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Posted by Daly de Gagne
Jun 12, 2022 at 10:35 PM
Your drive-by generalization of Luhman is shameful. Luhman was known widely among sociologists and practitioners of other disciplines for his academic output numbering approximately 30 books, plus learned articles.
For those of us who have become familiar with Luhmann through the popularization of his notetaking system, most probably know about his high volume of academic articles and books.
Contrary to your assumption that Luhmann had the cadres of academic staff a lot of profs have, such was not the case.
It is ludicrous comparing the length of one of Luhmann’s relatively short outlines with one of yours, and certainly no one would accuse you of brevity. Luhmann’s Zettlelkasten system, and the way he utilized his “slip notes” (analagous to what we call index cards) reduced his dependency on and/or need for lengthy outlines.
Luhmann worked very well without the benefits of software we have today. A perusal of his publications and a familiarity of how he used his note system demonstrates this fact. A key part of Zettlelkasten is Luhmann’s cross referencing system which predates today’s programs with linking, backlinking, and tagging.
Luhmann’s approach to academic notetaking was a significant paradign shift. Much, if not all, early note taking software created for computers an electronic version reflecting prevailing ideas about notetaking and outlines. That, of course, is changing, and now in the 21st century, we have software which allows those who wish to, to emulate Luhmann’s Zettlelkasten which, in case it remains less than obvious, predated by decades the emergence of personal computers in the latter part of the 20th century.
22111 wrote:
Post 2 of 2 in a row:
>
>(Luhmann being another blatant example for a person who’s known /
>“renowned” NOT for their real output, but for accessories… in this
>context, dan7000 here 2012: “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.”
>https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/8650/0/more-on-robert-caros-research-writing-methods
>- more about outlines infra, and “has all the time he needs”, for
>Luhmann, would have probably been “personnel”, staff…?)
>
>Amontillado: DevonThink would probably be one of two sw people might be
>switch to Mac, the other one being, for some, Dramatica Story Expert,
>since their Dramatica Pro - the only one available on Windows - is not a
>nightmare but an insult… and then, possibly, even FinalDraft might
>crash less on a Mac than it does on Windows…
>
>This being said, it’s interesting that even most “Mac writers” (and as I
>said above, most writers are “Mac writers”, since most of them are
>lonely, and so they want to be part-of-the-pack) do NOT write in
>DevonThink… anyway, I have to use what’s available on Windows, but
>without scripting the necessary, additional functionality onto my tools,
>I would be lost by “factory” Mac software as well…
>
>Btw, doing almost all my work(ings) within just ONE (as said,
>“apped-up”) tool, Ultra Recall in my case, bears the big advantage of
>having identical functionality identically at my hands (or
>“fingertips”), at several stages in my workflow (“integrated software”);
>this is obviously even much better than just assigning the same
>shortcuts (shortkeys) to identical / similar functions in different
>tools, and thus, I really have problems to imagine a “smooth workflow”
>when people use for writing Ulysses e.g., and then other software for
>their “data” (repository), especially without using, at the very least,
>some macro tool for smoothing (out) the most obvious glitches.
>
>This being said, people are right in saying that UR (in its “factory”
>state) “isn’t for writing”, so I’m sometimes musing what could be done,
>for DT (of which people say similar things), with the appropriate
>scripting…
>
>“My World War II notes could be organized in a hierarchy based on
>geography at the same time the same notes are in a separate hierarchy of
>political goals. That’s pretty cool, but it doesn’t tell a
>story.” - I in part have already commented on this just here, and of
>course, you’re right, in most cases at least, the data collection
>doesn’t tell a / the “story” yet, but I love to have the “data” “at
>hand”, i.e. in-between the “story” items, or in the same “format”, i.e.
>TWO UR panes, side-by-side, on the same screen, in case with the
>corresponding inter-db links between the two data bases.
>
>”[1]The quickest way for my own technical writing to become pedantic and
>stuffy is to drill too deep. [2]A chapter in a reference should have a
>deliberate scope. For instance, a section on the user interface to a
>software system may have no need to discuss developer APIs [3]even
>thought the two are fundamentally related.”
>
>1) Right when in combination with 2
>2) Right, hence the need for linking, cloning…:
>3) q.e.d.
>
>Btw, blogging is very different, hence my hint at Ul probably being very
>good “bloggers’ software” (with the reserve of me not knowing about
>their blog-update functionality except for their non-specific (!)
>marketing claims).
>
>“Without any doubt, I would plan the progression of overview through
>summation in a technical reference as a sequence of ideas, not as a
>hierarchy. That’‘s what an outline is for, actually, to plan
>a work from start to finish.”
>
>When I say “tree”, I mean pseudo-trees, enhanced trees, i.e. with
>transclusion, AND I’m absolutely on your side when you abhor DEEP
>indentation, FLAT trees are the way to go, according to me, and it’s
>been years ago that I wrote extensively, in this very forum, about LISTS
>in such “trees”, but manually ORDERED lists, and with grouping by
>divider lines / separator lines, AND I said this manual order is the big
>(not inherent but practical: almost all of what we call “outliners”,
>offer such manual sorting) advantage of “trees”, over tagging, where the
>“results” are then ordered by creation date, by order of some other
>tags, whatever, but not in a predefined, strict order, manually “sorted”
>by you;
>
>the “tree” allowing you to “look up anything”, and then it depends on
>the subject of that “group” if you have interest in ordering the
>“members” of that group manually, or by date, even alphabetically in
>some (sub-) contexts (and all these “items” may then include
>sub-hierarchies in case)...
