Tools for the writing process

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Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 26, 2011 at 02:54 AM

A number of people on this forum (probably me included) have sometimes expressed a desire for a single tool that could handle all information capturing, processing, and analysis, all the way to writing the final output. However, after observing my own writing process I came to the conclusion that writing happens not in the software or with the software but between various software and hardware tools, including pen and paper.

So the writing process occurs when the right sort of arrangement of software and hardware tools have been assembled in the right order to enable a specific workflow that is appropriate for the specific writing task. And this arrangement and workflow changes (at least for me) for every writing project, so I never use exactly the same assortment of software and hardware and the same workflow.

So a single software tool probably wouldn’t help me. Sometimes I just need to establish some distance between bits of work (an outline, a mindmap, notes, bits of writing, empirical data) in order to be able to establish relationships, come up with new ideas or be able to take in the big picture.

I hope you forgive me for indulging in this auto-ethnographic observation.

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 27, 2011 at 11:43 AM

I am in a similar situation with regard to the tools in my writing tool box. This is due, I think, to four factors:

1. I’m not a very discipline writer.
2. I fall in and out of love with various software.
3. My writing doesn’t fit neatly into a single category, ranging from press releases to short books.
4. I float back and forth between a Mac (for home and personal use) and a PC (at the office)

For a recent short article I wrote for a newsletter I produce, I had to research George Washington and some of his correspondence during the American Revolution. I gathered the correspondence from the Library of Congress web site, collecting it with Yojimbo. I then harvested that information with Tinderbox, organizing it on a pseudo timeline in Map View. I then wrote the article in Scrivener. So, some of the text went from the web to Yojimbo to Tinderbox to Scrivener.

If I had to write this article at the office, I’m not sure what my work flow might have been, as my tools for the PC are much less settled than on my MacBook. While I’ve been using PersonalBrain extensively to manage my day and keep my work-data organized, it doesn’t lend itself to the workflow described above. It isn’t good at displaying information in a time-oriented way. Nor do I like writing with PB. OneNote and or Zoot might have been involved. And I might have written the first draft with Noteliner.

Thank you for the thought-provoking post, Dr Andus.

Steve Z.

Posted by Hugh
Mar 27, 2011 at 07:46 PM

I agree with these pints of view. It isn’t worthwhile to search for the single tool that will always do all that you need. It doesn’t work for carpenters, painters and dentists and it’s unlikely to work when composing most kinds of written or presentational work. And anyway that would be somewhat boring (no opportunity for CRIMP infection).

But stringing together a collection of tools in a project-by-project fashion puts added demands on the operating platform that underlies them. It’s desirable that all the tools can be made to interact easily and reliably with each other (for example in terms of file import and export), and all of them operate in a recognisably similar way (for example in respect of keyboard shortcuts).

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Mar 28, 2011 at 04:37 AM

Great analogy!

Hugh wrote:
>It doesn’t work for carpenters, painters and
>dentists and it’s unlikely to work when composing most kinds of written or
>presentational work.

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 28, 2011 at 06:02 PM

It’s true that we probably can’t find the Holy Grail of information managers, the one that helps us gather and organize our data, think through and manage our writing process, and where we can build our first draft. But, there was an application, back in the far distant mists of computer-time that came so close. Grandview. More here:

http://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/grandview/

And I would settle for anything that matches Grandview’s power and versatility for Windows or Mac!

Steve

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