I’ve been writing recently about how I use Obsidian for a lot of different applications related to my university course, but little about how I use it for creating content. I haven’t spent long writing on Medium and elsewhere. Despite this, I’ve built a minimal and effective system that allows me to create content regularly. This system has helped me publish consistently for the last two months especially, with university work climaxing around this time too.

I’m going to share with you the different applications that Obsidian has for managing my content — there are several because of the flexibility of the tool. From this, I hope that I shed some insight into how I use this software effectively for the production of valuable work.

1. Idea capture and organisation

This is a crucial step in the process of creating online content. A lot of people are aware that ideas can strike you from anywhere and so you have to prepare to capture them. Equally as important as this is that you have a system in place to reduce the friction that’s involved in turning an idea into a concrete plan for a piece of writing that you want to produce.

Because of how unpredictable inspiration can be, I use a variety of means for capturing my ideas. These include Todoist, Drafts on iPhone and a Traveler’s Notebook for when I can’t capture digitally. I then regularly check everything that I have captured in these mediums and integrate them into Obsidian ready to turn into articles.

I use a projects folder in Obsidian, in keeping with the PARA method for organisation, with the project ‘Grow writing on Twitter, Medium and Beehiiv’. Inside this folder, I create a note with the title that represents the idea for an article that I want to create, for example, ‘Article on using Obsidian for creating online content’. This can then serve as a placeholder for as long as I like. I can sit down and flesh out the idea when I’m ready.

2. Building on the idea

Once I have some time to sit down and think about my writing, I’ll open up a note that I have saved for an idea. On this page I add the heading ‘Ideas’ and underneath I add everything that comes to mind in the present moment about the topic. This could be opinions, advice or some other kind of insight. Anything goes at this point, as it’s a brainstorming process.

The power of Obsidian becomes more useful here as well because you can research your other ideas in your notes. I have literature notes from all over the internet in my vault, as well as notes within a slip box format that are a representation of my linked ideas. I can use backlinks when brainstorming to make the most of everything that I have collected over the time spent working on my vault.

3. Outlining a draft

At this point, I can turn to the power of AI to create an outline for the article I want to write. I use the QuickAdd plugin and have created a prompt that transforms the selected text in a way that I want it to be transformed. I can prompt the outline to be any way that I want — concise, impactful, and creative for example. I can prompt the AI to use only the content from the ideas that I give, or I can prompt it to build upon and elaborate on the ideas that I’ve given.

Once AI generates the outline, I skim through it and add any changes required. To make the outline more personal and unique this often involves adding my own experiences or opinions. This outline should mainly be to give you an idea of the most engaging way to structure your article, because like I’ve said before, the input and output should be created by yourself. You then have the option to automate between these two points.

4. Creating a draft of the article

It’s now time for me to write the article. I split my screen in Obsidian and have one pane focused on the outline section of the file and the other down the bottom of the file, to write the script under the heading ‘Script’. This way I can reference my outline without any friction, making sure that the article progresses how I intended it when writing.

I also have a plugin in the status bar that counts the reading time and words of the piece. This allows you to aim for a length of article — not too long and not too short — that your readers will enjoy consuming.

5. Editing and preparing for publish

I use two different programs for editing my articles — Hemingway Editor and Grammarly. The former is a program that focuses on making your writing very concise. It points out when you are using adverbs and calls you out for passive voice use. It’ll also tell you when your sentences are too long and complex. This is an ideal program for online writing where you have to write in a certain way to hold the attention of your reader.

I paste the article from the Hemingway Editor into a Medium draft automatically, and I finish up the article from there. This is where the Grammarly browser extension comes in, correcting the more mundane grammar inaccuracies that have crept into your writing. I then add links, an image that I generated using Midjourney and add tags and a description. I select what publication I want to add my work to, most often the Obsidian Observer.

Then I hit publish, and here we are.

Conclusion

I hope you learned something from this walkthrough of how I use Obsidian to drive forward my writing habit. It’s still a relatively new practice for me, so there’s still much to learn. I’ll post some more about the journey in the future.