SamMorrowDrums Blog

The Goal

I've been looking for nice ways to publish content that interact seamlessly between my local environment and web, I wanted a way to got off Medium, and ultimately to write with as little distraction as possible. Write.As provides a lot of positives for me, and is a lot easier than maintaining a custom blog.

I think the bottom line for me though, is that blogging in a web browser makes procrastination too easy, and my will is weak. To avoid this I have experimented a little with alternatives, and finally found a setup I actually like.

Trying to go native with Write.As

When I first tried to use write.as, they did have a native app, and CLI tool available on Elementary OS, and so I attempted compose markdown using their app, and then connect it to a personal blog...

Unfortunately at the time both tools could only support publishing as an anonymous, unknown user. Also, the native app did not (and still doesn't) support Markdown preview – or at least syntax highlighting.

The Solution

Fortunately the CLI now supports publishing to blogs:

writeas publish --font sans -b sammorrowdrums ~/Documents/Blog/blogging-with-quilter.md

This has enabled me to re-visit Quilter – a native app markdown editor (available on EOS) that features a simple distraction free UI and syntax highlighting of MD, and the ability to preview.

The Future

Finally I am able to blog, saving my files locally first, in a native app, and then publish easily when ready. I know there are plans to enhance the Write.As native app, so I'm not ruling out using it in the future, but at least I have a workflow that can keep me away from the web browser for now.

* I know that I could just copy and paste markdown into the Write.As website – I just don't want to.

* The —font sans is important, because the default is to upload the blog in monospace font, which is a poor choice for normal blogs, although useful for sharing code, and ascii art etc.