8 Creative Writing Hacks to Leapfrog Your Next Hurdle

Here are eight creative writing hacks to help novelists and short story writers finish their books and tackle their hard-to-hurdle obstacles. Written by Joe Walters, author of The Truth About Book Reviews.
The post 8 Creative Writing Hacks to Leapfrog Your Next Hurdle appeared first on Independent Book Review.
https://independentbookreview.com/2026/06/05/8-creative-writing-hacks-to-leapfrog-your-next-hurdle/

#Blog #OnWriting #Beingawriter #creativewriting #CreativeWritingHacks

Writing with AI isn’t always generating entire novels with a prompt

Sometimes, I get frustrated with the writing community. I’ll casually post something about using AI for writing, and almost immediately, someone would drop a rude comment without finding out how I use AI to write!

They immediately jump to conclusions and think I generate novels with a click of a few buttons.

Yes, unfortunately there are some writers who do that.

Personally, I feel that generating 200 novels a year – even if you write fast before the age of AI – is not sustainable for the environment or for the mental health of the creator. I also highly doubt this method could produce something highly unique or impactful. I’m pretty sure very talented writers can, but they most probably cannot generate more than a dozen highly unique works a year.

However, in the world of genre fiction, this factory line use of AI can work because some readers just like to read the same story, tropes, and plots as long as there’s enough variety to the plot or characters to keep them happy. (Let’s face it, we know readers like these exist and I even read these novels for relax sometimes.)

In the world of content engineering (which is what I actually do at work these days), these stories are said to have a specific content model which can be fed to LLMs to generate stories very quickly.

These stories serve a very hungry market. Readers of these types of novels read so fast writers can’t produce enough books for them. The writers perform a service whether you like it or not.

AI as a ghost writer?

As a reader and a writer of fiction and non-fiction, I personally do not agree with this way of using AI for writing because it reminds me too much of factory production.

I generally do not find the process of writing books like this fun at all. Nor do I generally read these type of books in volume; I like books that have a deeper meaning, and I definitely love books with beautiful prose.

However, I do not condemn nor heckle the writers who write novels this way, because it still takes a certain amount of effort and creativity to do this, and they serve a market that I don’t write for. Far be it for me to wag my finger at other writers whose process I don’t jive with.

These writers are essentially treating AI like ghost writers. In real life, many writers (James Patterson, anyone?) use ghost writers. Is it wrong to use ghost writers, human or AI? Well, I personally don’t think it’s wrong; it’ll be hypocritical of me to say so because I’ve ghostwritten for clients before.

It’s just business. That’s the cold, hard fact, so why get delicate about this.

These writers will find readers who will appreciate them.

You, who prefer not to write with AI, will find readers who will love you for this very fact.

And I, a writer who uses AI to assist me, will also find the readers who will appreciate me.

Basically, we are not competing for the same pool of readers, so why squabble as if there’s a limited pool of readers out there?

Using AI to write fiction looks different for everyone

Not ALL of us write like this. I certainly do NOT.

For one, I love crafting sentences. It’s a fun challenge for me. I especially like writing prose that makes people laugh and I like my romantic scenes subtle and filled with nuance. AI is never going to take that away from me, nor is it able to produce the kind of fiction I like to write.

Here’s how I use AI to write fiction and non-fiction:

For fiction, I generally use AI to bust my creative blocks or when I’m especially brain fog-gy. I write most of my prose, but I use this method when I’m especially blocked and can’t write a word:

• I create an agent that helps me write story beats for me by having a dialogue with me. I give it my current story beats for a scene, and then we have a long dialogue where it asks me questions. My replies will improve the depth of the story beats. Then, I use these story beats to generate a first draft.
• This first draft acts more like swipe files for me. If you work in the content profession, especially in advertising, you’d know that swipe files have been kept by writers for decades. I use to grab novels off my shelf and read it when I feel “dry” and need inspiration to write my prose. It’s usually a frustrating experience as it doesn’t fit what I need. (Swipe files for ad copy is much easier, due to the shorter lengths.) Now, I have a highly targeted swipe file that suits my scenario or the scene I want to write.
• I then rewrite the first draft extensively.

