@ Spatia Nostra

Writing about writing, that's what I'm doing today. A couple months in, trying to make writing on Nostr a regular part of my routine has been both interesting and enlightening. This Spatia Nostra blog started as passion project of unknown intention, beginning with an attempt to fill a glaring educational void... but creating these resources has also served as my own schooling. I've learned that everything works well sometimes but nothing works well all the time. Given that Nostr development, as a whole, is akin to stray cats herding chickens, in hopes that they will trample out 100 fires, this was not an unexpected experience. Beyond a few painful days when nothing would work, its actually gone smoother that I expected. The state of reading and writing tools is yet in major flux. Some are way behind but still work, others are in active development... which has its own set of pros and cons. I've read in notes, that the Primal team is currently riding their white stallions (across a beach, no less) to deliver the writing tools that save will save the day. There is no single solution to a multi-faceted problem, though, so writing is no different than search problems or spam problems, in that regard. I have no doubt that whatever they deliver will be functional and suitable for their readers and writers , but ultimately there needs to be many Nostr tools available for many different styles of author and many ways for readers to uptake their works. There might be value in sharing some of my insights, for anyone looking to write natively to Nostr or for anyone who may be building writing and reading related tools, so that is my aim here today. (With hope that most of this piece will become outdated sooner rather than later.) For the sake of not turning this into a multi-client review, because its already going to be really long, I will direct anyone who wants to dive right in to writing on Nostr here .

Where to begin:

Right now, there is no easy way to see which client was used to write a piece. There are exceptions, of course, and there are things I have not tried or cannot use due to my hardware, so I can't say that this rings true across the broader view of Nostr. If we assume that most people are introduced to Nostr through the microblogging/social media gateways, then they are likely introduced to longer Nostr content through their follow feed, either by a client that nicely displays these publications as standalone items or by authors and readers referencing a piece within a typical note (Kind 1, for all us Nostr nerds). As with the writing tools themselves, I know that support for advertising which client was used to create an event is rolling out with varying perceptions of its importance. In the interem, Nostr has the benefit of a wildly passionate user-base to fill these gaps. Oftentimes, the author themselves are willing to share which client was used to write a piece. If not, someone will almost surely be able and willing to answer. As the ecosystem grows, I imagine that it will suffer the same problem as every other human-occupied spaces... the more people there are, the less likely they are to talk to each other. Nostr makes it incredibly easy to reduce those types of negative social impacts, but I can still easily envision a situation in which the aspirational writer finds their calling from a piece written by a popular big-name writer, where the reply sections tend to become too noisy to find answers. To alleviate this, client tags are an obvious mitigation. I would love to see all major social/microblogging clients build in support for that one day, so that anyone new to Nostr can easily figure out where to begin.

Writing:

Oof, yeah... This is where things start to branch out into the wild and weird world that we all love so much. Prior to this 2-month stint ( which I have every intention of continuing), I had only written a couple of long notes, one wiki entry, and a few recipes. No hitches whatsoever. I have found now, that the more frequently I attempt to write, the more interesting problems I encounter... But sometimes it all works so silky, smoothly that it becomes a sensational, powerful experience where one can see just how much potential Nostr has to revolutionize the way we exchange information, with ourselves, our friends and the world.

When everything, or at least most things, are working well, its amazing. You can send yourself nostr events through messaging clients on mobile to access and reference from a web client later, with many of the different Nostr messaging apps. Not all messaging apps perform in the same way, so before you go confusing yourself, send a test message or two to see if your messaging app handles the 'note to self' concept in a way that makes sense to you. This might sound a little bit janky, but it's really just a simple way of creating notes for yourself. Having some quick thoughts that you don't want to lose while your on the go, so you can build upon them later, is another strong use aside from gathering reference materials. I like this method because nothing is so good at organizing my thoughts than my own brain. If you prefer to use a note taking app, there are some out there that have integrated Nostr features so that you can maintain your usual workflow while benefitting from Nostr's ubiquity. Once You have your basis, you know when its time to write. You have a few solid choices that all have the same basic functions, with a slightly different feel and interface, and slightly different additional features. You can find the one you like, bang out your thoughts, and use the others to tweak and adjust things. Because... Nostr, the reading side will always be somewhat variable, so you'll likely want to proof your own writing a few times, in a few clients, that you believe your readers will be using the most.

Everything Works!

