My Writing Routine

I thought it might interest others to learn how I go about this whole blogging escapade. How I write, what I use, how I post – that kind of thing.

I suppose we start with an admission of sorts – I don’t write in the WordPress interface, and never have. I don’t like the way web interfaces work while writing, so tend to stay away from them.

Over the past year I’ve flip-flopped between a number of online solutions like Evernote, Notion, and Google Docs – but invariably return to using a text editor on whichever computer I’m using and copying the text into a blog post at the last minute.

I’ve used Notion to help writing longer-form pieces in the past, mainly because it can be used much like Scrivener from a project management perspective (and is free!). Oh yes – I once drank the Scrivener cool-aid too. I still have a license around here somewhere.

I guess because of my software development background, I keep the text in an online repository called Github. It’s really designed to store programming, but works well for writing too (software source code is just text really). Everything I have written since 2003 is stored in a series of year and month subfolders.

After writing a post I copy and paste it into WordPress, and add a suitable photo from one of the many royalty free online respositories such as Unsplash, or Pexels.

After clicking the publish button the post appears on WordPress, and a final piece of magic happens – I have a Zapier automation job (Zapier is free too) that notices the post arrive at WordPress, and creates the same post at Tumblr for me. I also use Zapier to replicate Instagram photos into Twitter. It’s very good.

Oh – I nearly forgot. I post a link to whatever I’ve just written to Twitter (when I remember). I don’t think it really does any good, but at least it keeps the Twitter account ticking over, and continues to pollute the twittersphere with my idiocy.

So there you go. I write in a text editor. I almost always have done. I just find it easier. I suppose living outside of the browser has advantages too – you have less distrations, and can just get on with writing.

It’s all about writing really, isn’t it. And reading.