For non-fiction, I get very technical. I use a lot of content engineering principles. Content models. Schemas. Things like that, but here’s one favourite way – I usually use this for more casual internal blogs:

• I create an agent which will dialogue with me.
• I will go for a walk and just talk into an app that transcribes what I say.
• I activate the agent, feed it the transcript and it’ll dialogue with me, asking me a series of questions so I can clarify my thoughts.
• At the end of it, it’ll generate a post – I’ve created “guardrails” for it so that it will use up to 80% of the words in the transcript.

As you can see, I’m heavily involved in this process. My ideas. My words. AI is there to help me clarify my thoughts.

I also have an agent that critiques my work; I designed it so that it is a firm mentor who is hell bent on making me a better content engineer and writer. (I once asked it to generate an image of a website menu that we were working on together, and it responded with: “I’m your mentor. I don’t generate images for you. I tell you how to improve.”

I designed it a tad too well, I think hah!

So, you can see that there are so many amazing ways that writers can use AI with their writing.

AI use cases for writing are extremely diverse and exciting. It’s all about automating the parts you do not like and find tedious. (My favourite use case is transcribing my thoughts! I am very much a “talk it out” person, and writing blogs by talking it out has sped me up considerably.)

I wish more would be more open to the possibilities and expose themselves to AI use, experiment and stop hiding their heads in the sand. And if they do, stop attacking those who are, because that’s not going to stop writers like us from honing our skills further, so it’s pretty much a useless exercise.

Whinging about what “AI is doing to writers” and leaning into AI doomerism is about one of the most useless things to do with your keyboard now. I’m not saying that you should go to the extreme end and be an AI evangelist.

Instead of whinging and attacking other writers, it’s far more productive to:

• Start experimenting with AI and writing and automate the things you find tedious
• Lean in even more into your craft, and be the next Sun Tzu or Margaret Atwood
• Find a way to help readers to find the writers they’ll love. If there’s one damage that is being made to the writing world, is that the book world is getting insanely noisy due to the deluge of books being created. Obviously, the old ways of finding books to read isn’t working any more. We need to find a new way.

Linkblog March 26, 2026: On typing

Welcome to my Linkblog where I share interesting articles and blog posts I found about social media, Indieweb, geopolitics, Chinese and Malaysian stuff, cute cat videos or anything funny and interesting I find online.

FYI: I also share links in the “Weekend Tales” of my Substack newsletter, Tai Tales. The newsletter is geared towards Chinese and Malaysian culture.

PS: I felt it was appropriate for this issue to use AI-generated imagery 😉

Nostalgia for word processors

The Digital Dilemma: Why Writers Are Abandoning Modern Word Processing Software

“Modern word processors, like most contemporary internet spaces, have become battlegrounds for our attention.”

I long for the days when a word processor was just a blinking green thing on a black screen 🥲

Your Word processor is distracting you

Each time I use a web-based word processor, my blood pressure just goes up. These days you never get a peaceful moment when you’re writing on one of those. You get interruptions galore – hey, would you like a tour? Hey! Did you know about this feature? HEY! WE GOT AI NOW

That’s why I write with Obsidian these days. So peaceful. No bloody interruptions. I use it to write almost everything. Blog posts, work copy, fiction, newsletters.

Turning Obsidian into the ultimate writing app and

How to Use Obsidian for Writing and Productivity

Speaking of which, this is how you use Obsidian for writing.

Malaysia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfnTcfquDnQ

We Malaysians sure love our malls. It’s our community centre, place of work … some malls even have condos above it!

Geopolitics

The three reasons why Americans aren’t rising up in open revolt

https://youtu.be/A6ptFXzx_JM?si=W–lBf_okNbKLsaM

It’s kinda depressing this video was released 12 years ago. At what point is “enough is enough”? 😅

Does AI “Threaten to Undermine Democracy” or is it already way too Broken?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLPWR4tTT_E

The intersection of tech and politics! I love the channel, Internet of Bugs, and this is such a solid take.

The Writing Community’s AI Panic

Another day, another storm in the writing community teacup!

The storm, this New York Times article: The New Fabio is Claude

TL;DR: Coral Hart uses AI to generate 200 books a year. This has made many writers mad, mad, mad.

(Somewhere in a glistening office tower is a very satisfied editor – the ragebait has worked as the article is widely discussed everywhere. KPI met!)

Coral Hart is just the newest “outrage” in a long list of “outrages” for writers.

