Picture a freezing Sunday morning on Long Island, New York. Chris B. Writes is sitting with the cold and the quiet, sick of the grey winter that won’t let go. Instead of scrolling his phone, he opens a blank page and writes a poem about mountains, about sunrise, and about climbing something that feels impossible.
He calls it Alpenglow. 1 He posts it on Substack and it goes viral.
But let’s back up. Because the poem isn’t the beginning of this story.
The beginning is a hospital room, two years earlier, and 26 days in the pediatric ICU watching his son fight for his life.
A Father, a son and a reason to write poems
Online Writing Club member and today’s podcast guest Chris B. Writes joined Substack seven months ago with ..
zero following
no email list
no strategy
What got him started was the a feeling he couldn’t shake…that his son Brayden, who everyone calls Bray Bray, deserved to have his story told.
Bray Bray was born with a rare genetic disorder, DNAI1. He uses a wheelchair. He doesn’t walk or talk.
But I asked his father about him and listened to what comes out:
He's a shining light and the happiest kid on the planet.
Two years before joining Substack, Chris almost lost him. Twenty-eight days in hospital. Twenty-six of them in the pediatric ICU. The kind of experience that reshapes a person completely, that makes everything before it feel like a different life.
And yet, here is what he said when he finally sat down to write:
I joined to give him a voice, to be a witness to the miracle that he is.
That word, witness, carries the entire weight of what makes his Substack work.
The one post that started everything
His first post was called His One Smile.2
He describes it as his “hero post”, the one where he put all his cards on the table.
I'm just like, you know what? I'm going to lay it all out there. I'm going to share Bray Bray's story. I'm going to tell them exactly what's going on and why I'm here.
No easing in. Straight to the heart of it. That, right there, is a masterclass in how to launch a Substack with something so real people have no choice but to feel it.
And then came Alpenglow.
It went viral a couple of weeks ago. And I think it's just a very relatable poem because there's an ethereal message here of the imagery of the Alps. We had a very, very cold winter here in Long Island, New York, and I wrote this poem on a very frigid Sunday morning. I was sick of the cold weather. There's a metaphor here of climbing that impossible mountain that maybe isn't so impossible.
One poem. A frigid Sunday. An impossible mountain that maybe isn't.
Over 200 likes. Over 100 comments. People sit with Chris’ peoms.
The “Writer’s Thumbprint”: your human superpower in the “age of AI”
Here is a phrase worth writing on a Post-it and sticking to your screen:
writer’s thumbprint.3
We’re often talking about this in the Online Writing Club since I talked with a Google expert two years back and he already empasized the importance of it with AI. Chris has it and that’s why he’s rising on Substack and growing his audience.
Writer’s thumbprint = the quality that makes your writing recognisably, irreplaceably yours, the thing AI can approximate but never replicate, the thing that makes a reader feel like they know you before they’ve met you. As my friend Karen Salmansohn said in our podcast interview: “The YOU-ier, the better”4
Chris has this in abundance. He describes his approach with an elegant simplicity:
I always tend to say more with less. And you can tell my writing by the personality between the lines. I write with specific imagery and I try to ground those images. But then I also have an abstract or emotional component to my writing.
That’s the structure of his poems, and it’s worth studying closely.
Take his poem Shave.
I thought I’d teach you how to shave as you ask me about cologne. You’d say it’s only men’s perfume.
It opens with something universal: a father teaching his teenage son how to shave for the first time, that timeless rite of passage. Almost every reader can place themselves there.
Then the poem pivots and everything changes.
But then as we get towards the end of the poem, there's a shift that talks about, you know, all of a sudden I'm lifting you from your wheelchair. We won't be able to do certain things that we imagined.
From cologne and teenage swagger, to a wheelchair lift. That gap, that distance the poem travels in a few lines, is where all the emotion lives. And then the poem comes back, circles around to the original image. It always returns home.
There's always a specific image that I have in mind... really tying in my unique experiences as Braden's dad or as a caregiver to then express a larger point that anybody can really hold on to and interpret it.
That's Chris’ top-secret formula for his Subsatck poems he shared with me.
Begin in the particular.
Arrive at the universal.
Let your reader bring their own story to meet yours.
Grief, grace and who Chris writes for
Chris knows exactly who his reader is. They're poetry lovers and people in the middle of something hard…sandwiched between raising their own kids and watching their parents' health decline, or caring for someone who needs them full-time, or simply living with losses they don't have language for yet.
My community, I feel like, is the later millennials into the Gen X crew. So I'm talking probably 35 to about 65. A lot of them are sandwich (caregivers). They have their own kids and then all of a sudden their parents have issues and they're thrust into those roles. And really people who understand that there are different ways to express what you're going through, but you can still do it with grace and humility.
He writes toward their pain but he never leaves them there. Even when he's expressing the anger, the exhaustion, the nights he nearly falls into despair, there is always what he calls "a tinge of hope." Because there is Bray Bray's smile.
His smile is the closest thing you can get to pure innocence on this planet. And really that carries us through during all of the harder times... But we learned a long time ago to grieve the life he would have had and embrace the life he does have.
That sentence: grieve the life he would have had and embrace the life he does have…is itself a poem. It's also, quietly, the philosophy of his entire Substack.
It's okay to have those feelings. It's valid to feel angry, frustrated, tired, exhausted. And what I try to do is express those feelings, but I always just naturally also provide that tinge of hope, that tinge of perseverance, and his smile shows that too.
