My Writing Year in Review

Well, that was fun!

I’ve been writing publicly in some form or other for about a decade now, but I can unhesitatingly say 2021 was my most fruitful and rewarding year yet. This is thanks to the generosity and encouragement of a great many people, including the editors who have worked with me, the readers who have financially supported me, and the many friends and followers who have personally let me know I’m doing something right with my work. With their encouragement, I was able to take the step of finally owning that work in my own name this year, nerve-wracking as that prospect had always been for me given the breadth of touchy topics I’d covered as a young writer.

Starting this Substack also turned out to be a perfectly timed choice, allowing me to connect more directly with my reader base and fill up a blank white, ad-free page with quite literally whatever I wanted. At times, I’ve regarded professional full-time writers with a touch of envy, but with experience I’ve come to appreciate the creative freedom of the freelancer-with-a-day-job, who has no obligation to fit the sum total of his output into one particular mold. (Though I hasten to add that in my particular case, since said day job is High School Teacher, YOUR GENEROUS SUPPORT is very much appreciated as I continue to keep various balls in the air. However, I’m more than happy to assist if this isn’t feasible for you—do DM.)

As I’ve continued to outsource select work, I’ve had the pleasure of expanding my bylines, which I hope to keep doing next year. Making original contributions in a crowded field is a challenge, and it’s always a thrill to see a pitch all the way through to publication at an outlet I respect. For readers who might not have been aware, here are the highlights:

*For The Critic, I wrote this reflection on the popular appeal of historian Tom Holland.

*I wrote my first few articles for Spectator UK, including a 40th anniversary retrospective on Chariots of Fire, a defense of John’s gospel as eyewitness testimony, a reflection on Richard Dawkins’s Down’s Syndrome comments, and an exclusive interview with Christian evangelist Hatun Tash (of which I later published the uncut version right here on the Stack). I’m very proud of the diversity and quality of these pieces, and I especially thank Tom Goodenough for being willing to edit a new contributor.

*I also notched my first couple articles at First Things, though in the confusion of my uncloaking they seem to have gotten filed in different places, one under my pen name, the other under my real name. In any case, they are an appreciation of Billy Joel, on his 50th anniversary in the music business, and an appreciation of It’s a Wonderful Life, on its 75th anniversary. (Freelancing tip: Watch out for round anniversaries of stuff you like, it’s an endless supply of Content.) I have some much less apolitical ideas to pitch to the mag in the future, but for now, I’m rather pleased that I got to launch my byline there with two pieces of pure arts criticism.

*Speaking of It’s a Wonderful Life, if you just can’t get enough of my commentary on the old thing, I also gave Spectator World an anniversary reflection, shorter and crisper in tone than my First Things take, but hopefully also worth a read.

*I have continued to keep my hand in commentary on Christian-atheist dialogues, writing up Douglas Murray and N. T. Wright’s radio conversation for the Unbelievable? Patheos blog. This was a treat, since host Justin Brierley had brought me and Douglas together on the same show a couple years prior while I was still “cloaked,” and Douglas has been a kind encouragement in my writing ever since. His dialogue with Wright was certainly more high-status than ours, but I still enjoyed hearing the similarities and differences between the two. Perhaps my key takeaway could be summed up here: “We Christian apologists are so occupied with making sure people have got all the good ‘reasons to believe’ that we forget to ask a different kind of question: Even with reasons, would you believe?” As always, I enjoy thinking carefully about the questions raised by figures of Murray’s ilk, while also pushing back where I think their arguments are thin. The great fun of interacting with an interlocutor like Murray is that so far from tone policing you in this enterprise, he will positively invite you to be more blunt. (Which bluntness I felt was a bit lacking on the religious side of his NatCon panel discussion with Sohrab Ahmari and others, but that’s neither here nor there.)

*Meanwhile, I dipped my toe into poetry with my first published poem at the North American Anglican (which I reproduced with poet’s notes for Christmas here). Poetry is something I greatly enjoy and could probably do a lot more of if I were more disciplined. Maybe I will.

*For something different yet again, which the majority of you haven’t seen until now, I self-published some very short edge-of-pandemic fiction under my own name for one of those schlocky aggregator competitions where nothing good ever wins. (I only figured this out after the fact. Yes, I’m slow.) But if the competition hadn’t dangled a $20,000 grand prize in front of me, who knows if this story would exist at all? For that alone, thanks Vocal Media! Fiction was my first love as a reader and has always been something I wished I could hack as a writer. After a few years of random floundering and dabbling, I’ve very gradually begun to feel like this is not a wholly ridiculous possibility.

