Ask HN: Where do you write?

I recommend a blog with your own URL (WordPress or Ghost). Then you can syndicate to Medium and Twitter with plugins. That way your content stays yours and you remain in control, while also getting the exposure from other platforms.

There are plenty of static site generates that you can have on gitlab for free: gitlab.com/pages

Just clone an example repo and push a commit, it should generate your site.

You can still add a custom domain in gitlab project settings.

I really wonder how it could be easier (fork a repo, push a commit) or cheaper (given that it's free).

Serious question: have you considered writing for just yourself?

I've found in this age of online sharing my motivations and enjoyments of things is more pure if I just do it for myself, and maybe share with one or two appreciative people.

In addition, I find that not telling anyone your goals or ambitions is extremely underrated. There's research that shows that if you do that, you get some of the reward for having done something worthwhile without nearly as much of the work, so the actual work becomes harder to do. And personally, I find it's absolutely true. The rest of the world's noise and opinions interferes with my own developmental process.

If I do things for myself and only for myself, it usually goes so much better.

The important thing is not where but how. What matters is a platform that doesn't get in your way. You need something that helps you focus on writing while keeping useless distractions (such as colors, formatting or html) away. Medium is good for that and so is the distraction free mode of WordPress. You can always write on Word and copy and paste the text later too. You can even use notepad or wordpad. I generally use metapad for this.

In my personal case I find markdown very useful when I absolutely need some formatting but don't want to waste time with HTML, toolbar buttons or having to remember keyboard shortcuts. The great thing about it is that it doesn't break the flow, I can just keep writing.

For publishing (which I do rarely as I mostly write just for my own amusement) I use Neocities because it's just old school HTML and doesn't get in my way, GitHub pages work for that too. The good thing about those two is that backups are basically hassle free, you always have a local and a remote copy and don't have to worry about having to backup a database or export a blog (as is the case for Medium or WordPress). Since you asked for cons too: static site generators and GitHub commands not only are something else you have to install, learn and keep up-to-date, they also break the flow so only use them once you've finished writing.

So here's my summary: choose whatever platform you feel that doesn't get in the way of your writing.

I have used svbtle.com for years, and generally like it.

I am all-in on Notion these days, though, and wish I could use it for my blog. I could but I want nicer URLs and to have it be on my domain.

I've found Duotrope is useful for tracking down science fiction and fantasy outlets if you're looking to place stories in a professional setting.

I've written a bunch of short stories over the years. Some I've trunked after they didn't go anywhere. In a couple of instances, I've published them on my newsletter (andrewliptak.substack.com), and then republished them at Curious Fictions.

It depends on how pro you want to get. If you have the means, I suggest getting both a story editor and a proof reader and ask them to give brutal feedback. The reality is that most stories that are written are low quality and thus don't get the audience that the writer would desire. Much like programming, it takes a while to get your stuff where you want it to be.

I just do a bunch of markdown files in a private github repo. There are a lot of great markdown editors to make the writing experience pleasant (I use typora https://typora.io/), plus text analysis is easy given it is just plain text file.

I self-host a couple of blogs using Wordpress. For over eleven years, I've posted a photo every day at https://www.75centralphotography.com/, but that's not really writing. For writing, I've just recently spun up http://www.robotsprocket.com/ to share ephemera, code and other things I've found interesting. Having played around with Medium, Squarespace and Wix, I find WP to be superior in its flexibility and the fact that I'm ensured that I own the content.

I wrote a blog post about that: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/10/14/how-to-start-b...

But the short answer is: wherever is easiest. I find setting up a wordpress.com blog (free) easiest, but medium or dev.to are good as well.

Don't let your desire to find the perfect platform inhibit your writing. The hard part about writing is the writing, not the platform. As a developer, I find it easy to get tangled up in tech choices, package upgrades and deployment pipelines, which lets me avoid or defer actually writing.

A good place to start off might be on an appropriate subreddit. It's low effort, pseudonymous, and you get an immediate audience. You can post it somewhere and get immediate (encouraging, good, bad, scathing) feedback.

Not so much a recommendation on where to publish, but I do suggest you form relationships and connections with other writers. It may seem like a solitary art form, but you can’t do it alone.

Thy said, the platform doesn’t matter. No one will find your content unless you cultivate an audience. There’s not much difference between Medium and GitHub and pastebin as far as your audience is concerned. If you want readers you’ll need an outlet that has them already (existing magazine, for example) or you’ll have to learn about marketing and promotion.

Good luck. Keep writing! The world needs your stories.

I think the key is finding a community, if feedback and potentially an audience is what you are trying to build.

Wattpad has been popular for those who can keep up with the social requirements (frequent updates, networking, etc.)

I just use Hugo and generate static html that I rsync to my web host. I have found this much easier to deal with and much less prone to hacking than something like wordpress or other CMS platforms.

I would use my own domain, so that I have the control of my site. Why hand over the control to Medium or Wordpress.com?

Same thing with the SEO. Why give the SEO juice to Medium instead of your own personal domain?

Building a static site with e.g. Hugo or Jekyll is an appealing choice. If you want you can use Cloudfront + S3 to host it.

OTOH, Wordpress is very convenient to work with and quick to set up. If you don’t have a VPS there are shared web hosting sites that should be good enough in the beginning at least. Shared web hosting can also be used for static sites.

I use Hugo and I host my blog out of an AWS S3 bucket.

Pros:

  - Cheap.

  - Static and small. Hugo lets me really make everything tiny.

  - Learned more about AWS.

Cons:

  - A lot of work because I had to setup Route 53, CloudFront, Certificate Manager and S3.

  - Learning about the permission model and setting up an IAM user with right permissions.

  - Figuring out how Route 53, Certificate Manager and CloudFront work together so I could have SSL.

