Thinking about my journalling in Day One recently and I’m wondering if it’s time to move it off to something else, maybe Markdown files in a Git repository. Still mulling it over but every time I weigh the two options in my mind, the simpler Markdown approach always wins out.

Plain old Markdown files are just way more versatile and portable than what Day One offers. I can put them in a private Hugo (or Eleventy) site and browse them in a web browser, with the backing of a full HTML renderer that offers, amongst other things, figures with captions (yes, I want them that badly). Making them into a book will be more involved than what Day One offers, but I’ve been a little unhappy with how books from Day One are laid out anyway. Doing it from Markdown files will be pricier and more involved, but at least I’ll have a bit more control over how it looks.1

I’ll miss the writing experience from Day One though, especially things like recording the current location and weather for each entry. I’m still wondering what the best substitute for it will be.

I’m toying around with a web-app I whipped up yesterday. A web-app will be fine for those times I’m online, but how would it work if I’m in an aeroplane? I’m also a little worried about trying it for a while, then abandoning it and leaving it to rot. I guess one thing going for it is that at-least it won’t lock me out of any entries, since they’ll just be Markdown files in Git.

I’m also considering iA Writer. I haven’t tried it yet but from my understanding, it’ll just write Markdown files to a directory, which is the goal. But I’m not sure how I can get the posts and media from there to a Git repo.

Anyway, that’s the current thinking. Will keep you posted on what happens.

  1. Of course, the challenge there will be to overcome the friction involved in doing this work to actually get the book made. ↩︎