As I sit here typing on my Alpha, I’ve noticed something I haven’t for a long time. I’m seeing my thoughts in all of their undistracted, unfiltered glory. Music pumps into my ears from a Sony Walkman (yes, I said Walkman) as I type.
I’m not staring at a screen, and I’m not seeing red spellcheck lines. I’m just typing. Trying to write in a post-smartphone world means that my attention is split. Screens are to my left, right, and center. I’m wondering how I got any writing done under these conditions.
The Productivity Paradox
I’m somewhat of a productivity and knowledge management system hoarder. I don’t know what it is, but my brain attaches itself vigorously to any new system, especially if I can automate it. PARA, Linking Your Thinking, Zettelkasten, GTD, and others have snuck into my workflows. As I type away from my screen, I’m starting to realize and understand that I don’t actually need them. Not really. As a post-internet Gen-Xer, I’ve realized that I need more than anything the space to let my thoughts breathe. I could see myself becoming addicted to the simple act of just writing again. No agendas. Nothing to optimize.
That’s not to say that I don’t have a use for systems. I’ve just de-emphasized their usefulness in the beginning stages of any writing project. I’m so sold on the “draft first, edit later” mindset that I must find a compelling reason not to start drafting on one of my Freewrite devices. One of the things I love about my Alpha, even versus my original Smart Typewriter, is that I can take it out, put it on my lap, and start writing. If it is close by, then I can quickly get into this flow state. That is one of the greatest gifts I have received from this little device. It’s nearly frictionless. As much as possible, I want to replicate that frictionless feeling into the rest of my workflow, from editing to final publishing. While everything can be a perpetual work-in-progress, I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished so far with my tablet publishing workflow. Let’s take a look.
The Tools
Freewrite touts itself as a drafting machine, which I’ve fully embraced. My thoughts manifest on the device in a way they never could if I were working inside a word processor (typos and all). Having experienced a certain degree of drafting freedom, I decided early in the design phase for my writing workflow that my laptop, as a writing tool, would be too heavy for this purpose. My iPad strikes a beautiful balance between completely frictionless work and powerful features.
So, I needed to get from Freewrite to my iPad. Postbox cloud syncing makes this fairly trivial. I can open the file in Dropbox on my iPad. Easy. But there’s a catch. Every app I open in my workflow introduces the risk of distracting me on my way to the true goal of editing my article. I decided to solve this with Apple shortcuts. The shortcuts I’ve created serve as the cornerstone of my semi-automated workflow.
My website articles are published using the Hugo static site generator and hosted on an Amazon S3 bucket. I can’t run Hugo on my iPad. That means I need a traditional system for the Hugo site generation process. I don’t want to move from my iPad to another machine for publishing. That’s too much friction and opportunity for distraction. So, I settled on a remote Linux system hosted on AWS. I have a small development EC2 instance that I now use to run my publishing workflow.
As I’ve stated, all my drafting starts on the Freewrite. If I have quick inspiration, I start writing on my Freewrite Alpha. If I know I’m all in on a deeper drafting session, I use the Freewrite Smart Typewriter in my writing room. The point is to be able to get my thoughts down quickly. After I’m finished drafting, I copy my draft to Obsidian.
I’ve been an Obsidian user for several years. I’ve tried other apps that perhaps are a little more polished out of the box but require proprietary formats or online-only access. I was already an Obsidian user, but if I were starting today, I would still pick it for one reason. It works with plain text markdown. I can’t think of a more philosophically aligned tool for the next step in my publishing process. My draft starts in plain text, so I’ll also edit in plain text. It’s a lightweight workflow, and I love it for that.
I could save the draft file right into Obsidian. That would be easy enough as it is already syncing to Freewrite Postbox and my Dropbox account. I’m always looking to take my workflow one step further. I created a shortcut that will create a new note in Obsidian with the contents of my draft and the frontmatter that Hugo requires for later publishing.
I use Apple Shortcuts as the automation engine for my website publishing workflow. After I finish editing my draft in Obsidian and am satisfied with the result, I have a shortcut to copy the draft and associated images to the appropriate folder on my EC2 instance. I also have shortcuts for starting the Hugo server to preview the webpage before publishing. Finally, once everything looks good, I have a shortcut to run the Hugo build process, commit all the changes to my local git repository, and push the changes to my remote Github repository. After the push, a GitHub action will copy the files from the public folder into an S3 bucket. At that point, I have published my article.
The Entire Process
- Draft in Freewrite
- Edit in Obsidian
- Upload to my development EC2 instance to preview
- Commit and push the changes to GitHub
- Github actions takes it from there to publish the new article to an S3 bucket.
For me, there are a few key advantages to this workflow:
- I can draft quickly.
- I can edit and save everything in plain text
- I control the publishing platform (my website is hosted on S3).
- Finally, it was enjoyable to set this up and use it. Anything that helps me keep writing and publishing is a huge boon.
The shortcuts for my Hugo publishing workflow can be found here.
You can follow my other writing and connect on social media by exploring the links at harleystagner.me