Writing · Chapter 6

Writing a page yourself

In the evening your notes become a page, with a title, a cover and the text. You can write it entirely yourself, as long or as short as you like. This chapter shows the writing view. How the AI makes you a suggestion is in the next chapter.

Opening the writing view

1. From “Today”

   At the bottom of “Today” is the card “Write the day up”. “Write it yourself” opens the writing view. If a page exists already, the button says “Go on writing yourself”.

2. For an earlier day

   Open the day in the journal and tap “Edit”. Days with notes but no page are in the card for catching up, with “Write it up”.

3. Write

   At the top are the date, the “Title (if you like)” and the cover, with the text below. Beside them are “Keep writing?”, the tags and “Your notes”.

4. Save

   “Save” is at the top right. On a computer Ctrl S works too, on a Mac Cmd S. On a phone “Save” stays above the keyboard.

Writing

What the editor can do

The editor writes like a blog. What you see is what gets saved. The bar above the text has “Bold”, “Italic”, “Subheading”, “Quote”, “List”, “Undo” and “Insert picture”. There is deliberately nothing more, so no links, no tables and no code. Whatever you paste from another page is brought back to text and these formats. A page can be up to 100,000 characters long.

How pictures get into the text, and the cover too, is in the chapter Pictures.

Using your notes and questions

Under “Your notes” you find every note of the day with its time. Tapping a note puts it into the text, and a photo on a note puts the picture in. That way you bring the day's snippets across and write around them.

“Keep writing?” offers questions when you lose the thread. A tap adds the question as a subheading at the end of the text. The button with the crossed arrows shows “Other questions”.

Writing with a template

If you write to the same pattern every evening, make yourself a template. It consists of fixed headings, each with a question as a hint.

1. Create a template

   Under “My account”, “Writing” tab, card “Templates”, tap “New template”.

2. Enter the sections

   Enter a name for the template under “Name”, and under “Sections” enter the first “Heading”, plus a “Question as a hint (may stay empty)”. “Add a section” adds more, up to twelve. Then “Save”.

3. Choose a default template

   Under “Default template” you decide which template is preselected when you write. “No template” is the default.

As long as you have no template yet, the card offers two examples under “To take over”, “Daily review” and “Work day”. You get a copy that you can change freely afterwards.

In the writing view a line “Template” then appears above the text for as long as the page is still empty. There you can pick a different template for this one day. The headings are already in the text, with the questions as a grey hint below. Sections that stay empty are dropped when you save.

My account

Nothing gets lost while you write

What you type already goes to the server as a draft while you write, encrypted just like the page. At the top “Draft kept” appears for a moment. If you close the tab or the battery runs out, the text is back the next time you open it, with the line “Your draft from 21:14 is back.” and the time of your draft.

If you write on the same day on two devices, nexdiary saves only what you changed on this one. If both changed the same field, it says “This day was changed on another device in the meantime.” and lets you choose between “Save my version” and “Load the other version”.