Reading this back, my pros and cons list sounds ridiculous.

Vuepress → Github actions → static site deployed to GCP/Storage. Writing Markdown in VSCode is _significantly_ better than all the online editors I've tried.

I am using a self-hosted Wordpress instance, lets encrypt, and cloudflare to proxy requests. A few automation scripts to ensure the apps are updated and IP changes are corrected with google domains. Every now and then I check my site to ensure everything is working as it should.

Granted, it doesn't get much traffic except for 2 post that gets me 5-10 visitors daily. https://ianmf.com

I just have a PHP site on my own domain and I also created a very simple PHP script to load and display markdown files. This way I write new posts as markdown files (so I get versioning and all), and there is no build step, I could edit files directly on the server.

https://github.com/Cristy94/markdown-blog

The content matters. The tool doesn't.

Based on painful firsthand experience, don't waste much time optimizing for the 'best' way to share. Just create, share, adjust. You can always switch to another 'tool'--tools are cheap, plentiful, and don't matter much. You'll kill every ounce of creativity and momentum mucking around in the weeds looking for the best 'tools'.

If I would start a blog, right now I would use Gatsby + Markdown + own domain. Using free repository hosting and static cloud hosting which in many places is also free. Basically for 10$/year and occasional backup you would have a platform and service independent blog which can easily be migrated wherever you want. Aware that for these you need some basic tech skills indeed.

I’m using ghost at https://mattbrandly.com/

I intend to write more technical content, and I don’t think ghost is that great for the purpose. I wish I were writing markdown and generating static assets locally. Having to send highlight.js to every client for syntax highlighting is unnecessary.

Always always always own your own content. Don’t post on medium often (might be worth it to build a following).

I post exclusively on my own Wordpress blog hosted on vultr for $5/month. If you aren’t a developer I’d recommend some self service option.

To build a following perhaps try twitter, Reddit, and medium. There’s also probably locations to post short stories I’m unaware of

I have my own personal blog using Jekyll.

Your own blog first if not for any other reason then the fact that you own it and are not at anyone's whims but your own. I used it as an excuse to get Ghost up and running in my Kubernetes cluster. Win-win.

Then push content out to Medium, dev.to, Twitter, etc if you're looking for more of an audience.

I was mainly using Literature & Latte's paid app Scrivener for years, but recently the free open source app Joplin has become my primary drafting environment. I still recommended both -- I use Scrivener for capturing research, organizing projects, and producing publisher-ready files.

I've got a blog nobody reads that I host with Netlify. It's just a simple Hugo-based static site.

Write Everywhere.

Write on Medium and Your Blog

Write on Substack. <=== I do. Pros: I can get paid. Cons: Formatting is simple.

Write on Amazon Publishing

Running a blog for my outlet: https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com

Started about 7 years ago and still haven't stopped. I did try a few times, but people keep emailing me.

For personal blog: 11ty + travis ci + github pages.

Its easy way to write and publish content.

Just checkout git repo, write posts with your favourite editor and push changes to github - thats all.

Previously, I've being using Wordpress and Ghost. Both were real nigtmare to manage.

I know a couple people writing on posthaven.com, and when it comes time for me to start putting stuff online, that's what I plan to use.

Their value proposition is 1. they will keep the servers online for all time 2. low bullshit post hosting

I keep a blog at https://vorpalhex.com and I primarily keep it as a repository of thoughts, ideas and odd projects.

I use Hugo because it's simple yet flexible, powerful and produces a static bundle that is easily hostable anywhere. I use the `hello-friend` theme with significant tweaks, mostly a lot of shortcodes for better and more-responsive friendly image handling. I wanted a markdown based flow with minimal JS that didn't require node/rails/etc toolchains. Hugo is available both as a docker image and a small compiled binary so both local builds and CI builds are very easy. Currently I'm hosted via Gitlab for ease (I can use my own CI runner and the hosting itself is free with SSL support) but I've used S3 and others with great results.

I do my drafting in my favorite notes app InkDrop, and then just take my markdown file and drop it into my repo. One git push and it's published. Still haven't found a great platform to let non-technical folks edit my posts though.

I keep my images and big files in a Digital Ocean CDN. I use rclone to manage cdn contents (it uses the s3 protocol) and have some utility scripts to pull the cdn locally and then sync up changes. I ended up having to write a small golang program to easily bulk resize images at responsive breakpoints: https://gitlab.com/vorpalhex/responsimg

For me, this setup makes it very low friction to compose blog posts and get them published and it gets good lighthouse speed scores and loads quickly on even low end devices with bad connections. No medium paywall, no facebook SDK, etc. I did end up caving and installing Google Analytics (I was very displeased with piwik).

Do you want to advance slowly in your skills? Then self publish.

Do you wish to advance painfully and quickly? Then find a traditional (online or paper) publisher and submit submit submit until you write something someone likes.

At work we use write.as for the blog, and I like it so far.

For my personal website, I use Jekyll on Vercel (ex. Zeit). I only did it because I wanted to code a bit and own the domain and the content.

Self Hosted WordPress with minimal plugins. Doesn't get in my way and I can write. No need to compile anything or create static files etc except a simple caching plugin.

First I put it on my personal blog (11ty+netlify), so I own the rights. I wait at least a couple days before publishing or promoting elsewhere (medium, DEV, hackernoon)

Medium will be OK for this purpose.

1. It's pretty quick to start

2. It's free but you can upgrade to premium for advanced features

3. Also Medium's community is a huge advantage

If you’re interested in short stories To be published I recommend trawling The Submissions Grinder. This is duotrope but free.

If you just want to write and could care less about ownership of content, pick Medium.

fanfiction.net :D

Mostly twitter, and my company's blog.

Github?