Basically want a random-access input, sequential-access output RAISAO workflow that’s as automated as possible. A mix of a wiki and a forward chronology auto-blog. For something like a novel + worldbuilding project.
Changelog-as-output still isn’t quite right but is a start
Conversation
There are 4 main current choices, all bad:
1. Wikis/Roam are easiest but nobody knows what you’re doing and sprawl can become unmanageable
2. Blogs/email are way too rigid even in CMS mode and produce garbled out-of-order output unless you force yourself to write serially
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3. Working in a traditional book workflow like Scrivener. You don’t get REPL type feel with a live-looped audience, plus it sucks for when you want to publish worldbuilding content + stories
4. Git+markdown static sites are flexible but incomplete on distribution and paywall
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I have a fairly clear spec in my head but don’t see anything that automates it enough that you can focus on writing a larger thing and also let an audience watch the work take shape live without getting disoriented
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The only person I know trying to wrote a true on,one book is but afaik he doesn’t have distribution set up or a way to REPL the audience in as he tweaks chapters or inserts out-of-order elements
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For audience REPL, I use RSS + email newsletter + twitter + on-site comments. Trad tech that's not great, but good enough. N.b. getting comments on a self-hosted site is a significant dev challenge nowadays:
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In a maybe-slightly-weird coincidence, I've been thinking in the past month about a payment model. This is a big problem for many people (we'd like to get paid to write, and that's hard). I have a new theory of how to do it.
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Sort of thinking I'll roll it out for myself and then productize iff it works for me.
OTOH, do I want to run a payments SaaS?
[Narrator: no, he does not]
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I suspect a lot of people want to write this way. Trad writers just don’t even realize it’s almost doable.
Drupal/Joomla/Wordpress is just too creaky for this though. You can make them work with effort, but I think this needs updated foundations. Roam checks off a lot for me.
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Yes, I built a new foundation (on Django, but that’s just generic web framework stuff, not a CMS). That’s at the server end… I don’t have a great writing client solution currently. I have a sketch plan, but would rather write text than code :)
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Django is even heavier and doesn’t really break out of the paradigm. Graph databases seem to open up a lot of possibilities. If I wanted to build a custom backend I’d likely pick Gatsby. Frontend should be easy with one of the email tool APIs (substack isn’t open but others are)

