Towards a colophon
Back when I worked in publishing, a colophon was the emblem of the publishing house. It can be used to describe how a publication is made, especially when the book is artfully bound. In blogger circles, people are using their colophon page to describe how the words and pages come into being. It’s like a little recipe for how the blog is made.
A couple of years ago I started using iA Writer to write notes. The intention was to write a note whenever inspiration struck, and to publish it as quickly as possible. At some point I’d make links between my notes and then sit down to write a bigger post, coalescing my thoughts.
But that hasn’t happened. Work and life gets in the way. I still want to have that system, and it’s a lot easier to pull together these days. So here’s my steps towards a colophon.
Writing
- Get better at reading things every day
- Make notes and tag things when I make highlights
- Review these highlights regularly, but use the tags to stick to a theme
- Write longer notes, make links between notes
- Once a topic has bubbled up in my brain, write about it
I could use Obsidian and iA Writer together. OpenAI have an API for pulling out themes to help with making links between posts, I bet. Some combination of those tools will work, and it’s Shortcuts-able.
Publishing
- Use the drafts folder to develop longer posts
- Use Working Copy to add new posts to my website’s repository
- Set up a GitHub Action to build and deploy my website
It’s important that the GitHub Action deploys to my current web host. Netlify is easy to set up, I’m sure, but I’ve made deliberate choices on sustainability that I’d like to uphold.