thesweetsetup-com-x9nbdv.txt (15985B)
1 fbpx * 2 3 FREE! Plan Your Ideal Week: Bonus Workshop + Planner → Get the Workshop 4 5 [1]The Sweet SetupThe Sweet Setup 6 [2]ABOUT [3]COURSES [4]BLOG 7 [5]Sign In 8 9 • [6]Categories 10 □ [7]Mindfulness 11 □ [8]Workflows 12 □ [9]Setups 13 □ [10]Quick Tips 14 15 [11] 16 [12][ ] [13][Go] 17 Turning Obsidian into My Perfect Writing App 18 19 October 24, 2022 20 by [14]Mike Schmitz 21 22 NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is right around the corner, and if 23 you’re looking for a great tool to help you hit your writing goals, there are 24 lots of great options available. 25 26 In this article, I want to make the case for using [15]Obsidian by showing you 27 how to turn it into a powerful writing environment using a few essential 28 plugins. 29 30 [svg][obsidianwr] 31 32 But Isn’t Obsidian a Notes App? 33 34 That’s what I thought when I first started using it a couple of years ago. I 35 was hoping it would help me make connections between my notes and help inspire 36 some new ideas. But over time, I fell in love with it as a writing tool. In 37 fact, every article I’ve written in the last 2 years has been written in 38 Obsidian. 39 40 What makes Obsidian great as a writing tool is how much you can customize it 41 using third-party plugins. The number of plugins continues to grow (676 as of 42 this writing), and with Obsidian recently launching version 1.0, the app shows 43 no signs of slowing down any time soon. 44 45 My Journey Away from Ulysses 46 47 Let me get this out right now: Ulysses is an incredible writing app. 48 49 It’s just not for me for a couple of specific reasons. 50 51 First, publishing to the web isn’t quite as easy as it should be with Ulysses. 52 It does give you the ability to publish straight to WordPress, and you can even 53 update blog posts from Ulysses now — if you can get it to connect to your 54 custom WordPress blog. 55 56 When this broke for me, I started digging in to how to fix it and quickly came 57 across weird plugins and settings for modifying XMLRPC. And unfortunately, I 58 could never get it functioning again. I fully understand it’s something on my 59 domains, but the “simple instructions” didn’t work for me, and even as a web 60 developer I didn’t feel comfortable digging too far into this. 61 62 Which meant I was stuck copying and pasting into WordPress. 63 64 And because Ulysses doesn’t use standard Markdown, that meant I had to “export” 65 my text first. This works, but adds a few extra clicks (or taps in iOS) in 66 order to get my text out of my writing app. Combine that with the fact that 67 Ulysses has some weird Markdown formatting that never quite clicked for me in 68 the first place, and I was left looking for a straight Markdown-based text 69 editor. 70 71 Obsidian fits that description perfectly. It’s simple, uses plain text files, 72 provides inline formatting, and supports standard Markdown. It’s everything 73 I’ve ever wanted in a plain text editor. 74 75 But there are a few additional settings and plugins you can use to make it even 76 better as a writing app. 77 78 Obsidian Settings 79 80 First, let’s look at some of the settings. 81 82 To access these settings, click the gear icon in the lower-left corner and then 83 select Editor from the Settings sidebar. 84 85 The defaults are actually pretty good, but here’s the key settings you want if 86 you’re going to use Obsidian for writing: 87 88 • Make sure that Auto pair Markdown syntax is toggled ON. This creates both 89 symbols and places the cursor in the middle, making it easier to create 90 italicized or emphasized text. 91 • Make sure Smart indent lists is toggled ON. This makes it easier to create 92 bulleted and numbered lists quickly, automatically adding the next bullet 93 when you hit the Return key. 94 • Make sure that Fold heading and Fold indent are toggled ON. This creates 95 carats for Markdown headers as well as indented text, adding some cool 96 outliner-inspired features that make it easy to fold up text in large files 97 and focus on the text you want. 98 99 There are a bunch of other settings you can customize, but many of them are 100 simply personal preference. These are the important ones. 101 102 Once you have your settings, it’s time to move on to the plugins. 