How I stopped fighting the blank page

I built a writing workflow with my Claude executive assistant that solved my biggest problem with Substack: the blank page.

I write personal reflections on my spiritual journey. Topics that are hard to put into words. I lean on stories and lived experience to make abstract concepts feel like something real. After trying many different processes, I landed on one that works.

The process

It starts with a content calendar. I always know what my next two or three articles will be. I have deep research features built into my assistant, so I run thorough research on the topic. I read that research, and then I let it sit. A few days where the ideas are brewing in the back of my mind. Walking. Cooking. Exercising. It never really leaves.

When I'm ready, I go to a coffee shop with a dictation app. I talk through the topic. I recall stories I want to tell, personal reflections, quotes I half-remember from the research. No research paper in front of me. It comes out narrative-driven and rambly, and by the end, it's a long mess. But the beautiful thing is that it's all being transcribed in real time.

Back home, I feed that raw transcription to Claude and activate my Voice DNA skill. This skill knows how I write. It knows what I like in framing and what I don't. It knows which words I reach for and which ones I avoid. It takes my rambling and structures it into the shape of an article without making it sound like AI, because the words are mine. It just gives them a proper structure.

Then it goes further. It gives me a summary of what it did. It pulls relevant quotes from the deep research. It suggests follow-up articles. It tells me where the piece is strong and where it's weak, and what to focus on in the rewrite. All of this lands in a markdown file.

The rewriting environment

I open that markdown file in a piece of software called iA Writer. Despite the name, it doesn't write with AI. It has a typewriter feature: the screen goes black, only the sentence I'm working on is highlighted in white, everything else fades to gray, and the active line stays centered on screen. I love that piece of software. $30, lifetime buy.

A real example

I'm writing about the Stoic concept of the discipline of perception. It's triggered by my Mystery School, where we've been practicing this discipline all month. I had Claude do deep research on the concept, including a branch into first principles thinking (which turned out to be a different thread, but useful anyway). I read that research twice over the last few days.

Today I sat down at my local coffee shop and talked through the topic while my words instantly were transcribed in an app. I told Claude what I wanted to say, what I didn't, where I was unsure (the first principles link), and which quotes from the research I wanted woven in. My narration was mostly private reflections and personal stories where perception has made a difference over the last few months.

Claude did the rewrite and set it up in a clean markdown file with notes and recommendations. I now have a first draft written in my words, but I never had to stare at a blank page.

That was always my struggle. "Just write, just keep writing until it flows." It works. But it's not fun.

Why this matters

This process has shaped my last four articles. They've reached a complexity and structure I wouldn't have hit by just sitting down and writing cold. I start ideation and research, building real knowledge on the topic, and then relating it all to personal experience through my own words. I let the words come without worrying about structure, flow, or which story comes before which quote.

Then I use Claude as a writing assistant to give me a first draft I can keep working on without his help. Second draft, third draft, adding concrete recommendations, tightening the arc. The final piece is mine. It reads like mine. And it's better than what I'd produce if I had to fight through the blank page every time.