Notion Architecture: Publishing Center
Managing a blog (or several) with Notion!
In early December, I finally got around to revamping my Notion app where I track my writing.
This, along with finally settling on an approach to centralize the publishing here in Substack, has really helped me build a consistent and sustainable habit! Take December and January together, and I’ll have posted 35 blogs containing about 25,000 words generating thousands of page views.
Admittedly, some of this is old stuff that I have repurposed and refreshed. But still, that’s 3-4 posts per week! And while few people are reading all of that, it is all going toward different audiences. That is what I’m going for: I’d rather not have someone get turned off my Notion overviews because they don’t like my politics or aren’t interested in data architecture.
PubHome 2.0
With that said, let’s dive into my “PubHome 2.0” which is my hub in Notion for managing all these articles:
As I note in The New Notion Architecture, I consider this Notion page to be an App like one that I would use on a phone. Through it, I modify a few databases, notably the Publishing DB which contains one entry for each article that I write or plan to write.
Because Notion’s new database views let you add views of different databases into the same block, most of the navigation here is done via the header row with a bunch of icons:
Each of these icons is a view on my Publishing DB. The current view shown above is the calendar view, which shows all posts across all publications on a calendar.
The Calendar View
This is the main view that I use, as each post also shows where it is at in terms of writing it and getting it setup to publish on Substack. Let’s take a closer look at this week’s schedule:
Above, you can see my schedule for the week that this posts: 2 of the 4 articles are already scheduled, the other two are in Substack but not yet scheduled.
The second status shown there reflects the state of the writing itself, and you see most of the states aside from “0 - Not Drafted” in this row. As this article is underway, it is at “0.5 - Partial” right now!
As you can tell, I also use the colors to convey urgency. If anything is red in the coming week, I know I need to get cracking on that. If everything is green, I’m probably all set!
The Other Views
After the calendar view, I have one Kanban view for each of my four publications. I use these to track ideas and other articles that are in the pipeline and organize them, with the ultimate goal of scheduling them.
This uses the first status element that you see up above as either “3 - In Substack” or “3.5 - Scheduled”, and particularly concerns the earlier statuses. Let’s take a look at HOP’s pipeline:
Here, you can see the other statuses, and this should give you a glimpse of how I decide what content should come next.
From left to right: I have some things that are just at the idea stage. Ideally (I’m not the best at this) I’d just add a row here as soon as any new idea popped into my head.
In addition to that, I have things that I’ve previously written either for WeAchieve’s blog (now defunct) or for legacy HOP (https://hop.mumma.co). Eventually this will go away as all that is migrated over, but I keep it there for now.
The Planned column is really where we start to organize what will come next. At the top of planned I keep anything with a date next to it, and you see a few there. Below that I keep the top of my backlog - basically things that I will schedule as time advances.
That Planned column then can be looked at to try to get a sense of the narrative or focus of upcoming writing, and group things as needed. While that isn’t too critical here, it is critical for The Book of Principles (which you should check out if you haven’t yet!):
This conveniently brings us to the couple series views that I have for The Book of Principles and Productivity In Notion:
The Series View
Here is the Series View for the Book of Principles:
As you can tell, this is a database view, but I’ve gone through and set an OrderID to each item after sorting through the whole list (here I have about 100 articles or ideas already).
This is used to map out the series and make sure that there is a broader flow to the ideas and that related concepts are grouped together. This is tricky to do, so it’s good to have a big list that you know you can keep the latest ordering on.
Putting it all together
Here’s the overall flow:
As I have an idea for something to write, I add it as an entry and tag it to the appropriate publication and any other details.
The post will come in as at a status of “0 - Idea”. If I want to write it soon, I move it to “2 - Planned”.
Looking at those Planned articles, I map out the next month or two of posts and put dates next to each piece.
Then, I would start to draft each piece. I typically hash out an overview in Notion and then move that to Substack. I change the status to “3 - In Substack” to note that Substack would have the latest!
I then schedule and publish the post in Substack, updating the status as needed.
Each week, I look at the calendar at the start of the week to make sure I have my posts wrapped up and ready to go!
Bonus: Writing a Novel!
Last but not least, I am (quite slowly) working on a novel called God: The Democracy. I won’t spoil it too much, but you can probably get a bit from the name.
And you guessed it: I’m also drafting that in Notion!
I currently have two separate databases that relate to this: one contains an entry for each chapter in the book, the other contains an entry for each character or organization within the book.
To speak to each briefly and why they help over just writing a long stretch of words in a word document:
The Character database keeps each character, a description, tags for their personality traits, what their planned character arc is for the first book, and any open questions or possible end points at the end of the full series. This allows me to plan out their personality and character arc so that each character is (in theory) well-developed and has an evolution or a story behind them. With 22 entries currently, this can be a lot to keep track of while writing!
The Chapter database obviously contains the actual chapter itself, but I also add several database fields that describe: the overall thesis of the chapter, which characters get introduced, what primary purpose the chapter serves, and for each of the main characters what, if anything, needs to happen to them during that chapter.
Writing a good book is a lot like writing a computer code. You need a good architecture and a system, otherwise you are just a monkey pounding on a keyboard. Of course, I may still be a monkey pounding away on a keyboard, but this structure seems like it gives me a chance that God: The Democracy will, someday, be a full and cohesive story worth telling.
Apologies for no screenshots of the novel databases: I don’t want to spoil anything!
And that is all I have as far as my Publishing Center! If you are writing anything, hopefully this was helpful. Even if you aren’t, the general ideas here are broadly applicable:
Create a system with well defined stages that reflect different discrete actions you need to take.
Use color to quickly visualize where to focus.
Make it enjoyable to use!
Do you do something different? Let us know in the comments below!