103 104 Obsidian Core Plugin Settings 105 106 There are two types of plugins in Obsidian: Core plugins that ship with the 107 app, and Community plugins that you can install to extend the functionality of 108 Obsidian. We’re going to look at the Core plugins first. 109 110 Here are my recommendations for modifying the Core plugins: 111 112 • Make sure that Backlinks and Outgoing Links are both toggled ON. These are 113 sections available in the right sidebar that show all of the notes that 114 link to the active note and all of the notes linked to from the active note 115 respectively. (If you’re new to the concept of connected notes, check out 116 [16]this article on using the local graph.) 117 • Make sure that Outline is toggled ON. This adds a tab in the right sidebar 118 that creates a table of contents for your note based on the Markdown 119 headers. This is helpful when you need to jump to a specific section of a 120 longer text as you can do so simply by clicking on the appropriate header 121 title. 122 • Turn the Word Count setting OFF. Word counts are important, but there’s a 123 Community plugin that does this much better than the built-in word count 124 tool here. 125 126 Again, there are a bunch of options here that are personal preference, but 127 these are the important ones. Once you have these Core plugins set, it’s time 128 to really make Obsidian dance by adding some Community plugins. 129 130 Obsidian Community Plugins for an Upgraded Writing Experience 131 132 You can access the Community plugins public directory by going to Settings → 133 Community plugins → Browse once you’ve toggled off Safe Mode. From there, you 134 can find plugins for just about anything, from [17]embedding tasks from Todoist 135 to [18]creating timeblocked daily plans to [19]creating kanban boards — all 136 based on your locally-stored plain text files using standard Markdown. 137 138 [svg][obsidianpl] 139 140 All of the plugin links I share below are Obsidian links (obsidian:// 141 link-adress) that will open straight to the plug-in page if you have Obsidian 142 installed and running on your device. 143 144 Note that many of the plugins I will share here are 1:1 replacements for 145 standard features in Ulysses, so if you don’t mind non-standard Markdown 146 formatting and don’t run into the publishing issues that I did, maybe try that 147 instead. But if you’re all in with Obsidian, here are the plugins I use to make 148 Obsidian my perfect writing app. 149 150 Better Word Count 151 152 The first plugin is called [20]Better Word Count. This replaces the built-in 153 word count core plugin, and it functions largely the same with one key 154 addition: when you highlight text, it shows the words/characters of the 155 highlighted text instead of the whole document. 156 157 [svg][obsidianbw] 158 159 It’s not as good as the writing stats in Ulysses, but it’s good enough for me. 160 161 cMenu 162 163 If you’re uncomfortable relying on your memory for Markdown formatting, [21] 164 cMenu is a third-party plugin that gives you a minimal text editor modal that 165 allows you to do things like bold, italicize, strikethrough, underline, and 166 toggle blockquotes. 167 168 [svg][obsidiancm] 169 170 If you don’t like the default options, you can customize what shows up in the 171 modal by adding any of the Commands in your Obsidian library. 172 173 Reading Time 174 175 Another handy Ulysses feature is being able to see how long it will take to 176 read the text in the selected file. But you can add this feature to the status 177 bar using the [22]Reading Time plugin. 178 179 [svg][obsidianre] 180 181 This one is pretty straightforward — just install it and turn it on and you’ll 182 see the reading time at the bottom of your Obsidian window. You can customize 183 your reading speed in the settings for the plugin. 184 185 Footnote Shortcut 186 187 If you use footnotes a lot, they can be a bit of a pain to create with standard 188 Markdown. It’s a lot easier with the [23]Obsidian Footnotes plugin.