Dear friends,

When you start a newsletter, you have no idea in advance what an adventure you are setting out upon.

I often find myself musing on the process of writing, and indeed — of running a Substack.

While The Creative Life is very much focused on how one finds one’s way as an artist in the modern world, I wanted to create a companion section dedicated to sharing with my community my own thoughts on writing.

As such, this video is the first of my newly created “Substack Hub”. I will not be sending these posts out to subscribers, but will update when I can with a video or short letter.

These will be more spontaneous than the considered writing of my weekly Substack — more an opportunity to share what I think about writing as it surfaces.

This week’s video is a short meditation on those nightmare Substack weeks when you have absolutely no idea how you will get your essay written.

This week’s Substack was one of those weeks.

But equally — I find there is a special type of writing that comes when you are under deadline and have to rely on your instincts.

We forget it too quickly in this modern world; that writing needs energy.

In this week’s video I riff off this wonderful quote from Toni Morrison, who wrote The Bluest Eye while working full time as an editor at Random House and raising two boys alone:

“I stole time to write. Writing was my other job — I always kept it over there, away from my ‘real’ work as an editor or teacher.”

She got into the habit of waking before 5am, and then, as they got older, kept the rhythm. Or rather; the rhythm had become her.

Though we all dream of an ideal habit, what we must remember is that ultimately, a habit is most of all about the doing of the thing.

That means, sometimes: getting it written.

In Morrison’s case, the act of getting it written, over and over, worked the habit into her.

My takeaway is that we often resist our circumstances, or even feel sorry for ourselves — when in fact, our circumstances are teaching us about life.

Can we bring our best, even when it feels life is against us?

Can we find the fire, even when energy is short, or nothing seems to be helping us?

To stay consistent with a newsletter, you have to find, beyond everything — love of the thing itself.

That means, simply: learning to love writing first.

Yes, building an audience is an important aspect of that, but a readership of substance, one that stays with you, comes from the love and the value you put into your writing.

As for me, I have now published 172 weeks in a row. For much of that time my subscriber list flatlined. But what kept me going was simply this:

I wanted to become the best writer I could within the limitation of time I had. That value is what has started — very suddenly — drawing people to The Creative Life.

I’m extraordinarily grateful for your support.

Have a great week everyone, and remember: keep writing and keep the fun in it.

Isn’t that after all the easiest thing to forget — the joy!

With love,
Jim

I spent a lot of time thinking about how creatives can better promote a creative life.

To help me visualise it, I put everything I’ve learnt into a single workspace. It helps me:

1) Extract the best “Notes” from my weekly Substack Essay
2) Turn comments I leave elsewhere into Notes of my own
3) Think of posts as a body of work rather than one-offs

→ Step inside

Dear friends,

I was mulling over publishing schedules on the way to the studio this morning, and thought I’d share what was on my mind.

What has kept me going over 169 consecutive weeks isn’t that I always felt like doing it.

But the discipline of committing — even in hellishly busy times — started giving me rewards I didn’t expect.

Writing is how we interpret the world as we experience it. Over time, that activity starts rewiring you on the inside.

And despite never considering it my “primary” art form, writing has become the basis beneath everything I create.

If you have any questions about publishing, I’m happy to answer them below.

Also, I’ve been resistant to video in 2026 so if you’d like me to share more short perspectives , drop a comment and let me know!

Big love all,
Jim

I built “The Substack Workstation” to help me with the challenge of how to promote a creative life .

In it are 7 Note Forms which help to format one’s life, history and projects into a short form content.

It does not change your words — just shapes them.

Morning Reflection
Value Note
One-Liner
How-To
Back Story
Project Update
Pain Points

If you’d like to check out, you can try it for free here:

→ Step inside

In Short: A thirty-minute system that grows my Notes from real conversations — so my time for art stays protected.

Substack Tracker: I use this daily — comment “system” and I’ll send it for free.

On My Radar: is a legend and helps wean us off social media.

Introduction

Today’s Substack is a short essay about how my community writes my Substack Notes.

Eh? Let me clarify:

As a creative you want to build an audience, and yet the process of building an audience eats away at the time you have for making art.

We want to approach social media in an easy way — shooting from the hip because it feels authentic.

But then you are suddenly busy at work and you don’t post for a month. Or you start concentrating on this “audience building” business and find that you are not actually creating anything.

Exhaustion and social aspiration — two enemies of art.

The answer for me wasn’t to find more time for generating ideas. It was rather to draw my creative short form from my conversation with my audience.

Today I will share a very simple system which has doubled my subscribers, deepened my community and bought me back time for my two creative passions: music and writing.

