How I Write My Newsletter in an Hour a Week
This article started as a voice note I recorded while walking my dog.
Writing a single newsletter issue used to take me a day or two, and most of that time was spent staring at a blank page. Unfortunately I don't have that kind of time every week, and I doubt you do either.
Which sucks, because a consistent newsletter is one of the best ways for a founder or creator to build authority. It shares your hard-won expertise with people who'd actually get value from it, and dare I say, makes the world a little better of a place?
But without any time to write it down, that expertise stays locked in your head.
AI looks like the answer. But most AI writing sounds like generic slop because the idea didn't come from anyone's actual first-person experience.
So I start every newsletter draft by talking through my idea out loud in a voice note to Claude, which helps me capture my personal experiences and perspectives on the topic. Then Claude and I debate an outline until I approve it. Only then does AI write a word.
The whole thing takes me about an hour, and it's a different kind of work (and in my opinion, more enjoyable). I'm shaping my idea right out of the gate instead of spending hours staring at a blank page.
At the end of the day, while there may be some written mediums better left fully human (novels, poetry, etc.), if you're trying to communicate your insights and learnings to an audience on a consistent cadence with limited time, AI-aided writing can be the difference in whether you do it at all.
So I'm going to walk you through every step of my newsletter writing process. Claude is my command center for all of it, with Flyletter (which I built) and Beehiiv as connectors. I'll even share some alternatives if you'd rather use other tools.
Set Up Your Brand Voice and Connect to Claude
Before AI can write for you, it needs to know your brand, your audience, how you sound, and what makes you different. Without that, what it writes comes out generic at best and nonsensical at worst.
You could give Claude this context manually, but I just use Flyletter (no hard sell, just being honest). It analyzes my website and writing samples to create a profile with complete context on my brand, audience, and how I write.
I also add my live newsletter feed to my profile, so Flyletter always uses my most recent published issues as writing examples.
From there, I connect Flyletter to Claude with its MCP connector so I can use my profile in any Claude chat. Now Claude assumes my brand whenever it writes, saves newsletter ideas and drafts to Flyletter, and runs Flyletter's writing agents directly inside Claude.
If you'd rather not use Flyletter, you can add your brand context and writing samples to a Claude Project manually, either in the project files or by linking a Notion database. Then create a skill or instructions on how you write, so Claude references it every time it writes for you.
Okay, so Claude can sound like your brand now. But for the writing to feel (and actually be) authentic, the core ideas still have to come from you.
Capture Ideas, Then Talk Them Out
I capture newsletter topic ideas the moment I have them. Otherwise I'll forget completely.
I dictate them to Claude, and it saves them to my idea bank in Flyletter, which also suggests topics based on a live feed of my content (if you're into that sort of thing). If you don't want to use Flyletter, you could have Claude save your ideas to a Notion database instead.
When it's time to write, I pick an idea and flesh it out by talking out loud in a voice note to Claude, like the one this article started as. The goal is to get my full thought out, however messy.
A newsletter that builds authority by sharing what you know has to draw on your own experiences and hard-won expertise. Dictating my thoughts on the things I'm actively learning helps me capture those first-person experiences, and it's what makes the newsletter original and authentic (though are there any original thoughts anymore?).
But talking it out has a second benefit. People say writing is how you figure out what you think, but I've found talking does it faster.
When you explain an idea out loud, you find out quickly how well you actually understand it and where the gaps are. You can then reason through those gaps and work with Claude as a thought partner to refine the idea.
So next time you have an idea worth writing about, record yourself explaining it first before you ever open a doc.
But a voice note alone is still basically verbal vomit (gross). So how does it become a polished newsletter issue?
Agree on the Outline Before Anything Gets Written
Instead of having AI write straight from your voice note, have it build an outline first.
I think of the outline as the scaffolding the writer works from. Without it, AI grasps at straws, trying to one-shot your input into a cookie-cutter masterpiece.
But if you audit and approve an outline first, it gets the substance down, so the writer only has to apply your style.
That's why I have Claude create what I call a "beat-by-beat outline," which includes every section of the issue and a bullet list of the points you're making in each one.
I create mine with Flyletter's writing agents. I run them right in the same Claude chat, and each one is built for one job in the newsletter pipeline: outlining, drafting, polishing, and interlinking.
First, the outline agent turns my voice note into a core topic with a reader takeaway. Then I debate it with Claude until we agree on the premise, especially why the reader should care. Once the premise is set, it produces the beat-by-beat outline, and I go back and forth until I'm happy with the flow.
However you create your outline, debate the structure, the flow of the sections, and every point in them before you sign off (I pushed back on this article's outline more times than I'd like to count).
Then it's time to actually draft.
Draft, Polish, and Interlink
Next, have AI write the draft from the beat-by-beat outline in the same chat as your voice note, so it uses your words. I use Flyletter's writer agent for this.
Then run a polish pass and have the AI self-edit. My polish agent audits the draft against the outline and edits it based on a quality floor and quality ceiling.
The floor is that it can't read like AI, so it catches tells like em dashes and "it's not X, it's Y" lines.
The ceiling is that it sounds like my brand, which means checking for voice flattening. When AI writes, it often reverts to the mean. It tries to find a middle road, so the piece comes out bland in both style and substance.
People often check for the floor, but rarely for the ceiling. However you write with AI, make sure Claude checks its own writing against both.
An SEO agent also suggests internal links to my past issues, which creates a virtuous cycle for search when I republish my newsletters as blog posts.
Then the draft comes back to me.
Edit by Hand, Then Ship
Edit the draft by hand, so you sign off on whatever you publish as your endorsed thoughts and opinions. And, in my opinion, add a little bit of soul back into the piece.
I edit mine in Flyletter. Claude saves the draft for me, and Flyletter tracks my edits and updates my brand profile automatically, so each new draft comes in closer to its final form.
Alternatively, Claude can create the draft as a Notion or Google Doc to edit.
Once I'm done editing, I go back to Claude and have it upload the draft into Beehiiv for me, through Beehiiv's connector, which I added to Claude the same way as Flyletter's. Way better than manually uploading newsletter drafts (I can't believe we used to do that).
I give it a final eyeball check for formatting, schedule it to send, and then pat myself on the back for a job well done!
Other platforms, like Kit, have connectors too. If yours doesn't, Claude in Chrome can navigate your browser and upload the draft for you.
From the first idea to the scheduled send, every step runs through Claude.
Bottom Line
I love writing, and I still write pieces completely unaided by AI. But for a weekly newsletter sharing what I'm learning in real time, this workflow is the reason the ideas get written down at all.
Start with your own thinking, agree on the outline, and let role-specific agents handle the rest. That's how your expertise becomes a consistent newsletter that builds your authority, in about an hour a week.
Next week, I'll break down the complete outreach system I run to promote my newsletter.
What's one idea you'd write about if you had the time?
Writer, founder, and AI builder. Currently building Flyletter, previously sold Selling Signals (100k subscribers). 1 sold, 2 failed, 1 active. This post started as an issue of my weekly newsletter.