Wow, I've been loving Obsidian for a good while too but I never actually 'write' in there, as in getting stuff ready to publish, so it was interesting to read about how you go about doing that.

As you say, using templates. outlines and doing research is joyous in Obsidian but I always hop over to iA Writer to do my actual writing. Have you tried that? - may be worth a go if you want a really minimal writing experience. The thing with that is that you use the same vault and everything stays pain text so it's completely slick switching between the two apps.