About My Writing Routine
Here is my writing routine: the way how I structure my research on various topics and then write an article.
It is not my usual type of content, but it might be helpful to someone. And yes, I need to fill the vacuum while working on two new writing pieces: a book review and a new topic.
Writing Tools
I use Obsidian as a knowledge base and content management. It is free, keeps your data in your hands, not in a vendor cloud, uses Markdown for formatting, and has a variety of great plugins.
The latter is handy as my blog is also built with the MkDocs engine based on the Markdown format. So, I keep writing and editing in Markdown, which is very convenient. I don't particularly appreciate it when each tool tries to reinvent the wheel with its custom formatting, which is incompatible with anyone else. With Markdown files stored on my local machine and my cloud storage, I can quickly grab them and migrate them to another tool.
I use the Zettelkasten technique in Obsidian when I research something and need to document some information and my thoughts to reference it later. You can find a lot of information about this approach. I keep my notes connected with tags and internal references where possible. Obsidian provides a nice graph where I can filter out some notes and track references.
Once a year, I clean up by editing, merging, or even deleting some notes. So, I try to keep the number of my Markdown notes from spreading. You can see a part of the notes graph in the attached image below.
I still use Notion, even though its performance problem a few years ago forced me to try Obsidian and stay with it. I don't synchronize my notes between Obsidian and Notion, as I use them for different cases. Obsidian doesn't have built-in databases like Notion does. Even though there are community plugins to address, I keep Notion for that purpose.
Writing Process
When I start to work on an article, I combine my thoughts, ideas, and relevant Zettelkasten notes in Canvas. It is a recently added Obsidian feature that is a mind map you can combine from new and existing notes. I waited long for someone to implement that by uniting a knowledge base and mind maps.
I used to start writing in a separate MD file, but the more complex topics appeared, the more time I spent on editing and restructuring. Now, I structure everything in Canvas, reshuffling pieces of content to have a logical and straightforward narrative.
Below, you can find images of how my recent API article and upcoming writing about Composability looks like in Canvas. I also started copying articles I gathered to prepare material to keep everything in one place. That really helps to focus.
In the next step, I finally put everything in a single document and proceed with a first round of editing, literally "adding meat to the bones." Then, I use Grammarly to help edit and fix spelling and syntax issues.
I pay yearly for a Grammarly Premium subscription, and I am delighted about that. Before, I spent a lot of time editing and fixing issues, and now that has gone.
I tried ChatGPT for editing, but the styling and word choice usually concern me. My specialization was Literary translation at the university. Thus, I know a bit about the topic and what I consider my writing style. And "delve" is not a part of it, sorry. So, I stay with Grammarly as a happy customer.
Back to track. I do two rounds of editing with Grammarly to clean up the text. In parallel, I search for images or draw diagrams by myself. I use Lucidchart because I have a license from work, but I can also switch to draw.io anytime.
Then, I combine a draft and usually ask my wife to read a piece before publication. She is not an expert in the domains I am writing about, but her linguistic capabilities exceed mine. So she can say what sounds too incomprehensible and whether the text is OK.
Publishing
I push an MD file with a new article to a GitHub repository with my blog, so in a few minutes, it is available. Then I go to Medium and automatically import my new article there. It works flawlessly, so I have to do a little editing.
If I send my Medium article to the Analyst's Corner, some time is required for a review and publishing, but not so long.
Then, it's time to write a post for LinkedIn with a link to my article. And that is it. I tried to post that on Twitter and Instagram but then dropped. They are not my platform because I like to write long texts or don't know how to work with them (or I simply don't care).
Ultimately, I relax watching LinkedIn, Medium, and Google Analytics stats on my blog. The Medium audience is steadily growing, and that makes me happy. LinkedIn is also doing fine.
That is my writing process in a nutshell. If this post gets enough traction, I will share some tips on using Obsidian in my day-to-day work as a product manager next time.
Stay tuned, and take care!