How I Use Obsidian to Publish These Notes

Remember, This is not writing or productivity advice. It's also not note taking advice (Better note taking is not the problem, it's better thinking).

Short version

  1. Write Fleeting Notes
  2. Review and prune (Kill your darlings, their bones are the best fertiliser)
  3. Pick a note
    1. Write
    2. Get bored, disillusioned or pleasantly distracted
    3. Back to 3.
  4. Add OG metadata
  5. Optimise images (How to optimise images for Obsidian Publish)
  6. Publish a draft
  7. Apply edits (from Luna)
  8. Publish to index
  9. Share social links

I'm OK with steps 1.–3. (Muddle Your Way To Success), but 4.–9. (except editing) should be done by a machine, not me. Hence the Abusing and reviewing Obsidian Publish I'm wrapping up at the moment.

Longer version

1. Every time I stumble upon something that tickles my thought-sponge, I add it to my Fleeting Notes (#fleeting). If I feel that a note sounds like a good writing prompt I tag it as an #article-idea. I try not to overthink it.

2. Review and prune daily. I go through each of my #fleeting notes and try to rephrase them so they sound more clear. Again, perfect is the enemy of good: if something sounds boring the day after I wrote it down, I remove it or give it a stay of execution for a day. Kill your darlings, their bones are the best fertiliser. I want to get better at this.

3. Pick something that feels exciting and write about it. Sometimes I expand on the note that piqued my interest, translate it from Rafalspeak into English and give it more detail. Then, another time I realise that there's a bigger picture connecting the idea with others, e.g. Kind software started with some notes on Projects and apps I built for my own well-being and Be kind, be curious.

I try to do this in the morning as writing in the morning is harder.

4. Write. Write for 2-5 hours, depending on how much time and energy I have. Less than 1.5 h is the goal. Writing is fun and it can easily take over my schedule. I have a job to find, Mango needs to eat!

5. Get bored. Realise that the idea is not that interesting/deep or that there's another new thing you just came up with and it's already story-shaped! Writing is thinking.

Back to 3. Sometimes I end up writing 2-3 notes at the same time. This can be a sign of Dog mode

Publishing:

  1. Add covers and OG metadata using Frontmatter
  2. Optimise images (How to optimise images for Obsidian Publish)
  3. Publish a draft to a super-secret-and-secure drafts page (btw, the more coherent articles are edited by Luna)
  4. Add to the index page
  5. Hit Publish
  6. Share on social media: Mastodon, Twitter, LinkedIn
  7. (Every Friday) copy to ConvertKit and format for the newsletter. This step is surprisingly easy (easy is not the word we hear often when talking about email HTML)

My writing practice (evergreen)

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a giant foot-shaped snail with a house on its back. the house is still in construction, with a big crane towering above it The image is a stylized black-and-white illustration. In the lower left corner, there is a small, cozy-looking house with smoke rising from its chimney. The smoke, however, does not dissipate into the air but instead forms a dark, looming cloud. Within the cloud, the silhouette of a large, menacing face is visible, with its eyes and nose peeking through the darkness. The creature, perhaps a cat, appears to be watching over the house ominously, creating a sense of foreboding or unease.