What to Post on Substack Notes When You're Stuck

Published: September 2026

Staring at a blank composer isn't usually an ideas problem — it's a framework problem. If you're picking a topic from nothing every single time, of course it feels hard. The fix isn't a longer list of prompts (we've got one of those too); it's a small set of repeatable Note types you can rotate through, a habit of capturing ideas before you need them, and a way of mining what you've already written instead of always generating something new.

Ten repeatable Note types

A useful way to categorize what actually gets posted on Notes (Unstuck to Published):

1. Thought Note — one idea pulled from something longer, on its own
2. Quote Note — a single memorable line from your own past work
3. Question Note — a direct question that doubles as research for what to write next
4. Milestone Note — a progress update, with the lesson attached, not just the number
5. Restack Note — someone else's Note, plus your own take on why it matters
6. Perspective Note — your opinion on something happening in your niche right now
7. Photo Note — an unpolished, real image from your actual day
8. Video Note — a short, unscripted clip of what you're currently thinking about
9. Story Note — one specific moment, not a general reflection
10. Build-in-Public Note — a draft, a decision, a work-in-progress, shared as it happens

None of these require a new idea from scratch — they're lenses. When you're stuck, the question isn't "what should I write about," it's "which of these ten haven't I done this week."

Keep a swipe file, so you're never starting from zero

A long-standing habit from advertising copywriters, worth borrowing directly: a swipe file is a running, ongoing collection of ideas, lines, and observations you capture as they occur to you, not when you sit down to write. The whole point is that when you do have 20 minutes to draft Notes, you're pulling from an existing list instead of trying to generate an idea and write it in the same sitting — which is a much harder cognitive task than either one alone.

For Substack Notes specifically, a swipe file can be as simple as a running note on your phone where you log:

• A line from something you read that stuck with you
• A comment you left on someone else's Note that was actually a full thought
• Something a reader said in a reply that deserves its own Note
• A sentence you caught yourself saying out loud that sounded like a Note
• A frustration or a small win from your actual day, jotted in one line

Reviewed weekly, this turns "what do I write about" from a live decision into a pick-from-a-list task — the same reason batch-writing sessions work, applied to idea capture instead of the writing itself.

The real fix: stop starting from zero on content, too

The more durable habit, though, is not generating new material at all most days — it's repurposing what you've already written. One documented process (Escape the Cubicle) lays out a version of this:

1. Spend 5–10 minutes scrolling Notes in your niche to see what formats are currently getting traction
2. Pull a post from your own archive — ideally 3+ months old — that's still relevant
3. Turn it into 3–5 Notes matching the formats you just saw working, using AI (ChatGPT or Claude) to help adapt the tone without losing your own voice
4. Post them as a loose cluster over 24–48 hours rather than all at once, so each has room to gain its own traction

The author of that process reports going from 2–3 daily subscribers to 30+ on good days using this loop — the specific number matters less than the mechanism: the content already exists, the only new work is reformatting it.

Why this works better than generating fresh ideas daily

Writing something new every day is a much higher-effort habit than most people admit, which is exactly why posting streaks break. Mining your own archive removes the hardest part — coming up with the idea — and leaves only the easier part: reshaping something you already know is good, because it already performed once. A swipe file solves the same problem from the other direction: it captures the idea the moment it appears, so it's never lost by the time you actually sit down to write.

This is also why Notes older than 60 days that outperformed your average are worth deliberately resurfacing rather than left buried in your history — the same principle, applied automatically instead of manually scrolling to find them.

Making this a habit instead of a one-time fix

The two ideas above only work if you can actually find your own old high-performers and act on them without re-reading months of history. NotesIQ's Evergreen Recycler surfaces Notes older than 60 days that beat your average automatically, with one click into Compose or the Queue — and Ghostwriter (AI Pro) can draft the reformatted version directly from your own top-performing Notes, which is effectively step 3 of the archive-mining process above, done for you.

Stop mining your own archive by hand. NotesIQ's Evergreen Recycler surfaces your best old Notes automatically — one click to repost them.