Wandering the Alps in 2022 wondering if I’ll ever release any of my writing. I started Substack 2023

Why Systems?

Many artists don’t like systems, yet wonder why they never have time for deep creative work.

I’d counsel you to reevaluate. I don’t see systems as ways of being productive; I see them as ways to buy back non-productive time.

This is the opposite of how businessmen see systems, which is all about maximising time and buying leverage.

I want instead to protect what is most precious to me: my creative life. That is how my heart stays connected to the world, and how I interpret its pulse.

So I treat my creative process not as something that happens in my studio, but as a philosophy of life — not just what I create, but how I engineer my life towards the space for creativity. A living organism I tinker with every day.

The following approach to Notes is simply one part of that.

Below, I’ll show you what my thirty-minute system looks like — but first, the thinking behind it.

Mahalla Art Community, where my studio is based in Berlin

Your Audience Is Speaking To You

I go onto some accounts on Substack with 80K followers and there is no conversation.

My own was like this until I started looking at Substack not as somewhere — to put it bluntly — that I talked at people.

Now, it is where I talk with people.

Slowly, it is becoming what I first hoped it would be: a living community of creative spirits.

I give part of my day to helping people with their problems and pain points, and Substack is where I do it.

I’m precise about it, too: thirty minutes a day.

I hard limit it because I have a busy life.

In that time I not only engage with my community — but write and schedule a minimum of two days of Notes.

It is not about being in a rush or trying to “get it done” either.

It is a creative flow — a system. Let me walk you through it.

Scrappy musings, Spring Berlin

The 30-Minute-Flow

Thirty minutes, start to finish. Seven small moves.

1. Open with a shortcut

My friend introduced me to Raycast. One of my favourite features is that I can set up shortcuts to the websites I use every day.

So my first move is to press: ⌘T

This brings up my Substack Tracker.

I spend zero time wondering where to start. I'm not even browsing. The tracker is simply there — and that takes the deciding out of it.

2. The Tracker

My tracker is a web-based app that I built to stay accountable on Substack.

I don’t use it as a tracker, though — I use it to guardrail the time I spend on Notes. I don’t want social media eating up my week, but I do want to show up consistently.

It simply hands me the tasks I do every day, so I don’t have to think when I’m busy or exhausted.

Also, it protects my mental energy by systematising something I’d otherwise have to decide each time — and that energy is saved for creativity and for business.

I use it every day, and you can have it for free below. If you’re already subscribed, write “Yes” in the comments and I’ll DM it.

Substack Tracker

I love check list because it guarantees I show up even if I’m feeling low or unmotivated. Growing a newsletter is a long and slow business, and this has revolutionised my daily approach. .

3. Listen to the community

Once I’m in Substack I either go through my notifications or browse Notes, listening to what people are talking about.

Substack is like a collective psychological tapestry of humanity. Read its quilt and you bear witness to the widest arc of what it means to live in the modern age.

Each of us faces our own challenges. Each of us is wrestling with something every day.

I drop a few short comments — but after a few, I’m always struck by a thought:

“Yes — I have a deeper take on this one”

In these moments your own experience and history are stimulated, and there’s a chance to help someone with it.

So I take it. I respond as deeply as I can.

4. Dictate, don’t type

I don’t type my replies — I dictate.

I use an app called Wispr Flow and it is always open on my computer. I use the shortcut 🌐 (fn) which activates voice mode, and then I shut my eyes and speak.

The only time I type any more is for creative writing — Substack, lyrics, diary, or my book. Otherwise I’m dictating.

About half of the 242,882 words I’ve dictated through this app are responses to my community on Substack.

It has done two things.

First, it has helped build not just a living community but a network of creatives around the world, all moving forward together. I love my local scene in Berlin — and I’m just as grateful to take part in a broader global one. What a daily education!

Second, it helps me speak better. Writing is a fine way to formulate ideas, but calling on them in real time is a separate discipline. Most of us lean on verbal scaffolding by default. For me, creative life is the adventure of letting ideas permeate in real time — and having access to that innermost source.

That takes training. Wispr Flow gives me a daily training ground.

5. Convert to a Note

Reply posted I now use a second shortcut: ⌘W

This opens up “The Substack Workstation”

In here I gravitate to the “Comment To Notes” section.

Very simply, it turns a comment-thread reply into a standalone Note — one of the workflows that inspired me to build the Workstation in the first place.

I was spending five minutes a day rewriting a comment I’d dropped to turn it into something that could stand alone.

My thinking was often sharpest, and most detailed, when responding to an exact pain point — so I found myself universalising these comments daily. Even one could take half an hour.

Now I simply drop it in and format it. What I love is that it’s designed not to change my words.

