All writing starts from an idea

A glimpse of my writing process starting with how I capture ideas

Author

Jonathan Yeong
March 20, 2025

I find it fascinating seeing how people do stuff. And I'm very fond of behind the scenes type content. It's been fun writing about writing, so I'm continuing here with a glimpse into my writing process.

I'll describe my process in two words: chaotic and messy. It's very inspiration driven, but it works. Mostly.

It all starts by capturing as many ideas as possible.

All of my ideas live in Obsidian's daily note. If you're curious, this is the date format of my Daily Note:

YYYY/MM-MMMM/YYYY-MM-DD

This format will create folders and organise the notes, like 2025/03-March/2024-03-19. Having folders makes viewing my daily notes in the sidebar less overwhelming.

Also, Obsidian sync is crazy good. You could store your Obsidian vault in iCloud — or some other cloud service — to get the same behaviour. But I find Obsidian sync faster and more reliable.

The ideas in my daily note are a blob of text. I've found this to be the best way for me to capture without getting caught up in organisation. When I sit down to write, I'll go through today's note and move ideas I like into their own page.

There's no limit to what an idea looks like. Sometimes, it's a fun title with a description.

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies - a post on my relationship with metrics

Other times it's a paragraph I enjoyed writing:

Pottery is one of those hobbies that tickles all of my fleshy brain folds. Like a game, there’s multiple levels with different boss bottles. Each with is own mechanics. Throwing has a learning curve, as does trimming, as does glazing. And at the end of it all, you have to take a leap of faith and hope that it makes it out of the oven. Even if I make an ugly ass mug, it’s uniquely ugly. And that’s why I’m obsessed with pottery.

Rarely is an idea fully formed.

Over time I’ll add more to the idea and once it hits critical mass, it has legs to become a post.

As you can imagine, this is not the most optimal process.

Knowing when to pursue an idea is an art I haven't yet mastered. And I probably spend too much time investing in ideas that are meh. But it’s satisfying when you’ve been thinking of an idea for a while and it finally clicks.

What I love about this process is that it promotes growing ideas over time. It's similar to a digital garden. I plant a bunch of seedlings and see them sprout as I tend to them.

That pottery idea might have legs. If only as another excuse to write the phrase "fleshy brain folds".