Some very interesting discussions have taken place here on the use of applications for the various phases in the writing process.

However, these accounts, like in the "My current set" thread, have been pretty brief and summerizing. I would find it very inspiring to read some more detailed accounts of what people do, where the uses of different software tools are put into the real context in which you work. Some of the participants in the forum write non-fiction, other write fiction, and again other have totally different use of outliners. I would find it interesting to see the "person behind the outliner", to understand your real problems, and how you might have solved them.

For my own part, I'm working on my PhD thesis on interpersonal compatibility in work teams. It has proved to be a rather broad area (which I guess most research topics in the social sciences are), and I would have wished that I had surveyed the tools discussed in here and settled on a set of tools to use from the beginning. If I had used e.g. Zoot from the very beginning, the work on the literature survey would have been less chaotic, I'm pretty sure.

The thing is that a long time has passed from I did my Masters till now, where I do my PhD, more than 10 years. And as we all know, the access to information has just exploded in that time. When I did my masters, I went to the library, browsed through the relevant shelves and even made a keyword search at the PhychLit CD-ROM in our university library (which was very innovative at that time, very few people used electronic searches, at least at my institution). Now, in the 21st century, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the availability of online journals from our institution, the web and even interlibrary loans. There is no limit to it. I'm reluctant to stop the search, as I tend to think "somebody out there must have thought along the same lines as me", and indeed, they have, though not seriously challenging the required novelty of my research. Luckily.

I should have done more effort on writing earlier in the phases, but I had the classic problem of not knowing where to start and how to structure it, and the problem of perfectionism, want to get it right the first time. So I just continued searching and reading, without writing much. I used TreePad from pretty early in the process, but, as I wrote in an earlier mail, became quite constrained by the outline, tended to continue to think in headings, without much content to put in each heading.

I've been pretty good at maintaining a bibliography (in Reference Manager), and even applying categories, so I could print out a "subject bibliography" which has kind of sorted the 400+ references into the appropriate issues/chapters and sections of my thesis-to-be. Eventually, though, I found it necessary to go through all the references once again, as the structure of the thesis had changed since I made the set of categories.

If I could "rewind the tape", start all over again, I would have used Zoot while searching for information, using relevant keywords, and writing actual pieces of text, explaining every time I found a point, got an idea, inspired by the literature or just from myself. I find however the data entry is a problem when I'm away from the computer. I find it inspiring to take my car and go somewhere beautiful in the nature and just sit in the car and read. Then I make notes on paper. But I need to type these notes into Zoot or whatever, when I return to the office, to transfer them to the computer. This is absolutely not optimal. Zoot can somehow synchronize with Palm, but what about keywords etc? And Palm is not easy to use for making notes. What do you guys to when stuying material when away from the computer?

Through the smart folders in Zoot, I would have an overview of how much contents each category or keyword contained, and I could start filling in snippets of text in BrainStorm.

However, the question is, if there really is a need for Brainstorm, or if it just complicates things, going through Brainstorm before turning towards Word (where the text has to end up eventually). But as far as I understand it, several of you use Brainstorm as an intermediate tool between he raw notes and the text in Word - right? Another problem of not going directly to Word is that Reference Manager integrates with Word throus "Cite while you write". If I use Brainstorm, I would need to write the references manually, with the problems of inconsistency etc. I consider the references the building blocks of my writing, and the less manual interference, the better. A third problem of using Brainstorm as an intermediate is that when working on a lengthy thing like a dissertation, in some parts you will be on the data collection stage, in other you will be outlining and structuring the things, and some parts you will be writing. It's a kind of rolling process, where you are in different stages of different parts of the work. I guess that most people don't complete, say, one chapter, before continuing to the next, but work simultaneously on several chapters. Using different tools for different stages hence become confusing, because which tool do you use right now for this or that chapter?

If I should summerize by problem and the kind of tools, that I really need, then I would say that the picture has become rather blurred, and I would like to have a tool that could help my to make some distinctions. It's like a painting, where all the colour have become mixed together by some bastard with a big brush (that big bastard is me, I know!). I would like to "separate" the colours again, to see the - MY - golden thread emerge from all the information that I have.