If you’re as much of a social media hermit as I am, you’re probably unaware that the fiction writing community is currently being torn apart by those who use AI to write and those who aren’t.

I won’t go deep into the arguments for or against writers like Coral Hart right now, as this article is more about the writing community than AI and the answers are just a Google away.

Also, when I’m talking about the writing community, I’m talking about the online writing community that writes in English. They often come from countries such as the United States, Europe, and to a degree, Australia and New Zealand.

I personally do not know how the Malaysian fiction writing community is reacting to AI as I have limited contact with the community at large. (That’s another long story.)

How I reacted when AI became a thing

Like most writers, I was also resentful and upset, especially about the idea that our writing has been used to train AI without our permission.

But I’m a realist because I work in tech, and I have a realistic view of the technology. I have used AI for quite some time, even before ChatGPT became a thing.

Over time, my perspective changed as I found out how the technology worked, and calmed down. I am even experimenting with using AI to assist me when I write fiction.

Here’s the harsh truth: Either a writer is willing to adapt or they are not. Those who refuse will end up being behind, as they won’t be able to reap the benefits that AI gives a writer.

When you’re a working writer, you gotta face industry realities

On a practical level, at work, AI has been invaluable in helping me learn concepts faster. I’ve also created agents and accelerated my writing workflows because of it.

A powerful AI search bot on a knowledge base with rich data has been game-changing for me as well. (No more begging for stuff from colleagues and waiting for days to receive them!)

AI is also discussed in societies differently. In the West, doomerism prevails. In the East, especially China, there’s lots of optimism and it is now actively used in smart factories and hospitals. There are different types of AI, and LLMs are just one of them, so for the purpose of this article I’ll be focusing on LLMs.

These regional cultural attitudes will affect how AI is received in writing communities.

At the end of the day, AI is just technology—neither inherently good nor bad.

Writing communities have always been prone to toxicity; AI is just the newest trigger

To be honest, the fiction writing community has always been toxic to me. Even in Malaysia.

They’re always squabbling and attacking each other for one reason or another. During the early days of indie publishing, traditionally published authors sniffed at indie published authors, saying they’re not real writers. Now, it’s writers who are using AI assistance that are “not real writers”.

I’m not sure what it is about the writing craft and why its communities are like that. I have a theory that this is because writing, as a craft, is so closely tied to one’s ego. So, anything that threatens that makes people go crazy.

I’m a working writer (like, I literally write for media and corporations). I have been writing professionally for decades. Not only has my ego been pulverised by sharp-tongued editors and scathing reviews, I have no time for this shit. I need food on the table, so I need to write, end of story.

I prefer to use my limited free time to practice my craft – write fiction free of the demands of a cash till or boss. I don’t have time to reply or write posts in forums or social media defending my ego or hoping to get some understanding from a community that is often fighting among themselves.

During the early days of indie publishing, traditionally published authors sniffed at indie published authors, saying they’re not real writers. Now, it’s writers who are using AI assistance that are “not real writers”.

One thing I noticed lately, especially on Substack, is that many anti-AI writers have ended up bullying writers who do.

Frankly, I have no idea why people do this. What will that accomplish? How will that improve anything? Their anger should be directed at the tech giants who impose technology without understanding its impact on creatives, or at governments that refuse to regulate.

Honestly, it is not worth arguing with these bullies because they are too fearful of a technology they do not understand. The right thing to do is to block them because your energy is precious—you need to use it to create, not engage with people who refuse to do their own research and dare to experiment with this technology to truly understand what it means.

Unless these bullies who come hurling nasty words at you truly understand what AI does, they shouldn’t bully others about it. They only reveal their own lack of knowledge and understanding.

If a writer is hungering for community, especially one that uses AI to support their work, the best thing is to get it from small pockets of like-minded writers. Big is not always better.

The disability perspective

Another common narrative is that AI isn’t solving real problems but creating problems to solve.

For one, and I will continue being annoying about this, I have seen how it helps neurodivergent communities or those with cognitive problems, even in the creative field. Their struggles are valid, even if they aren’t always visible. Let’s not dismiss their problems so quickly just because their issues seem incomprehensible or not real to neurotypicals.

Ethical AI use?

As for writers who use AI, they must decide for themselves how they want to use it.

Sadly, due to the hostility against AI in the fiction writing community, I’ve come to believe it’s not worth announcing that you use AI.

