ties over several notes

[Stefan Thomas]

Dear community,
is there a way to connect several notes with ties with just one command?
I hate writing things like that:

\relative {
c4. d8 ~ d4. ~ |
d2~ d8 e4. }

I would like to do it like this:
\relative {
c2. \maketies { d8 d4. d2 d8 } e4. }