^[24]1 189 190 [svg][obsidianfo] 191 192 Once installed, you can find it in the Command Palette and with the hotkey: 193 Footnote Shortcut: Insert and Navigate Footnote. You can customize the hotkey 194 by going to Settings → Hotkey and searching for Footnote, which will then 195 insert the appropriate Markdown and navigate to the bottom of the note where 196 you can insert the text for your footnote. 197 198 Focus Mode 199 200 The Obsidian interface can be a little distracting when you’re trying to focus 201 on your words. Fortunately, the [25]Focus Mode plugin allows you to remove all 202 the distractions and focus on what you’re writing. 203 204 [svg][obsidianfo] 205 206 Once the plugin is installed and active, just click the Toggle Focus Mode 207 button to hide the sidebars and status bar, and you can shift-click the button 208 to hide everything but the active writing pane. 209 210 Typewriter Scroll 211 212 [26]This plugin keeps the currently selected line in the middle of the screen 213 as you type. As you type, the focus moves from the current section to the next 214 section by moving the rest of the page in the background, much like an 215 old-fashioned typewriter. 216 217 [svg][obsidianty] 218 219 There’s even a Zen Mode option that grays out the background text to help you 220 focus on the line that you are currently writing. 221 222 Novel Word Count 223 224 If you are aiming to write a book (fiction or non-fiction), you probably have a 225 total word count in mind. [27]Novel Word Count shows you the number of words 226 that a document or folder contains in the sidebar so you can keep track of your 227 long-form writing progress. 228 229 [svg][obsidianno] 230 231 You can also use pages, characters, date created, and date updated (as well as 232 a few different combinations) that can be configured in the plugin settings 233 once you turn it on. 234 235 Conclusion 236 237 Obsidian is much more than just a notes app, and might be the perfect writing 238 tool for you if you want to: 239 240 1. Store your plain text files locally 241 2. Use something that supports standard Markdown 242 3. Gives you the flexibility to craft your writing environment 243 244 Obsidian may not be for everyone, but since it’s completely free to start, 245 there’s no reason not to give it a spin. 246 247 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 248 249 1. Since it’s an Obsidian Command, you could also add this as a button to the 250 cMenu plugin mentioned above. [28]↩ 251 252 Follow us [29] [30] 253 254 [31]Get App Picks, Guides, & More 255 256 Get workflow tips, app recommendations, how-to guides, stories, and more 257 delivered to your inbox. Plus we'll send you our productivity guide for free! 258 259 [39][ ] 260 261 [40][Sweet!] 262 263 [41]Best-Selling Courses 264 265 [42]🎟 All Access Pass 🎟 266 267 Join the Focus Accelerator to get instant access to the entire course library, 268 resource vault, and more. [43]» 269 270 [44]NEW: All the Things 271 272 Best-selling productivity course. Stop being managed by your task list. [45]» 273 274 [46]Full Course List 275 276 Serving 15,000 customers since 2013, we have a library full of in-depth courses 277 to help you be more productive, creative, and focused. [47]View all courses » 278 279 [48]The Latest Posts 280 281 [49]Our First Look at Apple’s New Journal App 282 283 Let’s take a look at Apple’s new Journal app for iPhone and how it stacks up to 284 one of the perennial apps on the App Store. The app has a long way to go, but 285 it has some very intriguing elements to start. [50]» 286 287 [51]Tracking Important Events with Up Ahead, Time Blocking Methods, and More 288 289 Catch up on what we published this week, including a look at Up Ahead for 290 tracking upcoming events you're looking forward to, a guide to effectively 291 using time blocking for productivity, and more. [52]» 292 293 [53]Up Ahead Lets You Track the Important Things in Life 294 295 How many days is it until your next trip? How about until your anniversary? Or 296 maybe that movie you’ve been waiting to see comes out? You can of course put 297 all of these events on a calendar and find them that way, but that doesn’t 298 really make it easy to see