It strips out the conversational scaffolding — the “yes, exactly” and “thanks for this” — so what’s left is the standalone thought.

It shapes the idea outwards: from one person, to everyone.

6. Schedule

Once I’ve reviewed the Note, I schedule it in Substack for the following day.

But this triggers a flywheel!

7. Repackage across formats

Something many people miss about “content” is that you can repackage the same idea through different lenses.

This isn’t about repeating yourself. It’s about understanding that a new format reframes an idea — gives it a different way in.

My comments are often long and in-depth. So I’ll think: how could I ventilate this idea better?

I take the longer version and reskin it — as a “Value Note”, a “How-To”, or a “One-Liner”.

If I find a format I like the feel of, I'll schedule that new Note for a fortnight after the original.

8. A Living Conversation

Being inspired by my audience means my Notes dig into what people are actually thinking about.

There is no guessing. No wondering.

These are real pain points, real challenges faced by the community — and it gives my Notes an animation, a texture coloured by the reality of creative life.

They aren’t assumptions about what I think is hard. They are a living conversation with the world itself.

The effect is that my thirty minutes a day concentrates my mind not only on the individual, but on the greater narrative — what Goethe called the eternal mind: formation, transformation, the eternal mind’s eternal recreation.

And I’d encourage you to think of Substack as different from an artwork. In an artwork you are mining your own battles, your own yearning, your own conversation with life. Substack is about exchange.

9. A Message Distributed Through Content

The effect of all this is that one concentrated, deep thought becomes an ecosystem.

Each comment becomes three Notes, distributed evenly as scheduled posts, two weeks apart.

The same thought, offered in new ways.

Most of us don’t need new information. We just need reminding of what we already know.

People follow you for your message and your values — and content is simply the effort you make to convey those values in different ways.

The same, but new.

My first Berlin show after the pandemic, 2022

The Freedom of a Fly Wheel

I’ve outlined today how thinking differently about one small aspect of my life solved several problems at once.

I don’t want a life built around “content” or “audience building”. But I do want to participate — to know people.

By putting what matters most to me — helping people with their creative life — at the heart of what I do, I make depth my foundation. From there, I take that first effort and turn it into a flywheel.

There doesn’t have to be a choice between “content” and “art”. There doesn’t have to be a choice between “building an audience” and “deep creative time”.

What you do have to do is challenge your own assumptions. For me, that meant facing how often I felt divided between art and audience — and then resolving that, rather than choosing one or the other, I’d look for a third way.

Those solutions have cost me untold hours of thinking, researching, experimenting, building. And it’s one of the real joys of my life to share what works, here, with you.

Finally — I’d love to know how you’re thinking about content, so let me know in the comments.

With love,
Jim

Start Your Flywheel

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you know the tension I write about — the one between making art and making content.

I built this tool to resolve it:

• The Seven-Note Cadence

• A workstation for promoting a creative life

• Try it today for free

Built by a creative, for creatives.

→ Step inside

Dear friends,

Five months ago I developed a nodule on my voice. After working so hard on the new album, it was a devastating start to the new year.

It did, though, give me some time to think. I had been writing about the tension between art and content creation for over a year, but wondered if I could build something that solved it.

My pain point was simple: building an audience meant churning out short-form content — and that was eating the time I had to make art.

Creative time is a precious commodity. After life and work, most of us are drained of energy. Too often you have to choose between the work of building an audience or the work of creating something.

I found this all during writing Chromatic Zero — and the grind of trying to do both nearly burnt me out. It almost cost me the album.

“Not good enough” I thought.

I did not want to spend my life performing for a content treadmill that cost me the very creative life I was trying to live.

Glum, and a little doom-laden, I opened up a code editor for the first time.

“Fuck it” I thought, and I entered the labyrinth.

How Do You Convey Your Story?

I wanted to create a space to systematise my short-form creative writing.

I was writing well but felt I could communicate more effectively.
So I asked myself:

I saw it not as a technical challenge, but a creative challenge. I did some “market research” and nothing came close to what I was after.

More importantly, nothing gave me the feeling of what I had in my mind’s eye.

So I started building.

My dream? An all-in-one workspace where every task for Substack lived under one roof.

I wanted it crystal clear. So I built an uncluttered space I could navigate without confusion.

What Does It Do?

Inside the workstation you find a complete house for Substack. The key feature is the Notes section where there are 7 tiers — 9 for full package.

Rather than guessing what to write, each node presents a different structure for how you express a creative life in bite-size.

For instance, in “Essay Notes” — you drop in your essay and it gives you the best 5 Notes from it. You can choose no edits, add a bold hook, trim the fluff, or add white space to ventilate the density. The words are yours. The structure adapts.

