This isn’t meant to convince anyone to switch tools. Plenty of writers use Scrivener, Sudowrite, Word, Google Docs, or something else entirely. This is simply the workflow I’ve settled into with Obsidian.
Using Obsidian for Writing – I do 70% of the Writing on Mobile Phones
Full manuscript writing. My main phone is a current-ish Samsung S23, and the writing-only phone is a Blu G53. Only the S23 has mobile service. I mainly use phones because at least one of them is always on me. It’s fast to just get things out, and even though I’m a horrible screen typist, Google Keyboard (installed on both) can usually figure out what I was trying to spell.
Most of my best inspiration has started when I’m not in front of my computer. Yes, I do use the computer for long-range editing and writing, but the initial capture and scene creation usually happens from a phone.
For the setup, I use Obsidian on both phones, but I don’t use Obsidian’s built in Sync since you have to pay for it on a per-vault basis, and I have more than a few vaults on each phone.
I run Syncthing (https://syncthing.net/) on the vault folders at the OS level to keep files in sync. Obsidian stores everything as ordinary Markdown files in folders. Syncthing simply keeps those folders synchronized across all my devices.
I have a desktop, a Windows 10 tablet, and an Android tablet, and yes, they’re all syncing.
How I Got Here
I actually started in Obsidian. There was nothing else really. I was already using it for research notes, daily stuff and long-term projects, and the writing just started in an existing vault. It was around mid- Book One that I moved the files into their own vault, and the end of Book One where I broke the canon files out to their own vault.
The Obsidian Vault Structure
I run two vaults per project. A project is a book series. For example, Charles Mandrake Books One through Three are in one vault. The East Bay website content is in a different vault. Finally, the Azaya Series runs in a third vault. There are three vaults.
Each Manuscript Vault has an accompanying “Canon vault.” This is a completely separate vault that contains all the canon information related to the manuscript. It contains all the character sheets, world information, location details, chapter references, style guides, and notes that just don’t fit anywhere else.
So my current layout is as follows (Vault Sets):
- Charles Mandrake –> Manuscript Vault : Canon Vault
- Azaya’s Books –> Manuscript Vault : Canon Vault
- East Bay Main website (I consider this project more like a book) –> Manuscript Vault : Canon Vault
Each vault set lives on a USB drive. The desktop pushes changes from USB to GitHub where I have versioning enabled so I not only don’t lose the data, I can go back in time and find anything I need in an older version. This is done for each Vault Set.
If you’re not familiar with how dev work goes, then you could just have a backup on an external hard drive, but there’s no versioning (going back in time) unless you save fresh copies under dated folders or something.
I hardly ever work in more than one Vault Set at the same time. I do sometimes open canon from one vault to bring over to another when needed, but vaults from different sets are hardly ever open at the same time.
For both phones, Syncthing syncs all six vaults so I have a full copy of each vault syncing.
Obsidian Themes and Plugins
Falling down rabbit holes with Obsidian is very easy to do. There are a million customization options, and any number of ways the vault can be set up. I did my time falling down these holes. One of my vaults got so deep and complicated that it was completely unusable.
None of my manuscript vault sets use plugins. At all. I don’t install themes either. Those vaults are completely stock installations. As far as Canon vaults are concerned, they’re completely stock as well, with the exception of East Bay, where I wrote my own plugin to pull news feeds from the site down to the Canon Vault.
I’ve found that writing doesn’t ask much of the platform that’s being used. As long as there’s an editor, I could get by. I mean, I could do this in notepad if I really wanted to, but that’s not the point.
File Structure: This is where Obsidian helps me out the most. Keeping all my files organized. Across my vaults, I have over 4,000 files. Without Obsidian, I would have files everywhere because I really am not an organized person. Using this platform keeps everything neat and tidy and the biggest benefit is that I know what I need and where it’s at about 95% of the time, which is huge. Nothing breaks a writer’s flow more than trying to figure out that little detail from three books ago, and not knowing where it’s at.
AI and Obsidian – The AI’s New Role
As of Azaya’s first book, AI transitioned into a different role for me. It no longer is a writing partner. Its primary job is to file and organize the canon in my vaults now. It’s also easier and faster a lot of the time to query the LLM for information I need, keep writing while the LLM goes and hunts for what I need. This has been a very good workflow, and I still get the satisfaction of having written the books myself without AI assistance on the writing part. I think of AI as more of the intern now that’s tasked with the mundane so I can stay focused during my sessions.
Specifically, I use Claude desktop with the filesystem MCP and Desktop Commander connector to handle this. I also have a few custom skills for the intake of the information specific to my writing. Claude keeps a project document and its own claude.md file for that. When I let it know to do an intake, it just does it, but that’s only because it has access and has parsed the vault to know what to do with the canon that it’s bringing in.
Beyond Obsidian
I use only two other tools in the process: LibreOffice Writer for the final manuscript (via Pandoc conversion), and PDF24 to convert the final document into PDF format for Kindle. Images are out of scope for this post, but they have their own process, and I’ll do a bit about them in the future.
The target for me was low friction, and this is about as low as it gets. Three apps to output a novel, having access to my writing literally everywhere, and knowing that I can just drop back in anytime a flash of brilliance strikes is reassuring.