This, as noted by my AI scheduler, really is the difference between how I typically write on Substack and how I write for external outlets.

Substack is where I think out loud about whatever has seized my interest. I often don’t know where a piece is going to end up. Writing is thinking. This saves my friends from getting thousand word texts from me. Well, no, it doesn’t, but they get fewer of them.

External pieces are commissioned so I know what I am writing about before I start writing it. I think that I want to address a subject and then ask an outlet if they’d be interested in that. They say “yes” and that’s great, but then I feel the need to structure it all out very carefully and then read everything anybody else has ever written on the subject. It can feel a bit like homework.

Substack is thinking.