how long it is until that thing happens. That's 299 where Up Ahead comes in. [54]» 300 301 [55]The Power of Focus Themes 302 303 One of the most important concepts to learn as you figure out your 2024 plans 304 comes from David Allen: "You can do anything you want, but you can’t do 305 everything you want." [Free Workshop this Monday] [56]» 306 307 [57]The CEO Who Had No Goals (Video) 308 309 I recently heard a surprising admission from a very successful CEO. [58]» 310 311 • [59]Home 312 • [60]About 313 • [61]Products 314 • [62]Contact 315 • [63]Blog 316 • [64]Newsletter 317 • [65]Sign In 318 319 A website by [66]Shawn Blanc and friends. See also: [67]The Focus Course | 320 [68]Tools & Toys 321 © 2024 Blanc Media, LLC 322 [69]Design by Ink Blot Media Group • [70]Dev by Jonathan Christopher 323 fbpx 324 325 References: 326 327 [1] https://thesweetsetup.com/ 328 [2] https://thesweetsetup.com/colophon/ 329 [3] https://thesweetsetup.com/training/ 330 [4] https://thesweetsetup.com/blog/ 331 [5] https://thesweetsetup.com/my-account 332 [6] https://thesweetsetup.com/turning-obsidian-into-my-perfect-writing-app/# 333 [7] https://thesweetsetup.com/category/mindfulness/ 334 [8] https://thesweetsetup.com/category/workflows/ 335 [9] https://thesweetsetup.com/category/sweet-setup-interview/ 336 [10] https://thesweetsetup.com/category/quick-tip/ 337 [11] https://thesweetsetup.com/turning-obsidian-into-my-perfect-writing-app/# 338 [14] https://thesweetsetup.com/author/mikeschmitz/ 339 [15] https://obsidian.md/ 340 [16] https://thesweetsetup.com/the-power-of-obsidians-local-graph/ 341 [17] https://thesweetsetup.com/syncing-embedding-tasks-from-todoist-in-obsidian/ 342 [18] https://thesweetsetup.com/timeblocking-in-obsidian/ 343 [19] https://thesweetsetup.com/my-obsidian-based-kanban-writing-workflow/ 344 [20] obsidian://show-plugin?id=better-word-count 345 [21] obsidian://show-plugin?id=cmenu-plugin 346 [22] obsidian://show-plugin?id=obsidian-reading-time 347 [23] obsidian://show-plugin?id=obsidian-footnotes 348 [24] https://thesweetsetup.com/turning-obsidian-into-my-perfect-writing-app/#fn-132252:1 349 [25] obsidian://show-plugin?id=obsidian-focus-mode 350 [26] obsidian://show-plugin?id=cm-typewriter-scroll-obsidian 351 [27] obsidian://show-plugin?id=novel-word-count 352 [28] https://thesweetsetup.com/turning-obsidian-into-my-perfect-writing-app/#fnref-132252:1 353 [29] https://twitter.com/thesweetsetup 354 [30] https://thesweetsetup.com/feed 355 [31] https://thesweetsetup.com/newsletter/ 356 [41] https://thesweetsetup.com/training/ 357 [42] https://thesweetsetup.com/accelerator/ 358 [43] https://thesweetsetup.com/accelerator/ 359 [44] https://thesweetsetup.com/things/ 360 [45] https://thesweetsetup.com/things/ 361 [46] https://thesweetsetup.com/training/?utm_source=training_sidebar_link&utm_medium=sidebar&utm_campaign=sidebar_att 362 [47] https://thesweetsetup.com/training/ 363 [48] https://thesweetsetup.com/blog/ 364 [49] https://thesweetsetup.com/our-first-look-at-apples-new-journal-app/ 365 [50] https://thesweetsetup.com/our-first-look-at-apples-new-journal-app/ 366 [51] https://thesweetsetup.com/tracking-important-events-up-ahead-timeblocking-more/ 367 [52] https://thesweetsetup.com/tracking-important-events-up-ahead-timeblocking-more/ 368 [53] https://thesweetsetup.com/up-ahead-lets-you-track-the-important-things-in-life/ 369 [54] https://thesweetsetup.com/up-ahead-lets-you-track-the-important-things-in-life/ 370 [55] https://thesweetsetup.com/the-power-of-focus-themes/ 371 [56] https://thesweetsetup.com/the-power-of-focus-themes/ 372 [57] https://thesweetsetup.com/the-ceo-who-dad-no-goals-video/ 373 [58] https://thesweetsetup.com/the-ceo-who-dad-no-goals-video/ 374 [59] https://thesweetsetup.com/ 375 [60] https://thesweetsetup.com/colophon/ 376 [61] https://thesweetsetup.com/training/ 377 [62] https://thesweetsetup.com/contact/ 378 [63] https://thesweetsetup.com/blog/ 379 [64] https://thesweetsetup.com/newsletter/ 380 [65] https://thesweetsetup.com/my-account 381 [66] https://shawnblanc.net/ 382 [67] https://thefocuscourse.com/ 383 [68] http://toolsandtoys.net/ 384 [69] http://inkblotmediagroup.com/ 385 [70] http://mondaybynoon.com/