Writing a book in Obsidian: The beginning

Brandon Sanderson’s 2008 decision to publish every raw chapter of Warbreaker online while drafting it has sparked a bigger question: can “writing in public” work for someone without an established track record—and can Obsidian handle the messy, long-form grind of turning notes into a finished book? The plan laid out here treats that as a practical experiment, not a motivational slogan. The goal is to self-publish a book (or an alternative long-form format) built around Obsidian and note-taking, while documenting the process semi-publicly and iterating as the work evolves.

The project starts with consolidation. A dedicated Obsidian vault—tentatively titled “Obsidian Playbook”—already contains a large inventory of existing material: a video database with embedded videos and timestamps, plus a web of links and some text notes. The vault is built from a prior structure used in the course “Obsidian for Everyone,” and it includes workflows and notes on Obsidian releases. Much of the content is still incomplete: many items are placeholders, tags and frontmatter aren’t consistently applied, and several plugin-specific notes don’t exist yet even though the videos and screenshots reference them. The creator’s current word count—25,149 words—comes from the imported notes and gives a concrete signal that finishing a book is feasible, even if quality remains uncertain.

Next comes “processing,” aimed at making the archive usable for writing. That means standardizing frontmatter and tags across the video-heavy collection, linking timestamps more systematically, and likely pulling in transcripts or writing out what was said so the material can be searched and recombined. There’s also a gap between what’s been recorded and what’s been documented: the vault needs notes for each plugin discussed in the videos, with cross-references back to the relevant clips.

From there, the approach branches into format and structure experiments. One possibility is publishing something interactive rather than a traditional physical book—potentially using Obsidian Publish to deliver the work as a navigable experience. Another is using visualization tools beyond Obsidian’s default graph view. The plan includes installing Excalidraw and ExcaliBrain to map nuanced connections and identify gaps more effectively than the graph view, which is seen as less helpful once the project grows.

For drafting, the workflow shifts toward outline-first and incremental assembly. An outline will be built from the existing notes, then notes will be strategically filled in. The creator is considering the Longform plugin later for scene-based writing, but for now is leaning on Incremental Writing. The core idea is to write small pieces across many notes, then rearrange and assemble—avoiding the “start from scratch” trap. To manage focus, Incremental Writing’s queue system will prioritize tasks within a single-project vault, reducing the constant decision-making that previously derailed similar efforts in a mixed-use workspace.

Finally, the experiment extends to adjacent tooling and publishing formats. Spaced Repetition is floated as a way to trigger incremental writing via reminders rather than flashcards. The overarching unknown remains whether Obsidian is truly strong for long-form authorship in practice—and whether alternative reading experiences (like choose-your-own-adventure structures) could outperform linear A-to-Z ordering for this kind of knowledge product.