One, writers don’t need validation for the tools we choose.

Two, I find these arguments around AI a bit silly. We’ve been using AI long before LLMs became a thing. People argued that spell checkers weren’t AI, but modern versions definitely are. AI has done a lot for knowledge management, a field I work in and love. It makes knowledge sharing easier and information more accessible.

What we need to discuss

What we really need to discuss are the rampant capitalistic forces that are driving this hype and the safeguards that are sorely needed to protect jobs, creative works, and societal stability.

We need to discuss the production-driven, “we need to write more books faster” culture that is now festering in indie publishing.

We need to come up with a better way to matchmake books and authors with their destined readers.

But no, writers are fighting with each other.

And the powers that be continue with a grin, knowing that their profits are still coming in because the writing community is as divided as ever.

I just know there would be a writer or two who would probably come at me and yell that I’m supporting Coral Hart or all for generating novels with AI due to my Guide to writing fiction with AI, all because I have written such a guide and I’m not raising my pitchfork at Coral.

Which, of course, makes me question the reading comprehension abilities of writers who claim to write professionally, sometimes. I will address my reaction to Coral’s situation, and what I think about generating 200 novels a year in my next post, promise.

How much does your working vocabulary change between works?

#authors #beingAWriter #conversation #vocabulary

Does AI help you work  faster or is  it just hype?

With all the research coming out saying that no, it doesn’t, you’d think my answer would be a definite no.

Instead, I’m going to be annoying and say: It depends.

For AI to help you accelerates work, the user needs to use it the right way.

Yes, it all depends on how well the user uses AI, and also, whether the user has the domain expertise in their field to ensure that what comes out of AI doesn’t require extensive rework.

I can only speak from my personal experience.

For me, I think AI does accelerate writing work but not in the way you think. (Meaning: Generate reams of text and voilà, work is over.)

The main benefit of AI for me is that it eases cognitive burden. That it allows writers to create without burning out. Writers like me, anyway, whose day job involves writing cognitively demanding copy about highly technical concepts 😅.

In the past, my work took so much cognitive and creative energy out of me that there was often nothing left for my personal creative work. So, I often had to sacrifice my personal writing.

If my blog, newsletters, or social media posts drop off – it’s usually a sign that things got so busy at work that there’s little energy or creative juice left for me to create for myself.

However, these days, these furloughs are getting rarer, and this is due to the ability of AI to now help me with things that drain me, I can focus on things that matter to me.

I like writing so AI is never going to be my ghostwriter; I won’t let it take that away from me.

That’s part of the reason why I don’t pay for AI services because I don’t really rely on it to generate much text.

Writers often subscribe to models if they want to generate a lot of text as the free versions do not generate a large amount of text.

The open source Deep Seek is enough for me, because I use it mostly for planning, organizing my thoughts and to do detail-oriented work like editing. I also realize that I like to dictate my writing and I often use AI to help me organize my thoughts. And then I fix it by rewriting it. This has accelerated my blogging and writing by quite a bit.

Oddly, I can’t do all this with fiction. I find it too weird to dictate a scene, so if I do use an AI transcriber like Otter.ai, it’s usually to flesh out the story beats for my chapter, and then use AI as a sophisticated swipe file to start my writing.

And yes, I still write my fiction with my own fingers!

With that cognitive savings I gained from using AI, I can now write fiction, or my newsletters and Cdrama reviews without feeling like I am draining my brain dry or burning out every month.

So I think AI doesn’t exactly accelerate my work per se. (Because I do rewrite extensively, and some argue that it’s just faster to write from scratch instead of rewriting and editing like crazy.)

What AI does is that it enables me to produce more because I am no longer exhausted as quickly or as often. I imagine in the days of yore (like a few years ago before Gen AI was publicly available), people would hire personal or writing assistants for all the tasks I’m outsourcing to AI.

How does that translate to the corporate world?

I foresee that in the future, writing teams for corporations will be much leaner. They will be staffed by people who are adept at using AI to create content; AI will be the copywriting juniors or interns. Writers are still needed, but they will have more strategic roles. They manage content workflows, plan, strategize content pipelines and ensure editorial quality.

But the question is, how do juniors become these people? Because expertise is something that gives AI users an edge. Without expertise, you won’t recognize quality copy.

That’s the biggest dilemma of the day – how do we give younger writers the training they need to be strategic writers and editors of the future?

