General inquiry on long form (academic book) writing

Knowledge management
1

Hello everyone,
Currently I use Obsidian to take notes, write short articles (around 15-20 pages) and conferences texts, but I am unsure if I want to use it also for longer forms such as entire books. Currently I make drafts/notes for each chapter of the book but then I finalise my writing in Mellel because it works well with my reference manager of choice (bookends); also I can easily write a TOC and a name index.
However, I find myself wanting to write in Obsidian more and more.
I am curios: how do you handle big writing projects? (books)? Do you have a special method/hack?
Thanks!

1 Like
2

I recommend you check the Longform plugin. Here is a video showing how it works.

2 Likes
3

Longform is one option, but there are others using a number of plugins for specific features.

isn’t on the community list yet, and is still a little glitchy, but it allows files and folders to be placed into a manual sequence in the file explorer.

shows word or page counts for all files and folders in the file explorer.
I assume you already use Better Word Count or File Info Panel for the current note.
Constructing the long-form is, I believe, best done through embeds (I make them headings and can then movem them around with the core outline plugin) and the Hover Editor can help with editing, while in the long-form.

Personally, I do any indexing etc in word processors after export.

2 Likes
4

I write my novel with Obsidian, but I don’t need a reference manager. If it was so, there are a Zotero and two Pandoc plugins to support this effort.

I export my novel chapters files in HTML and import them to Sigil to create the epub, and I import the epub to Calibre to create the PDF version.

1 Like
5

Thanks! I am aware of that plugin, but I need to look at it closely. What are the advantages of using it in your experience?

6

The ease of managing drafts and compile notes into pieces of a longer writing is quite nice. In the end, it’ll depend on the output you are looking for. You might use Longform to compile together alll your chapters, etc, and then expoet with something more sophisticated as Pandoc. But if all you need is to compile .md files into a longer one, this is, imo, the easiest way to do so.