Writing in git vs. blogging

Any of us who have been blogging over the past 10 or more years has written hundreds or maybe thousands of posts.

I’m pretty sure I have at least a couple thousand.

But blog writing and other writing are different. A blog tends to say “this is now, things below this are in the past, things above this will appear in the future.”

It’s reverse-chronological. That’s not a horrible thing.

But if you’re trying to write something longer, something where you do a lot of editing and want to change the order in which things appear, a blog is not the best choice.

That’s why I’m beginning to use Git and remote repositories like GitHub and Codeberg to help me write outside of the blogging format. So far I’m enjoying it. Getting things “right” is slow-going.

And even though writers of “longer” pieces are supposed to keep them hidden from the public until they are ready to be published, I am purposefully keeping my first repo in this format — Zen of Debian open. You can read what I have now](https://codeberg.org/passthejoe/zen-of-debian) open. You can read what I have now.

This is working for me. I don’t feel like I’m working in a total vacuum, but it’s not as public or ready for prime time as it would be on a “real” website.