Forum Posts Feed
Robert Caro's outliner
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by dan7000
Apr 15, 2012 at 09:53 PM
Caro’s system would be totally unworkable for me because of 1) its inefficiency and time requirements; and 2) its volume limitations.
First, anything that requires you to write by hand is slow. Typing is much faster. Plus, if you write by hand you then have to re-copy everything into a computer. I think this really points up Dr. Andus’s point that this guy is just very privileged. He has four years to write a book so he can use the absolutely slowest method of outlining (handwriting and re-copying) regardless of its inefficiencies. He has no deadlines so efficiency is a non-issue.
Second, looking at those pictures, what NYT calls a “painstaking” and “detailed” outline is nothing compared to outlines I regularly generate. He has 30 pages for a whole book. Yikes. I have outlines 3X that long. His system simply couldn’t accommodate a truly detailed outline. NYT also says that he has filing cabinets full of notes and references. That gets back to efficiency: keeping that stuff in evernote or even searchable PDFs makes it thousands of times faster to find what you need when looking through your references. But again, the guy has all the time he needs.
Ultimately, even if I had all the time in the world for a project I can’t imagine working his way when we have computer resources available. The inefficiency would drive me crazy. Maybe he’s just stuck in his ways.
Posted by Gorski
Apr 16, 2012 at 01:30 AM
However privileged Caro may be now, he’s earned it. He went broke writing The Power Broker, a book no one would have said was a sure thing.
An Esquire profile, http://www.esquire.com/features/robert-caro-0512, has more on working methods, which haven’t changed since 1966.
> Each of the files is labeled in blood-red ink ? Busby, Horace; Jenkins, Walter; The Gulf of Tonkin ? and given a code. (A particular file on the assassination of John F. Kennedy is labeled ASS. 107X, for instance.) Caro’s outline contains hundreds of these codes, leading him directly to the file he will need when he is writing that particular section. “I try to have a mood or a rhythm for a chapter,” he says, “and I don’t want to interrupt it, searching through my files.”
> Only after he has filled and annotated those notebooks does Caro begin to write, three or four drafts in longhand, on pads of legal paper. With each pass, muscle is added to the frame. Finally, Caro feels prepared to give his fingers wings. “There just comes a point you feel it’s time to go to the typewriter,” he says. ... Three or four more drafts will appear out of that battered Smith-Corona Electra 210, each one hundreds of thousands of words, until he has his final draft.
> Even then, Caro is far from finished, crossing out lines and rewriting them, often tearing out paragraphs along the edge of a ruler and taping them into a different place on a different page. There are single pages in his final draft that are three feet long.
> “When I’m doing this, I can feel it,” Caro says. “There’s a feeling about it. You feel almost like a cabinetmaker, laying planks. There’s a real feeling when you know you’re getting it right. It’s a physical feeling.”
Posted by Gorski
Apr 16, 2012 at 01:32 AM
That link in the previous post doesn’t work because for some reason the forum added a comma. This works:
http://www.esquire.com/features/robert-caro-0512
Posted by Dr Andus
Apr 16, 2012 at 01:52 AM
Caro’s system sounds very much like Luhmann’s Zettelkasten. He would probably like ConnectedText:
http://takingnotenow.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/luhmanns-zettelkasten.html
Posted by Cassius
Apr 16, 2012 at 04:32 AM
Mark wrote:
>> Each of the files is labeled in
>blood-red ink ? Busby, Horace; Jenkins, Walter; The Gulf of Tonkin ? and given a code.
>(A particular file on the assassination of John F. Kennedy is labeled ASS. 107X, for
>instance.) Caro’s outline contains hundreds of these codes, leading him directly to
>the file he will need when he is writing that particular section. “I try to have a mood or
>a rhythm for a chapter,” he says, “and I don’t want to interrupt it, searching through
>my files.”
AhHa!!! Tagging!