by Rachel Smith
04 September 2025
“How on earth do you write The Wrap-Up every single week alongside everything else you do?” is a question I get more than any other.
The secret? A 2-hour newsletter writing process I devised and honed over many years. It makes a chunky newsletter so much easier to pull together, week after week.
And, as a fan of email marketing legend Tarzan Kay – who wrote about HER process late last year – I thought I’d let the keen Wrappers peek behind the curtain of how my Friday newsletter, The Wrap-Up, comes together, and the process that saved my sanity.
Because in the beginning, it was chaos.
If you’re not yet a subscriber, The Wrap-Up is a compilation newsletter or ’round-up’ of news, links, events, tips, tools and more that appeal to writers.
I started it as a way to engage writers of all kinds and give them a soft intro to Rachel’s List. Plus, I wanted a place to share all the things I was coming across that were so useful for freelance writers.
Apart from The Wrap-Up and our other Friday newsletter for job-posters (which, ironically, isn’t as hectic or as long, but can take far longer to write!), all our newsletters are paywalled for RL members. For freelancers, writers and anyone building a content or copy business, The Wrap-Up is our one ‘free’ newsletter you can subscribe to.
(And many people seem to love it – sometimes, we’re even included on lists of great newsletters. Naww.)
You can, but you shouldn’t.
Sometimes (kill me now) I would start The Wrap-Up ON FRIDAY. Cue massive stress.
I made other mistakes. Like gathering material for certain sections at the last minute.
Take the Clever Stuff section. In my infinite wisdom (not), I used to ask Gold members for their latest work via a FB group post called #LookAtMeFriday.
When your newsletter is going out on a Friday afternoon, you don’t want to be info-gathering hours before clicking ‘send’. Nope. I recently changed the post to #LookAtMeThursday and it was the last puzzle piece in my 2-hour newsletter writing process. Now, it all just works.
By the way, as any newsletter owner will know, figuring out what works and tweaking as you go is part of the learning curve.
For a compilation or round-up newsletter like The Wrap-Up? Absolutely.
Every writer I know reads widely. And as a freelance journalist and copywriter myself, I spend a big part of my week reading.
I’m endlessly curious about business, upskilling, building strong relationships with clients and other freelancers, learning new tactics and ideas and trying out new tools. And as a bower bird who likes to save things of interest, this routine has made collating Wrap-Up material quite easy.
I already have a huge repository of content I’ve found useful or insightful. And anything new I come across, I drop it into Evernote if I think it might be Wrap-Up worthy, so I’m never starting from scratch.
My tip: organise any content library you create with relevant tags and categories so it’s easier to search. (Mine is still a work in progress.)
I’m now 230 newsletters in and putting a process in place has been a game-changer. It’s meant that a) I get my own work done and b) can run Rachel’s List AND get two big newsletters out on a Friday.
I spend roughly 2 hours compiling The Wrap-Up every week. I already have a general plan in my head for what I want to put in it each week, and compiling it is done via batching. I create pockets of time to set it up, get it drafted, and then scheduled. I try not to overthink or over-edit too much. This can waste precious hours, when the content is actually fine.
My batch creation happens like this:
FRIDAY AFTERNOON – Set-up: The Wrap-Up goes out at 3pm and I then spend about 30 seconds duplicating it into a draft for the coming Wednesday. This is a small step but mentally, it’s good to know there’s a fresh canvas there for me to start on.
WEDNESDAY MORNING – Drafting: I spend 90 minutes during #WedWritingSprint (our weekly online co-working session for Gold members) drafting that week’s newsletter. I write the intro, dip into my Evernote content library or Wrap-Up email folder where I may have saved stuff. Usually, I’ve already read almost everything I’m using, and I write fast so by the end of the Sprint, the draft is mostly done.
THURSDAY AFTERNOON – Testing and scheduling: I spend about half an hour checking our #LookAtMeThursday post in the Facebook group to see what Gold members have been up to. If I can share their work in the Wrap-Up, I will. When the newsletter is ready, I send a test version to check that it’s formatted nicely and all the links work. I then schedule it for Friday 3pm. Once the newsletter is scheduled, there are no more tweaks. (This was liberating and gave me my Fridays back.)
A process for capturing ideas, links, articles and other things you want to revisit later is key. You could do this in Notion, Evernote, NotebookLLM or any number of the digital note-taking apps out there – it’s just about creating a system that works for you. Mine uses:
This is a big question. For The Wrap-Up, our research tells us that most of the writers, editors or other creatives reading are in the throes of building their freelance business, finding clients and trying to stay connected and make enough money – just like I am.
As I read or revisit stuff, I have clear parameters on what might work:
I have a big soft spot for #freelancelife, which is the hardest section to find things for. The poll is fun to write, and stumbling on insightful ‘lightbulb moment’ business tips is very cool. Sharing what our members are doing each week is also something I love doing – and it helps me get to know them and their strengths, too.
And I receive a lot of emails about the Am reading… section. Readers often drop me a line thanking me for introducing them to a new book, or sharing the books they’re enjoying. It keeps my Kindle packed with good reads. Ha!
We also get lots of emails asking us to include dates for events, festivals, workshops etc in our bits’n’bobs section. This is also where we list upcoming masterclasses or our Lunch Clubs. We offer businesses and brands advertising opportunities if they want a small or larger listing.
I do believe that any writing is better if you edit it after it’s had days or even a week to breathe. Unfortunately, a lot of us don’t have that luxury (I mean, what if you’re writing a DAILY newsletter? No breathing time for you).
The Wrap-up doesn’t get a lot of breathing space, but from the Wednesday draft to the Thursday scheduling, it gets 24 hours without me prodding and adding to it. That’s long enough to pick up typos or copy I want to tweak.
When I check it on Thursday afternoon, there’s not a lot left to do. I might edit the intro or change it if I’ve had a better idea, add a few extra bits here and there, and schedule it for 3pm Friday.
To make sure your newsletter keeps people interested, you’ve got to keep an eye on what they’re clicking on.
All the metrics and data is maintained by my VA, who keeps a spreadsheet of preview links and metrics to The Wrap-Up and the job-poster newsletter I write. This spreadsheet is hugely helpful in determining topic ideas and checking what performed and what didn’t, so I can figure out why.
Unsubscribes are crap, but you can’t avoid them. I keep an eye on the numbers but don’t obsessively check who’s unsubscribing. There are many reasons people unsubscribe – they’re leaving freelancing, they’re overwhelmed with too many newsletters, the content is just not their cup of tea, etc.
If you’re trying to build an subscriber base, my tip is to commit to a certain day and time. The amount of comments I get about how people wait for The Wrap-Up (we even had a testimonial from a writer who said her ‘working week didn’t feel finished until she’d read it’) has proved to me that creating a newsletter people anticipate is far better than sending at adhoc times.
We’re currently rebuilding the Rachel’s List website and will be adding sections and new things to The Wrap-Up. I think newsletters need to evolve and stay fresh, and I always look forward to giving it little revamp.
Want to subscribe? Head this way.
Over to you: Do you enjoy The Wrap-Up? Do you think my 2-hour newsletter writing process is something that’d work for you, or do you have another system for writing your newsletter? I’d love to hear about it!
