131: Why she couldn't publish on Substack

It had nothing to do with writing.

Apr 19, 2026

On a call this week with a client, we spent an hour on why she wasn't publishing on Substack.

She has the topic. She has real expertise, plenty of energy around it, and months of material from a workshop she’s been building.

So why wasn’t she writing?

Because every time she imagined “writing,” she pictured herself sitting at a blank computer screen trying to squeeze something out of nothing. She hated that picture. So she avoided it. And then she concluded that she couldn’t write.

Halfway through the call, I shared a few things I do. I don’t actually write at a blank screen. I walk. I talk to myself as I walk, and I record the talking in an app that turns it into a searchable note. Then I let an AI ask me questions about what I said until the idea sharpens into something I can use. When I do sit down, the “writing” part is mostly arranging what’s already there.

She went quiet for a beat. Then she said:

“This is a whole workshop you should be teaching. How we think we’re supposed to write versus how we actually write. I would pay lots of money to go to that workshop.”

She’d inherited a definition of writing as sitting-at-a-blank-screen. Nothing about that picture matched how she actually generates ideas, and she’d never questioned the mismatch. So the problem had to be her. But inside the span of a single hour on that call, her confidence in her plan moved from a 6 to an 8/10. All from reframing what writing actually is.

The pattern isn’t limited to writing.

“I can’t do visibility” usually translates to “I can’t do visibility the way I’ve decided visibility has to look.” Same goes for pricing, for selling, for charging properly. The block almost always sits one level beneath the action, in the picture we hold of what doing the thing is supposed to look like.

What shifted her was approach. The walking became her main mode of generating ideas. AI moved into the role of interviewer instead of ghostwriter. Her workshops started feeding her essays, her essays feeding her offers, her offers feeding her visibility. None of those tools are new on their own. Assembled in the right order, they change the whole experience of the work.

Next month, I’m running the first Architect Session inside Radiant Flow. This is the exact territory we’ll be in. How to use AI as a thinking partner without handing over your voice. How to turn work you’re already doing into the content you’ve been failing to publish. The goal is a writing practice built around how you actually generate ideas, not around the version of writing you’ve been told you’re supposed to do.

It’s the first of a monthly Architect Session series inside RF. Carolina holds the embodiment anchor. I’ll be bringing the structure.

If you want to know what Radiant Flow is and whether it’s somewhere you’d want to be, you can read about it here.

Learn about Radiant Flow →

Phil

Who We are Celebrating This Week: Monique Renée

Ancient Wisdom Made Practical for Flow ✨ Monique guides women leaders & entrepreneurs into clarity, peace, and aligned success using Astrology, Feng Shui, Tarot, and intuitive strategy. Join her at the Flow Frwuenc for weekly guidance, resources, and rituals.

Things I’d Like to Share

Carolina wrote this one. It’s about the not-enoughness most people try to correct with better thoughts, and why that approach never holds. The pattern isn’t a belief. It’s a survival strategy with years of loyalty behind it, and the way through runs through the body before it reaches the mind.

Last week a fever sent me to the emergency room and forced me to reschedule a presentation for Leo Babauta’s audience. But watching my mind through the recovery, I noticed I’d also been quietly postponing the prep, telling myself the calendar block was enough. This one is about the kind of avoidance that looks like planning.