Well, this was my story and reflections. However, I invite other to give theirs.

Best regards,
Peter.

Peter,

As you are aware there is no easy answer to this,and I think if you browse back through old posts you will see that there have been some reasonably detailed discussion on aspects of what you ask.

As to background, I spend 50% of my time running my own Ecological Consultancy and the other half as a Senior Lecturer in Biology. Nearly all my writing is related to preparing lecture material or technical/scientific reports, but I also write marketing material and other business type stuff.

For information gathering I use Zoot, Net Snippets and and Libary Master, I also use DTsearch for disk wide searches.

Zoot is my "all data hoover" and my overall aim is to have all my data, some how or other, in Zoot or linked to Zoot. Net Snippets I use for specific projects which are web based, graphics intensive, and short term eg gathering information on buying a new computer. However, Zoot will search HTML files so you can link the NetSnippets folders to Zoot allowing Zoot to search your netSnippets files.

Library Master is self explanatory, and we have discussed this before, and I shall mention it again later. I rarely write anything directly into Zoot.

I have at various times used Psions, Palms and now my Nokia 9500 to gather notes while out and about, using whichever method syncs best with the PC and then cutting and pasting into Zoot or wherever.

The Psions and now my Nokia have workable keyboards and lend themselves to serious writing, The Psion is rather better than the Nokia.

Databases available for the all three will allow you to set up picklists for keywords and forms with fields that match Zoot fields or Reference manager fields which together with txt export, will give you a file you can import into Zoot/reference manager. (I have only done this with Access but the same principles apply. The Nokia is new and I am only just beginning to look at writing a database on the Nokia that will export to Library Master.

One way of working with the Palm and Zoot is to use Outlook as an intermediary. The Palm syncs with Outlook Memos and Zoot syncs with Outlook memos. You can then use Zoot rules to move the memos into the appropriate Zoot databases.

Having said all that I probably prefer paper and pencil when I am out and about.


When it comes to sorting data for a specific project/report, what I do depends on the task and its maybe worthwhile mentioning OneNote here.

An area of data that I have to deal with is Statistical analysis. This can generate hundreds of tables and graphs from several different programs and I am now uisng OneNote as a central store for these.

I start most things by brainstorming in MindManager, and use it to generate key headings and subheadings. In the past I would then continue to add notes and text in Mind Manager, but now I quickly move into Brainstorm. Indeed I often now miss out the Mind Manager step, depending on how I feel.

I use Brain Storm as the real thinking tool, writing text, pasting text, pasting lnks, gathering new data etc. Brainstorm is much more than an Outliner, as it allows a strange mix of structured and totally unstructured thinking that exactly matches my mental state when I reach this stage in document production.

As I have mentioned before, Library master natively uses text based "intext" tags to generate bibliographies so I can add links to Library master directly into BrainStorm, or indeed into Zoot, just as easily as I can add them in Word, knowing that when I eventually move to Word, Library Master will sort out the formatting and bibliography. No "cite while u write" of course, but I happily gave up this feature in EndNote for the Library Master versatility. Actually, that isn't true, "Cite-while-u-write" is rather nice and I gave it up rather reluctantly.

Now during this process, I am likely to add new data which I still want to have filed in my main data store, e.g. Zoot. Fortunately, Zoot will happily search Brainstorm files, and using the auto file sync tools in Zoot, all my Brainstorm models are automatically available, and searchable, in Zoot as well as Brainstorm.

I tend to spend most of my time in Brainstorm, but when I feel I am pretty well done with the Thinking stage, I move the Brainstorm model into NoteMap. Pasting a Brainstorm model into Notemap works flawlessly, and I start to think more about the formatting and tidying up the structure. The advantages of the NoteMap stage is that it still gives a powerful Outliner, so you can continue writing, and it gives you head start in the formatting of the document while still writing it. It has an excellent export to Word or PowerPoint: much better than Brainstorm.