#AI #BeingAWriter #ChatGPT #writing

Why do you want to write a book?

In a world consumed by TikTok scrolling and YouTube binging, it is a wonder that anyone still chooses to spend hours reading a book. Yet despite how instant gratification has chipped away at our attention spans, book sales are thriving. In fact, this resurgence in reading seems to be fueled, at least in…
https://www.hiddengemsbooks.com/why-want-to-write-a-book/

#ForAuthors #beingawriter #howtobeawriter #inspiration #selfpublishing
@indieauthors

Guide to writing fiction with AI

I started this journey out of frustration. I’ve had a story languishing in my mind (one of many!) that wouldn’t stop nagging me each night. So, one day, I decided to let AI write it for me by sending it my storybeats (description or outline) with the dialogue I have of each chapter.

Since then, I got more and more curious about the process. I started wondering out loud if writing fiction with AI is as evil as the writing community made it sound.

Experimenting with AI fiction writing made me more aware about my creative writing processes. This helped me clarify what processes I will outsource to AI, and what I will keep.

🌿If you’re following my website via RSS or subscription, please note that this is just a “seedling” or a post where it is a work in progress.

This guide will be updated as I explore this topic, so do bookmark this page and return to it. Below is the list of essays about this topic.

You can als bookmark the page with the tag “Fiction writing with AI” or follow it with an RSS reader like Feedly. Just copy that link and feed it to your RSS reader.

Note: Some of these posts are only for subscribers to the blog. I usually only reserve posts where I get personal for them. Subscription is free.

Posts about writing fiction with AI

• Writing with AI isn’t always generating entire novels with a prompt

  May 26, 2026

• The Writing Community’s AI Panic

  Feb 27, 2026

• Fiction writing: What tasks will I outsource to AI?

  Aug 13, 2025

• What my AI fiction writing experiment taught me about my creative process

  Aug 1, 2025

• What if using AI to write fiction isn’t an evil act?

  Jul 23, 2025

Fiction writing: What tasks will I outsource to AI?

🌸 P.S. Follow the guide on my experiment writing fiction with AI—it includes a list of all the posts about it.

In my previous post, What my AI fiction writing experiment taught me about my creative process, I mentioned SJ Pajonas’ post, “The Joy Factor: How to Use AI Without Losing What You Love About Writing”. In that post, she talked about how we need to find the parts of our writing process that we loved, and the parts where we didn’t.

The parts that we don’t, we can outsource to AI.

Why do this? If we outsource tasks that we don’t like or cognitively drain us, we will be able to save that cognitive energy for tasks we value and love.

Tasks I will outsource to AI

Brainstorming outlines
Note: Brainstorming, not creating! I find AI’s plots pretty pedestrian, to be honest. Besides, I want ownership of my plots.

I’m a discovery writer, or a pantser. I may have the whole story in my head, but there are gaping holes in it. I find it hard, sometimes, to understand how my story goes from point A to Z. So, sometimes I get stuck because I write myself to a corner. AI will help me brainstorm a way out. I hope to explain my brainstorming process in a future post.

Editing and proofreading
Despite being a professional editor in real life (once for a national newspaper, at that), proofreading drains my cognitive batteries like no other. I just prefer to write! AI will help me massively in this. My tool of choice is Prowriting aid, which I have paid a lifetime subscription.

Creating story bibles and “fact-checking”
I like coming up with character arcs and plots, but that doesn’t mean I like write about them.

I find the work to create story bibles tedious, so I’m glad I have AI to generate the copy I need for my outlines, character descriptions and more.

With the story bible, I can ask AI to ensure consistency and accuracy in character names, places and plot lines, something I truly hated to do in the past – fact-check my own fiction!

Marketing
Book blurbs, social media promotional posts — I am more than happy to outsource this to AI, thank you very much.

Book covers
This is controversial, but I may do this.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for me is that I write in genres where pre-made covers are just not that great or even readily available: Science fiction, and the unique Chinese genres of wuxia and xian xia.

In the past, I tend to rely on pre-made covers as I don’t have the energy nor the money to work with an artist to create specialised covers.

My previous attempt with a cover artist was not great. I sunk RM500 into th ewhole thing but it was a disaster because the cover turned out awful, and I never used it in the end.

