Mandaris

Spent the last few days building a small site which will convert an OPML file of RSS subscriptions into an HTML list of links to their respective websites. I needed it for a blogroll I’m planning to add, but I figured this might be something others may find useful.

I know this person and I feel that this is a wonderful idea. As I've seen more and more people talk about making their own personal sites, I feel that it's fantastic to have tools to help with the process.

I’ve been thinking about the general friction that I experience when it comes to making posts and then putting them onto my blog. It feels that it has become both easier and harder to write something that I like.

What do I mean by writing?

In this instance, I am referring to my posts that are more than my pithy one liners or pictures of my dog.

It’s valid and I am not ashamed of most any of it.

What I’m referring to in this article is anything that takes longer than 10 minutes to write. These pieces of writing are harder for me because of the amount of time and focus that I am able to put into it.

I feel that I only have a couple of minutes before my mind wonders or I am called upon to do something else. Most times it’s my own brain telling me about all the other things I should/could be doing.

Where do my ideas start?

I used to carry a set of index cards; at one point called the hipster PDA. I stopped after losing my Good quality pens on a regular basis and being mocked repeatedly by my loving wife.

Since then, I’ve tried adding information to Apple Reminders or Notes (this was before they got good). It’s decent for simple one liners but complex ideas would come with the unwritten hope that I would remember what I meant by “pumpkin pickles”.

Recently, I’ve started using Drafts to capture links and notes. At first, I thought that I was only going to be using it for a little bit. Some of the podcasters have been raving about it for years and I got caught up in hype around it.

The hype is real. I’ve grown to like it more and more because of the simplicity and stability of the software. The sync has been pretty good; I’m able to start writing in one place and then move from one device to another. I’ve even had a few ideas start off from a voice dictation on my watch, but I’ve only done that less than a dozen times.

I’ve played around with the idea of keeping a rule to clear out the inbox daily. I haven’t stuck to it, but this is mainly because I see the Drafts inbox as something that I have complete control over. Unlike my email inbox which has seen a tremendous increase in things wanting my attention.

Revisions?

Drafts is a wonderful application and I’ll continue exploring it as I’ve become more comfortable with its feature set. One of the hurdles that I’m running into is that I’m looking for a way to do grammar checks.

A lot¹ of my writing is done in chunks that are determined by availability of time and energy.

I feel that I need a workflow to help me decide if something that I wrote makes sense before posting it on the World Wide Web.

I’ve tried putting my draft into Ulysses. Unfortunately, a large portion of my writing contains code examples that have the formatting removed when sent to the server.

The hardest posts for me to write are the ones about my Hugo/Micro.blog theme. For those posts, I find myself moving from Ulysses to BBEdit/iTerm to Marsedit.

It makes me not want to put in the time to write.

But, I really enjoy writing.

So, I’ll be pushing myself to read over my drafts … in drafts going forward.