That is my basic set up at the moment and how I use it. also do some writing in Nota Bene, and I occasionally use different tools, mainly as a test to see if they offer me anything useful. But the setup I described is likely to stay for some time as it seems to work well as an integrated and flexible system.

I think thats about it.

Graham

My current job doesn't require as much writing as my previous job, but I have been working on a personal writing project, an informal historical guide to the region of North America where I live. This is not a scholarly work, so doesn't require the depth of research of a doctoral thesis or anything. But I have accumulated a number of references from both secondary and primary sources. I collect these in one of two ways, generally. I either hand write them while at the library and then retype those into Zoot, or I make photocopies of relevant pages and then type those into Zoot. Either way, Zoot is my database of choice because many of the references will refer to more than one historic site, so I can easily have the same reference appear in multiple folders, each folder representing a different site. When I'm ready to write a chapter (a chapter for each historic site), I can very easily find all the relevant references for that site and then, using magic paste, clip them into Brainstorm. In Brainstorm, I can structure and restructure these references til I'm happy, add notes of my own and then transfer the whole thing into Word for the actual writing process. I use MLA formatting, so I can easily cite the references within my text and that goes from Zoot to Brainstorm to Word.

This system works fine for my modest needs. If I were doing something more academic, I'd probably look for one of the citation programs talked about here, or try ndxCards.

Steve Z.

I'm a longtime listener, first time caller.

Peter, as others have noted, Zoot synchs to the Palm via Outlook. It is the only reason I have Outlook on my computer--I don't use it for e-mail. On the Palm side, I would strongly suggest two things. First, acquire and learn FitalyStamp, an alternative keyboard arrangement that is not only a brilliant piece of programming but that also works. It has enabled me not only to take notes easily on my Palm, but also to write whole pieces on the Palm. (I write a weekly column for a New York newspaper, and I do it entirely on the Palm while riding the subway.) Fitaly (www.fitaly.com) takes some getting used to, but is worth the investment of time. I'd also use a program called Memoleaf that works with the Memopad. It performs lightning-fast full-text searches on your memos, and also allows you to set up a sophisticated keyword system that can easily be mirrored in Zoot, while Zoot will allow you to do a million things besides.

Zoot is where I store notes and snippets, and what I use for synching to my Palm memos. My main writing environment is Nota Bene (yes, I am an academic), and I can also synch my Nota Bene works in progress to the Palm via the Palm word processor Wordsmith. Finally, I use EndNote 7, which has a flawless Palm synch. I then export my EndNote bibliographies to Nota Bene's Ibidem, again a flawless process.

I can't stand Nota Bene's outliner, so I use NoteMap, but I don't use it to outline essays or books, only to prepare lectures. These eventually get sent to Nota Bene so they can "Orbisized." I love Brainstorm but have not figured out how to integrate it into my system, which works well enough.

The real point I wish to make is that the Palm (or the Pocket PC) can be a very effective writing instrument with the right add-on software.

Francis

If I should summerize by problem and the kind of tools, that I really need, then I would say that the picture has become rather blurred, and I would like to have a tool that could help my to make some distinctions. It's like a painting, where all the colour have become mixed together by some bastard with a big brush (that big bastard is me, I know!). I would like to "separate" the colours again, to see the - MY - golden thread emerge from all the information that I have.<

BrainStorm may actually be the ideal tool for making such distinctions, because it is close to the precise scenario the developer had in mind. To make distinctions like this--or at least one way to accomplish it--is to read through your material again and again, while using a tool that allows you to reflect your growing sense of its relationship to the topic.

The step after that might be to create an outline structure like the basic structure you have arrived at in Brainstorm in a program that allows you to organize snippets under your headings while retaining formatting. ndxCards and Idea! feature that functionality.

By the way, if you like taking notes where a keyboard and mouse aren't available or prefer to write certain notes by hand while retaining the advantages of the computer to organize it, you probably should really consider a tablet PC. (This comes from hearsay, not my direct experience.) If you get a tablet, another consideration for your notetaking becomes how well the software comports with the tablet. The programs that seem to have taken the lead in that regard are MS's OneNote and Agilix's GoBinder.

Stephen R. Diamond