If I do use pre-made covers, I spent countless hours searching through the catalogues of cover artists. Most of the time I had to settle with what I could find at my budget.

In the end, I thought of creating the covers myself, but the stock images for science fiction novels are generic and overused. I remember the dismay I felt when, after paying a pretty penny for a premade cover, I found the same exact cover being used by another author.

So, yes, I probably will use AI to generate the image for my ebook cover.

Tasks I will keep because they give me joy

Coming up with the actual plots and character arcs
AI can pry this from my cold, dead hands.

Writing the prose
I read with interest, people who generate first drafts and then rewrite them. I did try that out of curiosity, but I think it was so awful, and the rewriting work so much, that I don’t think it’s worth it. Apparently, you can train the AI to write in your voice, and while I did try that and the results were much better, I still felt uncomfortable outsourcing this part of the process to AI.

Because my biggest joy is to write prose, and to learn to write better prose. I’m a craftsman who enjoys the process of improving my craft.

There are moments when I’m so inspired that the text just flies off the keyboard for me, and writing the entire chapter is effortless.

But there are moments when I cannot seem to write a word because my brain is so bored with writing necessary scenes and just wants to write the “fun bits”.

AI would be helpful in making that “rough ugly first draft”. However, I must supply it story beats (rough outline of the scene) and dialogue. Without it, that first draft would feel like too much work, not mine, and an unsatisfying exercise.

Somehow that first draft enables my brain to get over that inertia and finish and even extend the chapter. There’s probably some neurological hack at work here, which I hope to explore in the future.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, you can see that “using AI to write fiction” is a lot more complex than just the act of generating raw text, do zero edits, and then slapping it together into an e-book format and publishing it on Amazon.

It is more of a collaboration between AI and human. Think of AI as that research assistant, cover artist, writing buddy or beta reader or proofreader that will never get bored of your requests. It is someone who will tirelessly work with you at your side as you hammer away at your book.

#AI #BeingAWriter #Fiction #FictionWritingWithAI #writing

Digital decluttering: Marie Kondo-ing the content I consume

Information overwhelm has been a long-standing problem with me. I find it so difficult to choose which content to focus on; partly because I feel like supporting every writer I see, but I have to admit that I just cannot do read everything.

I no longer look at geopolitical content as much as I used to—thank God. I don’t even know why I was so obsessed with them before. Now, I’m thinking of reducing my blog feeds and Substacks. I need to reduce them significantly, but I don’t want to lose contact with all the wonderful blogs I’ve found.

Personal guidelines to manage information overwhelm

The big question: what guidelines do I need so that I don’t end up following enraged by my feed?

Although I enjoy reading about the many use cases of AI, right now, there’s so much toxic discourse around the subject that I have to avoid my Substack Notes feed altogether.

I like following AI content, but only the kind that is positive and nuanced. But the Substack algorithm is a mess – I can’t curate it like I can on Mastodon. Nor is it as ‘obedient’ as those on Xiaohongshu (Red Note). It has an agenda of its own.

One irresponsible click and I’m suddenly being recommended outrage content: Posts that are performative moral grandstanding, Restacks that are thinly-veiled attempts at bullying people, outrage, moral panics…

Posts that make me itch to respond with an angry retort…

So I have to come to the sad conclusion that the best way to manage this is…

Removing Substack from my phone

So, recently I wrote this on Mastodon and Notes:

Notes isn’t fun anymore. I’ve deleted the app (again) because it’s just too toxic. I lack the discipline not to peek at the FYP feed. Each time I do it’s a test of wills: Can I resist engaging with yet another rant? (Spoiler: Often, no. 🥲)  

This isn’t an airport—you don’t need to announce your exit. That’s always been my philosophy when leaving platforms.  

But this is for people who follow me on notes and whom I interact with often:  I’m limiting my time on Notes

Moving forward, I’ll focus on my newsletter and your comment sections instead.

I’m realistic enough to know I can’t quit entirely; there are still actual humans that I enjoy talking to. But lately, I am  being forced to read, or end up having to reply to debate bros or moral scolds. 

I don’t enjoy ideological trench warfare.

Pre-Notes Substack was so much more cosy and community like. Now it’s just a rage buffet where I’m constantly bracing for hostility just for having the “wrong” take. It’s like Twitter, but with essays.