This feature alone saves me an hour every single week!

The Voice Profile

One of my main motivations was simple: I detest AI for writing.

I didn’t want to build a tool that wrote for you. I wanted to build a tool that helped format what you bring — and protected your voice in the process.

Each Note type is designed with the preservation of your voice in mind. The Workstation packages what you bring; it doesn’t replace it.

Because I am suspicious of any modifications to my own voice, I wanted to make the Workstation foolproof.

So I designed into its logic a “voice profile”. You drop in three essays so the point of reference is your writing alone.

Content Calendar

One of the things that drives me crazy about Substack is that there is no Content Calendar. Beyond that, all the others I’ve ever found are so busy that they make me want to give up.

So at last — a content calendar, made by a creative for creatives. Simple, easy, scannable.

The Essay Section

The Full Workstation comes with an essay flow — including title ideation, full screen writing mode, an editor.

One of my favourite features, though, is that it builds your Pre-CTA and Post-CTA the moment your essay is finished.

There's nothing worse than spending hours on an essay and then having to muster the energy to create promo-posts right after.

But they are nevertheless essential to build an audience.

My Pre-CTAs drive subscribers every week before posting my essay. I’d buy the Workstation for this feature alone!

Why I Built It

The truth is: I first made this for myself.

What started as a personal labour of love became a passion project that I felt could really help people.

My hope is that it helps you grow your audience without being consumed by the insatiable beast of the content machine.

The world needs its artists. The trouble is that content creation, left unchecked, eats the very life the art is made from. The Substack Workstation is a third way.

I hope this helps give you back the time for why you are a creative in the first place.

As for me, the Workstation has paradoxically become part of my own healing. Though not yet totally right, my voice nodule is clearing, and I’m excited to put my heart back into music.

Ok, so, can’t believe I’m really launching this — With love, Jim

You are most welcome to step inside!

The Substack Workstation

I started on Substack in 2023, and for two years I lived inside a strange contradiction: little traction on the platform but positive inbox replies.

I was putting all love into my essays but disregarding promotion. Nobody was finding my writing.

Like many creatives, I hated marketing. I believed quality would be enough. I was wrong.

There is a difference between writing and communication. The world is too distracted, too full of AI slop, too crowded with professional content creators for quality alone to cut through.

Crashing against that reality snapped me out of assumptions. So I studied the world’s best digital writers. But something felt off — as if I was being asked to give up part of my creative spirit to “earn” a bigger audience.

I am an artist. I’m not playing someone else’s game. But I can play my own better.

In today’s essay I share how I’ve assimilated everything I’ve learnt into 7 Types of Substack Notes. They haven’t changed my writing. But they have reshaped how I distribute my thought.

And the cadence works. I’ve doubled my subscribers in five months, without a single viral Note or Post.

The Shape of a Creative Week

With Substack Notes, every day is an opportunity to put your voice into the world.

Many people, me included, like to shoot from the hip. And the joy of Substack is that informal musing, off-the-cuff thoughts and funny blurbs have a place. It may even lead to a viral Note or two.

But it doesn’t build a readership.

The question becomes — what does?

A Cadence, Not a Strategy

I revile “content strategies,” and “growth systems.” So I developed an alternative: a way of being in public that maps a creative life.

You may think “oh but I do that anyway.”

But unless you are conscious of how you approach it, you do not distribute your story, message and values effectively.

That is the difference between writing well and communicating effectively.

My framework gives seven distinct ways of expressing what’s already happening inside the work.

Why Seven Note Types?

Each Note Type represents a different type of thinking, and performs a different job:

Morning Reflection
Value Note
One-Liner
How-To
Back Story
Project Update
Pain Points

You can run them as an arc through a single day, or split them across two.

Each one earns its place because it does something the others can’t. Together, they give you the tools to talk about your work, help others, and — crucially — have fun!

What They Replace

I write for creatives and artists — people who need an audience for their work. The usefulness of the 7 Notes is that they are not just a fall back; they guide you.

If you feel overwhelmed, they give you an angle.
If you feel resistant, they give you a nudge.
If you feel perfectionist, they dismantle.

The blank page and the busyness around it stop being the problem. You have a companion.

What They Protect

I built this system because I wanted to protect my time for deep creative work.

I do not want content to eat the precious time and energy I have to grow as an artist. Done badly, content becomes a full-time job — and you will never fulfil your artistic potential if it does.

But it does not have to be either/or.

The Seven Note Types are a way to communicate consistently without the communication eating the work it was meant to support.

Art stays primary. Promotion delivers it.

