The World’s Fastest Growing Substack

An accidental success — 7 days, 1 million subscribers, and a creative spark that won’t quit. (Interview by Blake Africa.)

The world’s fastest growing Substack has taken everyone by surprise, including children’s author and creativity mentor Andrew Newman, who sits astonished at his desk wondering how, on day 7 of writing his thoughts down and quietly posting them to a new-to-him platform called Substack — he has over a million followers. (or subscribers as they are known in Substack-land.)

Even more befuddling is the notion that over 10% of those subscribers have decided to pay to read his whimsical musings, netting him a healthy living just for sitting in his pyjamas with a cup of tea and scrawling his ballpoint over the pages of a cheap Tesco’s lines notepad.

When asked what his secret is, Newman paused, appearing to think deeply, and said in what sounded like sincerity: “I don’t know.”

As an interviewing journalist that’s the worst possible answer he could have given. “I don’t know” doesn’t make much of a story for other aspiring Substackers and newsletter writers who want to write the world’s next best Substack and need to know: how did Newman grow a Substack from scratch in just 7 days?

Perhaps Newman saw my notepad close and my eyes roll — or perhaps he too felt this not to be a good enough answer to inspire, but he put his teacup down and asked: “Does anyone ever know?”

What followed was a mesmerizing hour of contemplation — akin to the ramblings for which he has so quickly become known and quite apparently, loved.

“Does anyone ever know what will work, or why, or when?” Certainly not this marketer who has thrown more ideas against the wall to see what sticks than God has dripped raindrops on Scotland.

Newman’s previous adventures in attracting attention and recognition have had some success, with families around the world enjoying his kids’ books.

He mumbled something I didn’t quite catch about a bestselling story called The Hug Who Got Stuck, but the use of “who” to describe a hug threw me off. Who says “who” when it’s clearly a “that”?

I’m concerned that the grammar police haven’t added that book to the banned books list just for teaching kids to personify every aspect of their inner world. Anyhow, I detract..

Most worthy of consideration was Newman’s idea that no writer really knows what they are going to write next, and that they don’t need to. That’s because of the guiding current of what he calls “The Creative Spark.”

There’s no doubt in his mind that this ‘spark’ has its own intelligence and can be trusted to lead you somewhere interesting if you dare to follow it. Given that his Substack is only 7 days old, and he has a million subscribers — he may well be onto something.

This sounds distinctly like the territory discussed by Elizabeth Gilbert in “Big Magic,” the New York Times bestseller on creativity.

Well, go figure! A man with no plan, further than to bravely express himself through his favorite pastime — writing — may just have stumbled on the key to marketing success, and be on his way to retiring early on an accidental 4-hour work week.

It certainly seems with his massive new fan base that his upcoming book Follow Your Spark — Not Your Trauma will launch to certain success, if not start a wild revolution of people who actually prioritize doing what they love and put creativity first.

I for one will be subscribing too. I wouldn’t want to miss whatever genius this man has discovered, even if he stumbled upon it in the dark. Hell, I’ll probably pay to subscribe. It seems worth the money to be in his inner circle just in case inspiration like his washes off better with proximity.

The interview concluded with Newman scratching his belly and standing up to excuse himself, saying “Oh, there’s another spark” — as if a baby had kicked inside his belly like a pregnant woman in her third trimester. “Show yourself out, this could take a minute,” he said. “It feels like a big one.” And off he went to follow said spark, sitting down at his blank page, leaping in without hesitation.

As I let myself out, I glanced over to where he sat, and saw a man so deeply content. Happily absorbed as his pen filled the page. If that’s the power of the creative spark and the result of following that impulse when it kicks inside — then I’m all in. I’d do anything for a little additional happiness to quell my depression and this spark medicine is apparently “free and always available.”

Postscript:
As I glance back and read over my article I see a whole lot of sentences I don’t even remember writing — or thinking about writing — but they are good and somehow it all hangs together. It seems I just accidentally followed my own creative spark. Perhaps this article will blow up too?!
- Blake Africa