
Ask HN: Where do you write? - rntc
I would like to write some short stories but I don&#x27;t know where to publish them. Should I go for Medium, or a personal blog ...<p>Whatever you are writing, fictional or not, which platform do you use to publish ? And what are the pros and cons ?
======
alexmingoia
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.

~~~
pier25
Does it really work to syndicate content to Medium?

I don't remember the exact number, but the vast majority of my Medium readers
(something like 80% IIRC) came from HN, Reddit, Twitter, etc. My most read
article had about 170k reads before I removed my content from Medium.

~~~
jstanier
Unless you have a very large following already, you're at the whim of the
Medium editors to "elevate" content to the wider readership of the site, via
the preexisting topics, or if you're really lucky, to feature your article on
the front page.

* Edit: That doesn't mean you shouldn't! :-) However, you might get more readership - if that's what you're interested in - by writing pretty much anywhere, and just sharing it with the right communities.

------
1337shadow
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).

------
asdfman123
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.

~~~
ge96
> you get some of the reward for having done something worthwhile without
> nearly as much of the work

I think it's ego satisfaction or something? I personally have started to tell
myself "get it done/build it first before you share it". Like buying a domain
before the site/app is ready.

------
livre
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.

------
steveklabnik
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.

~~~
leerob
Check this out. Notion as a blog -> [https://github.com/ijjk/notion-
blog](https://github.com/ijjk/notion-blog)

------
AndrewLiptak
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.

------
3pt14159
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.

------
tinza123
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/](https://typora.io/)), plus text analysis is easy
given it is just plain text file.

~~~
rajlego
What do you mean by text analysis?

------
75central
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/](https://www.75centralphotography.com/),
but that's not really writing. For writing, I've just recently spun up
[http://www.robotsprocket.com/](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.

------
mooreds
I wrote a blog post about that:
[https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/10/14/how-to-
start-b...](https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/10/14/how-to-start-
blogging/)

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.

~~~
kd5bjo
> Don't let your desire to find the perfect platform inhibit your writing. The
> hard part about writing is the writing, not the platform.

This is why the vast majority of my writing is on paper, never to be
published. The act of writing helps me order my thoughts, and that’s much
easier to do if I can be confident they’re only for me.

~~~
mooreds
100% agree that writing clarifies my thoughts.

I will say there's sometimes additional clarification that occurs if I'm going
to publish something (internally or to the world). I find that makes me aim
for that extra bit of polish or certitude.

------
runjake
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.

------
demygale
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.

------
ilamont
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.)

------
tmaly
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.

------
cpach
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.

------
hachibu
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.

~~~
1337shadow
Also, gitlab pages will host your pages for free, there are many site
generates you can choose from ( gitlab.com/pages ), including Hugo, you don't
get any of the con, and it's completely free to use.

~~~
samanthalee233
Community Advocate with GitLab here, just wanted to share the link to GitLab
Pages in case anyone is looking for it: [https://about.gitlab.com/stages-
devops-lifecycle/pages/](https://about.gitlab.com/stages-devops-
lifecycle/pages/)

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

------
ianmf
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](https://ianmf.com)

------
XCSme
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](https://github.com/Cristy94/markdown-blog)

------
stakkur
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'.

------
tzfld
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.

~~~
tta
Do you work on React/etc. on a regular basis?

I attempted to use Gatsby for a personal blog/knowledge base-style setup and
was immediately turned off by the seemingly immense overhead involved (React,
CSS-in-JS, GraphQL).

I ended up with Vuepress instead and I'm happy (so far, anyway); a big draw is
that it doesn't really require any Vue knowledge to get up and running.

~~~
tzfld
Of course, Gatsby is just a choice. Using markdown gives you more flexibility.
Almost every static site generator support markdown content.

------
brandly
I’m using ghost at [https://mattbrandly.com/](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.

------
lettergram
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

------
meerita
I have my own personal blog using Jekyll.

------
quaffapint
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.

------
rayrrr
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.

------
brenden2
I've got a blog nobody reads that I host with Netlify. It's just a simple
Hugo-based static site.

~~~
b3u
link?

~~~
brenden2
[https://github.com/brndnmtthws/brndn-
io](https://github.com/brndnmtthws/brndn-io)

------
kamphey
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

~~~
mooreds
Do you write the same content (cross post)? Or do you write unique content for
each platform? If so, how do you decide which platform for which piece of
content?

------
mattbgates
Running a blog for my outlet:
[https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com](https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com)

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

------
hawkweed
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.

~~~
uxcolumbo
I've not tried out Ghost yet - I thought it was suppose to solve WP's bloat
and UX issues.

What was nightmarish about Ghost and when did you last use it?

------
TehShrike
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

------
vorpalhex
I keep a blog at [https://vorpalhex.com](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](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).

------
kleer001
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.

------
BasilPH
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.

------
codegeek
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.

------
b3u
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)

------
jason_price
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

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

------
p0larboy
If you just want to write and could care less about ownership of content, pick
Medium.

------
throwaway123x2
fanfiction.net :D

------
urlwolf
Mostly twitter, and my company's blog.

------
adamnemecek
Github?

~~~
scaglio
Short stories on Github? Really?

~~~
adamnemecek
Why not?

~~~
scaglio
Because that's not what Github was created for, as far as I know... "built for
developers" is the first sentence on he homepage.