The Substack Workstation

When I created my system for Substack Notes, I dreamt of having a space where I could visualise all of it in one, neat working space.

I then spent 5 months building that very space from scratch. I found it so useful I eventually decided to release it publicly.

You can try it for FREE — it takes 10 seconds and you’re in (no card needed). Enjoy!

The Substack Workstation

Everyone has a different type of morning. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the hustle and bustle or whether you’re digging in solo to a creative project — there is a day before you.

For me I like to write a short Note to prime myself for the day. If I’m dashing to a job, it might be energised, short and written on the S-Bahn.

If I’m chipping away at a skill, I might reflect on my experience of it:

Before writing East of Eden, Steinbeck would write a diary entry. It was a way to get himself in the zone and eventually became “Journal of a Novel” — incidentally my favourite ever book on creativity.

My takeaway — don’t just hoard your insight; share it in a way that helps.

This type is a deeper dive. You are sharing a hard-won lesson — something you’ve learnt creatively, professionally, or spiritually.

Its purpose is not virality. It’s to help someone through an insight.

If you can crystallise your knowledge in a way that adds value to someone’s life, you build your authority. And authority is the engine room of an audience.

Many of us struggle with where we’re at because we’re late to this “social media game” And yet, inside you is a whole history of actual life to call upon.

The challenge is to mould that knowledge into a shareable form:

In this Note I boiled down the essence of my creative philosophy into the first three lines, then used it to lance the boil of obsessive productivity culture — which I see as destroying the two key ingredients of creativity: time, space, and energy.

If you can name something someone feels but hasn’t become conscious of, two things happen. You help someone. And you become someone worth following.

In a world where the value of words has been diminished by robots generating gunk by the million — reclaim them through a sharply constructed sentence.

The one liner is the opposite of the Value Note.

It is pollen to the scrolling eye.

If you give your audience a nugget in a second — and that lives with them for the day — you separate yourself from 99% of writers.

Oh, and in a saturated world, brevity is a gift!

The “How-To” is a practical, step-by-step Note with a named framework.

The aim of the How-To is to help one person specifically. It isn’t built to go broad. It delivers a technique someone can implement.

You may not get as many likes on these posts, but you will build an audience specific to what you write about.

I see writers everywhere on Substack with 400 likes per Note — and then you look at their essays and there’s no traction at all.

That’s a social media audience.

A newsletter has a different purpose. It’s a readership that goes with you over the course of a lifetime.

To do that, go in deeper.

This Note could easily be an essay in itself. Instead, I leveraged the organic reach of Notes to take the scrolling eye a level deeper. In a 2-minute read, the audience has discovered a technique that will save them time, protect their body, and grow their readership.

The long game is the short game when it comes to newsletters.

Who are you? Does your audience really know you? No — they are figuring you out in bite size.

The way you help them is to leverage time itself. Practically, that means sharing something short and impactful about your history every day.

Each Note builds a personal narrative. It is your story as it unfolds. That includes today, and your future goals — but it must also channel your past.

The Back Story builds the bridge between who you were and who you are becoming.

Why would any of these people know I’ve toured China, sung with an old maestro, or danced (badly) with one of the country’s great dancers while the Hutongs spied on us?

Keep your history alive.

Our projects carry a huge weight. We don’t have enough time, money, or resources. And yet we try to push them forward in some way every day.

Share the process.

Like many creatives, I don’t have a strong inclination to share. Despite a much bigger audience on Instagram, I haven’t posted for six months.

But our projects are LIVING — and people want to know. Let them!

If you're resistant, keep it light. Keep it short. Don't overthink it.

I often post a picture of my studio at the end of the day simply because it frames the story. I'm not posting about the work — I'm in the work. But I can at least show I'm in the process.

The Project Update is the engine room of your Notes.

It trains you to find the story inside your work.

Over time people become invested in the story because they have followed its arc. Suddenly there are stakes — and they want to know the outcome.

Goddamn it, I do too!

Notes should express our humanity. What are you really going through?

I like to learn online, but I find the relentless positioning of people as experts and gurus nauseating.

What connects us is not Darwinist hierarchy.

The thread between us is that we suffer. To open up a little doesn’t just create an invitation — it threads the link between us.

Fear, doubt — mortality itself — shadows our lives.

Writing about them doesn’t just help you process. It lightens the isolation in someone else.

Be braver with it.

Your demon is not yours alone.

Writing Notes was eating my time for making art.
And so I built: The Substack Workstation.

It’s a single space where the seven Notes live.
You can check it out for free — releasing officially next week!

I’ve put three years of learning and hundreds of hours of coding to compress my knowledge into something that can help people.

With love, Jim