The Prewriting Workflow of a Substack Author

Seeing the world through a creative lens
Writer’s workflow challenge
Traditional workflow
New prewriting workflow
Capturing inspiration
Organizing notes
Overcoming the blank page
The importance of prewriting in the age of AI

Seeing the world through a creative lens

A photograph is often more than what is captured. Talented photographers share their worldview and values through how they interpret their subjects and all the choices that shape a final image. Giles Thurston believes there is beauty to be found in the mundane. His photography expresses this optimism by focusing on our everyday human landscape, inviting us to pause and give a familiar scene a second glance.

Writer’s workflow challenge

Giles is also an online writer. Check out his Substack, The Photographer’s Eye.

For a writer/photographer, the challenge isn’t coming up with ideas—even long days on-site are full of sparks for new writing inspiration. The real challenge is finding a prewriting workflow that allows you to not only capture but actually use those ideas: to keep them organized, to develop them into drafts, and to explore them through AI-generated questions that deepen your perspective.

Traditional workflow

Giles’ old system was a fragmented two-step writing process:

Capture ideas in various digital notes throughout the week
Manually organize those notes into a longer form article later

This manual organization created friction at the worst possible moment, forcing him to do organizational busywork in those few precious moments he had for writing.

New prewriting workflow

Then Giles discovered Echo, the note-taking app for writers.

On the surface, Echo appeared to be a simple voice note app that promised automatic organization. But Echo is designed specifically for online writers, bloggers, and Substack authors. Giles immediately appreciated the nuance of Echo’s approach to building an AI writing assistant. Unlike ghostwriting tools that churn out generic text, Echo focuses on helping writers capture inspiration, develop ideas, and organize thoughts for writing.

For Giles, this distinction was crucial. His photography demonstrates a particular worldview—finding beauty in overlooked moments. He needed a writing tool that would help him develop that same perspective in text, not replace it.

Capturing inspiration

Once Giles started capturing ideas in Echo, he discovered something that set it apart from transcription tools. “I loved that in the app it provides questions in response to your note,” Giles explained. “It asks me questions that I haven’t even thought about. It’s almost like having an editor there that goes, ‘That’s really interesting. How about exploring this a bit further?’”

These weren’t generic prompts—they were tailored questions that helped him turn rough notes into writing ideas and discover angles he hadn’t considered. A quick voice note about light hitting a building during a shoot might spark follow-up questions about architectural beauty, urban planning, or the relationship between natural and artificial environments.

Organizing notes

Echo’s automatic organization naturally aligned with Giles’ vision for his ideal writing workflow. Notes get sorted into Topics (evergreen themes) and Projects (specific pieces he’s working on). This means that after a week of capturing ideas during photo shoots, Giles can sit down on Friday and immediately pull up all the relevant context—whether that’s individual notes, collections of notes around a topic, or a specific idea already formatted into an outline using Echo Projects.

Overcoming the blank page

“By the time I sit down to write, I’m never facing a blank page,” Giles noted. “Echo has already helped me build the foundation.”

The result: Giles spends more time writing and less time organizing.

The importance of prewriting in the age of AI

We live in an era of abundance for writing apps. But the real question is: what does it mean to write well in the age of AI? How do you avoid devolving into AI-generated content that lacks perspective?

Prewriting is that stage where writers develop ideas and sharpen a unique perspective—something AI can support but never replicate. For writers like Giles who need to capture inspiration on the go and transform it into publishable pieces, Echo bridges the gap between scattered thoughts and coherent drafts—without sacrificing the writer’s voice.

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I’m fascinated by the idea development process; the mechanisms and routines that pull us out of endless to-dos and give us space to breathe and think. That's why I'm building Echo, the first note-taking app designed for prewriting. Try Echo and see how prewriting can change the way you write.