*I celebrated the centennial of Sophie Scholl’s birth in my first piece for Law and Liberty.

That concludes my outsourced highlights. I do also still have my old Patheos blog, Young Fogey, where I’ve begun to write more of my Christian-culture-focused takes while aiming this Substack at a broader audience who might find Christian culture wars less than engrossing. As you can tell by the drop-off in my posting there, I find them less than engrossing too. However, I do still have things worth saying in that arena, which I may link here every so often if the good folks at Patheos don’t turn the lights out on me for spotty posting.

As for my favorite posts here at the Stack, I struggle to make a shortlist, because so much of this material means something to me. I think I can honestly say I’ve never done better work than I have here. My most-read piece by far was my “coming-out” story, for obvious reasons, a piece I was proud of in itself even though I’d meant it to be primarily a gateway. My second most-read piece got far more attention than I could have anticipated, a piece of mostly film criticism on the topic of assisted suicide. The attention spike came courtesy of Caitlin Flanagan, who’d shared her own personal thoughts on the topic in a post-Oscars film review of Nomadland. I took the chance to respond in kind by reviewing Supernova, which is about a middle-aged gay man who wants his lover to help him end it all before he succumbs to early-onset Alzheimer’s. Not exactly the most click-baity of topics, but it caught Flanagan’s Twitter attention, and the post’s stats quickly climbed, no doubt bloated by hate-reads but also attracting some people who might otherwise never have discovered my corner of the web. For which, though it might seem cheeky, I have to say thanks, Caitlin, and truly no hard feelings.

Two pieces especially close to my heart were tributes that were a very long time coming, one for my grandmother and one for a neighbor who died some years ago but left an indelible mark on me through his vivid testimony as a World War II combat veteran. I’m thankful I was finally able to honor these two saints of my life properly here, at the height of my powers as a writer. Speaking of World War II, I seized yet another round anniversary opportunity by commemorating a hero of Pearl Harbor with one of my stronger poetic efforts (in my opinion). Returning to heroes of the present day, it seemed to strike a particularly deep chord with readers when I pulled together and meditated on a number of photos from the Afghanistan evacuations in one place. I also tried to honor the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 as best as I could, which seemed to be good enough for many of you.

In a sadder vein, I paid a tribute to my friend Mike Adams on the one-year anniversary of his suicide, trying to capture something of the very good man many of us knew and loved in spite of the pain. Suicide has been a bit of a running thread in a few pieces here at the Stack, as part of a broader theme in my writing of trying to run towards the pain, not away from it. I treated it in the most depth for paid subscribers here.

In the vein of running towards pain, as well as running towards third-rail topics, a number of my pieces have dealt with homosexuality—sometimes more frankly, as in my three-part summer series (Part I, Part II, Part III), and sometimes more subtly, as in this piece comparing and contrasting the COVID and AIDS pandemics. This is perhaps my most “cancellable” work, the kind of work that made me hesitate the longest before putting my own name to it. It’s dark, difficult, and provocative, and I wouldn’t take back a word of it.

Another piece that struck a chord for a lot of readers was my All Saints’ reflection on Shusaku Endo’s Silence, a work of which I’m not a great fan in the final analysis but which has long been nagging at me, waiting for me to get out all my thoughts in long form. Faith and doubt in general are very potent topics for me, though I try to treat them with a sensitivity to the fact that many readers on both sides have tired of flattened, pre-programmed debates over the truth of Christianity. It’s not at all my intention to say the debate itself is meaningless (this subscriber-only post is just one place where I take blunt aim at liberal mainline bids to water down basic doctrine), but rather to find new ways into it. I’m preaching to the choir for, I would guess, the majority of you, but I know this isn’t the case for a not insignificant minority. For that minority’s continued readership, I am particularly grateful.

Most of the highlights I’ve just touched on are free reads, but they are indicative of the quality you can expect to find if you unlock the paid tier. Pieces offered at this level tend to be quieter, more personal, and more “evergreen,” often pulled from things I’m reading, sometimes sharing “people-watching” field notes (or cathedral-hopping, as case may be). But I try to keep some timely stuff in the paid-tier mix as well, like this take on the Alec Baldwin shooting, or this reflection on a recent long-form essay about Stephen Glass. This may still not be enough to nudge some of you into an upgrade, but meanwhile, I hope it’s made those of you who do subscribe feel like you’re getting your money’s worth.

And that about does it for my year in writing! I hope you all have enjoyed this look-back with me, whether it reminded you of a favorite column of mine or reminded you to double back and pick up something you missed. I look forward to another year. Thanks folks.