Chris’ 3 tips for writing poems on Substack and make your fist $1000
It happened. Chris made the first thousand dollars in seven months. from poetry. From a wheelchair-bound boy’s shining smile. From a father who decided the world needed to witness something.
When asked directly: what would you tell other poets who want to share their work here? Chris gave three answers.
#1 Connect with other writers and actually pay attention
I write naturally, I write in waves, and I’ve been very prolific because when I read the other people on Substack, they’re inspiring me to then write in different ways that I hadn’t even thought of before. Don’t just scroll through. Like, scroll through.Pay attention, sit with some of them for a while and you’ll be surprised what you come up with based on being inspired by them.
#2 Write from an audience of ONE first
Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. Just be honest. Don’t worry about the reception because you should write from an audience of one first. If you write from that audience of one first, the rest will follow. Be true to yourself.
#3 Collaborate, it leads to only great things
I’ve collaborated with so many people over the past few months and it’s led to only great things... collaborations are amazing and I really recommend aligning with those people and then going that extra mile and collaborating with them.
What built Chris’s paying audience
I joined Substack seven months ago with no prior following on a whim, right? But I figured it out. I honed my craft. And the biggest key is being real, being present, being yourself, showing empathy, building community, doing those things consistently. So don't go for those cheap things. You know, subscribe for subscribe... lend a unique perspective.
And then, about vulnerability, specifically about being a man sharing vulnerability in public, which is its own kind of brave:
A lot has to do with me just going all in on the authenticity of it and just being me, but being consistent with it. I am on Notes, I am present on Notes... just being accessible and knowing that everyone started somewhere is huge.
And when the unsubscribes come and they will here's how to hold your nerve:
For every one or two I lose for every time I post, I tend to gain like five, six or seven back from people who discover me anyway. So again, I think it's just a natural realignment going on.
Your right readers finding you, and the wrong ones making space for them.
BONUS tip: Substack Notes as your poetry teaser machine
One of the most practical and most underused tactics Chris has mastered is using Substack Notes not as a replacement for his poetry, but as a window into it.
My poetry is definitely shareable in snippets. And it's perfect for notes when I do teasers of my longer posts. I can have like four different stanzas in a poem and tease it on notes with certain stanzas that emphasise certain things.
My poetry is definitely shareable in snippets. And it's perfect for notes when I do teasers of my longer posts. I can have like four different stanzas in a poem and tease it on notes with certain stanzas that emphasise certain things.
People know they don't have to spend too much time reading it but they can sit with it, digest it further and then emotionally respond to it in a way that I think fits with their lifestyle.
Tease on Notes. Let them want more. Send them to the full poem.
That's the loop and it works.
Substack for Beginners (Substack School) opens May 7, here’s how to get access
Chris ended our conversation with something I have not stopped thinking about. I asked him about Bray Bray, about what it means to build something on Substack around a person you love this much.
And he said:
I truly feel like he was born to be my miracle. There's a great movie called Winter's Tale and it's basically about that concept where some people are born to lift others up in ways that you might not expect. And that's what he does for us.
Some people are born to lift others up in ways you might not expect.
Chris’s secret sauce: Show up. Be real. Do the hard work. Share the scary thing. Repeat …for as long as it takes.
But knowing the template and executing it are two very different things.
That is exactly why I built Substack School, so you don’t have to figure it all out alone, the way Chris did on a whim seven months ago. You get the map. You get the community. You get me in your corner.
On May 7 you’ll have access to THE Substack for Beginners course. My signature course as a Substack coach and top 15 #International Substack educator.
Totally updated for 2026… because Substack keeps changing, and so does everything inside.
Here’s the TOC: Substack School: Substack for Beginners
♥ Find your niche, your voice, and your writer’s thumbprint
♥ Set up your Substack the right way, from day one
♥ Grow on Notes and turn readers into your community
♥ Collaborate, cross-promote, and get discovered
♥ Monetise and earn your first $1,000
weekly Q&As and monthly masterclasses
What’s new in 2026?
Starting in May, I am adding weekly live Q&A sessions with me.
Me, live, answering your exact questions every single week. And if there is something inside the course I do not cover? I will record it and add it. This course breathes and grows, just like your Substack will.
In addition, I’ll open up some slots for 1:1 support and coaching. I f that’s you, please send me an email at kristina@onlinewritingclub.com
World Press Freedom Day Deal — open until this Sunday evening only:
The full value of Substack School is $499.
Until Sunday, you get it for a fraction of that — bundled with your full annual Club membership.
Get it for about $100!
One upgrade. Everything included:
The complete Substack School course — fully updated for 2026
Weekly live Q&A sessions with me starting in May
Full annual Club membership with everything that comes with it
All future updates, additions, and recorded answers, yours automatically
How do you get access?
Simply upgrade to an annual Club membership. That’s it. You’re in!
Want Substack School as a standalone purchase instead? Just hit reply and I will send you the details directly.
See you at the launch!
Hey, I’m Kristina, the heart of the The Online Writing Club.
I started writing on the internet in December 2020, newborn in arms, during one of the most disorienting and beautiful seasons of my life. What began as a creative outlet quietly became something I never expected: a 6-figure business, a global community of 18,000 writers, dreamers, builders, and work I genuinely fall in love with every single day.
In my corporate life, I’m an award-winning marketing professional and brand strategist. Here, I pour everything I know about writing, growing an audience, and building something real into every post, every lesson, and every conversation.
If you’ve ever believed your story deserves to be heard and want to get paid to be you, you’re exactly who I built this for.