For me, the amazing Nostr writing experience looks something like this:

I send myself some notes and thoughts on a multi-device messaging app. I visit my favorite publishing app for the majority of my writing because I like the thoughtful, quiet design. I can then jump to another and add tags, because I forgot to do that. It also has the best editing experience, so I can fix my damn typos while I'm there. Later on, I realize that maybe part of the revenue should go to the person who inspired my thoughts, so I visit a different client, initiate an edit, and add a revenue split to the post. Once I'm done, it looks amazing, and I want to check that it looks amazing in the places that I think my readers might see it, as well. I check through a few mobile social clients. Native display looks great, formatted neatly enough to call it a piece, with all referenced Nostr events displayed in pretty purple letters and linking to their naddr as intended. In posts that reference events, it links up great and takes me to a reading client intended to manage walls of text. Nice. All the while, I'm keeping in my mind that my work, should I or anyone else deem it worthy of longevity, is being stored across multiple relays, including my own rented relay (I should really set something up at home, I'll get there eventually). These thoughts are out there and they have the potential to stay there, wherever "there" may be. I don't have to worry about them being taken down or becoming unavailable because at least one of these many relays will be up and keeping my notes at any given moment, and the more my readers interact, the more sticky and distributed my work becomes. It'd be pretty rare for a controversial piece to come out of these fingertips, but its not impossible. I find a lot of peace in that, more predominately as the reader than the writer.

Nothing Works!

Unfortunately, this is not always the outcome of writing on Nostr regularly (Honestly, everything has its problems. This is not unique to Nostr). The more frequently you do something, the more likely you are to come across flaws and temporary issues or outages. So... the other side of this coin looks something like this:

I find a few things that I would like to reference in articles, I message them to myself. Unfortunately, the massages, though sent to myself, by myself, show up as recieved as sent by the authors of the notes I want to reference. Its not a big deal, I can sort that out but they easily become lost among all the other messages that I send and receive in between. It's a bit inconvenient but it still works. Thoughts to myself still work just fine. I sit down to write and my preferred client isn't recognizing my signing extension. Why? It worked yesterday. No matter, lets hop over to a different client, sign in, and ... nothing. Its recognizing my key but its not loading anything beyond an npub. Maybe its still working? I try writing... it looks like its working but upon publishing, nothing. No error, no loaders, my text just sits in the editor. Copy. Move to another client. Sign in, paste. adjust all the stuff because this one doesn't recognize the markdown links. I need to use their built-in tools for this (I know this from a previous day of some things working). Okay, this is great. Publish. At which point the text disappears and no note show up... hmm... its not connecting to any relays. I wish there was a way to check that before I had started. My clipboard is empty now because I wiped it clean while editing all the links. Hmm... One more try because I'm no quitter (to the point of detriment sometimes). Last try. Sign in, looks good. I half -ass rewrite my lost piece and attempt to publish and I am met with the infinite loading icon. I can't save my draft or publish. Smarter this time, I leave the text there, copy it to a local document, just in case, and quit for the day. The next day, I go back to this with a new client name I came across. It seems to work, its lacking some important features but that's ok. When the other editors are having better days, I can go back to edit tags and titles. Publish... Success! Or so I thought. I go around to do my checks, the event is no where to be found except in the client that was used to publish it. I copy the note ID from there and search around. Everything tells me: error, the event string is too short. I call it a wash. Over the next few days, the presence of that post comes and goes. Eventually it just stops showing up anywhere. Another new editor arrives, and once I figured out this stupid (me) signer issue that I was having, I republish that piece.

Things work, just not all at once...

Because of my own ignorance and because I think there is still value in interfacing with the outside-nostr world, for now I've opted keep publishing to both legacy web and Nostr. It acts as my fallback but also a little island of Nostr information. One day, I'll quit doing that but I'm not there yet. Nor are the tools that I would like to use in order to do so. That's okay, it's been incredible to witness the coordination amongst the chaos while the ecosystem gets fleshed out to something that can replace all of that. Everyday, I'm looking for ways to realistically help this process along and sometimes the best I can do is simply be willing to endure the mess while everything comes together. As I said at the beginning, this are just my insights and experiences. Most days are a happy middle between these two extremes. Writing on Nostr has huge potential to change the landscape of digital information and I will continue doing whatever the hell it is that at do so that it can be ready for the people who may really need it.

Reading...

Nah. Another day, maybe.

Find a list of Nostr writing tools here .