As a non-American, the relentless US culture-war spillover is exhausting. My interests (Chinese culture, AI) sit at the intersection of every hot take imaginable, and I refuse to performatively hate [insert topic] to prove my “purity.” 

The collective blood pressure here could power a small city.

Substack needs Mastodon-style guardrails: keyword filters, limited reply visibility, etc. Right now, posting feels like poking a raw nerve into the open air—will this spark a great convo or attract harassment? I’m tired of the gamble.  

I have periodically withdrawn from Notes before but I think after receiving two back-to-back rude comments today from people who claim to be morally superior than I am, I am totally done.

See you in your newsletters, friends.

I have removed the app from my phone and tablet. I mostly retained the app because I liked its read aloud function, and I enjoy listening to Substacks as I do my chores or go out for my walks. But I can use ElevenReader for that, even if it’s more tedious.

From now on, I’ll only access Substack from my laptop. If I want to reply, it will be from my laptop and I will only engage in people’s newsletters and not look at the ‘recommended’ feed any more. I will only follow people who do not write or recommend outrage/moralising posts.

I need to avoid using my smartphone too much anyway. I currently have tennis elbow and each time I use my phone or type too much, it sends me stabs of pain as a warning. In a way, it’s a nice alarm system!

Wrestling with Feedly

My philosophy: To funnel all content to one inbox. That inbox is Feedly, my RSS reader.

My current problem is that my feed is flooded with content I don’t look forward to anymore.

Here’s the thing: every time I open Feedly and see 35 blog posts, I feel like I must read them all. Even when I tell myself I don’t have to, I still feel compelled.

It’s time to do some serious Marie Kondo decluttering.

Will Substack remove its RSS function one day? Most probably, seeing how it’s trying so hard to be social media. Folks like me are an inconvenient stumbling block.

If that happens, so be it, I guess.

Weekend information workflow

I’m also implementing this workflow – it’s not the fastest way to read content, but perhaps this is the friction that I need.

Throughout the week I will scan my Feedly for articles I’d like to read, and compile it in my Obsidian vault.

Every Friday night, I will compile everything from Feedly into an eBook and read it in a café on the weekend.

I do this via Obsidian, which not only packages this into one document but converts it to epub. I will then read it on my tablet or e-reader in a cafe on Saturday or Sunday.

Remember the ritual of slowly going through the Sunday paper over coffee? What, only me? Well, I used to do this, and I guess this is the 21st century version of it.

If I want to respond to people, I’ll write it in my paper notebook first, then reply from my desktop. Tedious, yes. But worth it if it keeps me sane and prevents me from typing something in anger.

TL;DR: My information consumption workflow**

Substack

• Delete the Substack app from my phone. Goodbye Notes, but you’ve been terrible.
• Only access Substack on my laptop and engage within newsletters I follow.
• If I reshare anything to Notes, it is comments to the newsletters.
• If I want to reply to something, do it on my laptop—never on my phone.

Have check-in times for social media

• Check all feeds once a day at 3 p.m.
• During that time, review:
  • WhatsApp messages
  • Substack posts
  • Any other important feeds
• Only do this on my desktop.

Feedly

• Remove or archive feeds I no longer look forward to.
• Move “interesting but not essential” content to a Bookmarks page/folder.
• Keep only:
  • Career-related content
  • Chinese drama content
  • Content from friends
• Political content → Bookmark it instead of keeping it in Feedly.
• Daily: Scan for content I’d like to read and compile them into Obsidian.
• Friday: Compile them into one doc, which will be converted into an ebook.

Weekly Reading over coffee

• On Saturday or Sunday, take that eBook to a café and read it on my tablet or e-reader.
• If I want to respond to something:
  • Write the reply in my paper notebook first. (Gives me time to think and not give in to outrage!)
  • Type and send it later from my desktop

Platforms that stay

• Mastodon.
• Reddit – only some subs (currently only 3 that I go to regularly)

You know, compared to a lot of people, I’m pretty much a social media hermit!

Smartphone Use

• Avoid excessive smartphone use (tennis elbow).
• Remove any social media apps that tempt me into reactive reading or arguing.

I need to remind myself:

• I cannot read everything.
• That energy responding to rude comments can be used to create beautiful things
• To consume content that improves my life, lifts my spirit or genuinely excites me.
• Avoid toxic, outrage-inducing content

#AI #BeingAWriter #blogging #Internet #socialmedia #Substack