>
>It’s right btw that this “order”, in today’s “outliners”, is “fixed” in
>the way that there are no “alternative views”, but that’s just a
>technical problem, not a conceptual one, cf. the later versions of
>askSam, again… (and even them remained very (!) basic in that
>respect…)
>
>“If I plan a story in a way that doesn’t tell the story, I’m
>spinning my wheels.” - for non-“natives” who’d need to look this up,
>like I had to: “it’s futile”...:
>
>But of course, this is just a misunderstanding, as implied above: Most
>“data”, “material” needs some sort - but, as said, not really deep - of
>“hierarchy”, and fiction output doesn’t need but slight “hierarchy”
>indeed, or even none? Well, that’d be “stream” then, right?
>
>Since even the chapters in a novel, the scenes in a screenplay, are
>“hierarchy”, and that’s why Ul has “pages” (and not only “books” or
>whatever they call’em), and that’s why I write in “items”, and of
>course, they are ordered in some manual, provisional, alleged
>“publication” order, not in the order of the “material”, and thus, if
>there is not a bulk of such “resources data”, I like to put that data
>into the (alleged, provisional,) flat “output tree”: it’ll be shuffled,
>in case, together with the alleged “output”: resources following their
>masters, not them becoming data slaves, or if you prefer, the luggage
>goes where the traveler goes, not the latter running after the former.
>
>And again, we’re d’accord! Ironically, most novels just have (but have
>indeed!) chapters (most of the time not even numbered), and only in rare
>(and mostly historic) cases, they have / had an additional “tree” level,
>“books” they were named (i.e. above the chapters of course; cf. the
>Bible; playwrights have (not necessarily) “acts”, then (ditto)
>“scenes”), and - this is different in television though - movie
>screenplays may NOT begin a new page with each scene, so writing scenes
>by “items” in whatever “outliner” is just for creational purposes,
>whilst the final “output” then then just allows for upper case “new
>scene” indicators, even bolding those being more or less viewed a
>“profanity”...
>
>Which means that screenplays tend (i.e. are forced, by the “industry”)
>to HIDE any “hierarchy”, and that’s probably “magical thinking”: the
>audience (which will never see the screenplay) should not be reminded of
>any element disjoining the flow of illusion… (“Annie Hall” with Allen
>addressing the audience directly being one of the more notable, early
>exceptions to the prevailing rule; cf. the (auctorial or not) narrators
>in novels);
>
>on the other hand, in novels, I not only remember chapters, but also (in
>rare cases) title lines for chapters, and sub-chapters, those being
>separated by something like
>
>*
>***
>*****
>
>whenever such symbol groups weren’t used for the chapters, and if they
>were, perhaps just some blank lines, in case together with ~~~ or
>similar - yes, in literary works, there (not necessarily but mostly) is
>some FLAT hierarchy, so any hierarchy / tree-building WITHIN a given
>“work” (and for hierarchy and grouping without’em, 3-pane, instead of
>2-pane, outliners come really handy indeed, and after all, the “3-
>instead of 2-pane” paradigm is for distributing (!) one single, then
>necessarily deeper, hierarchy into two partial hierarchies…).
>
>You can use MS Word instead, or some other “text processor” as they were
>once called (e.g. “Atlantis”, I mentioned that one before): They all
>come with some sort of “outlining help”, in order to facilitate your
>“navigation” beyond the scene / chapter / whatever (flat, but then, not
>totally flattened-out) hierarchy level, BUT in their “content” (body /
>all text) field / pane then, they do NOT separate those, but show your
>current “element” together with its “environment”, and that’s why I
>insist on more-than-1-pane “outliners”: only they will “single out” the
>“element” you’re currently working on, but that “freeing your mind”
>(upon that matter cf. infra).
>
>(Of course, you should not work, for weeks (!), upon a 700-plus-page
>document, in MS Word (!) on an iPad (sic! incredible I may say!),
>without at least daily backups, see
>https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/40882/how-best-to-recover-from-catastrophic-text-loss
>- he could recover, from some export, some 625 pages, lost another 100,
>then gots lots of advice recover tool use, and then, at the very end,
>told his helpers all that occurred onto an iPad - so I did NOT make this
>horror tale up! (Ain’t there no Mac tools to recover data from a
>connected iPad then?))
>
>I also wrote, in this forum, about continuous numbering in legal text
>books, i.e. chapters numbered 1…120 or whatever, instead of even doing
>a “slight”, flat hierarchy indeed… but for “technical” works (of all
>areas), this is obviously not the very best way to do, and thus, I have
>seen such legal textbooks, with about 120 chapters, courageously counted
>thru some “parts-and-books” hierarchy, overlaid over that, now obviously
>having become ridiculous, flat-thru numbering…
>
>Whatever, this forum proves that by “tree”, “hierarchy” I understand
>“just what’s really needed, what really makes sense”, even having
>explained here how by introducing “separator lines” (just do an item
>____________________
>with 20 underscores, and then copy it into wherever you need it, into
>your text / “content”, or then, into your tree, in order to “hold
>together which belongs together”, instead of artificially creating
>another hierarchy level there, which would not only be unneeded, but
>most of the time then would even create ambivalence: “did I put item x
>into subgroup a or b?”: it’s like placing the kids of some unworthy
>parents into different foster families, and further problems will
>arise…
>
>
>“I think some people who hate outlining (like myself) would be better
>off if they planned what to write.” - you also said, here, in 2019,
>“Outlining has a bad name. Part of that comes from the pain of looking
>at a hierarchical topology you’re sick of and morphing it into a
>sequential exposition.” (
>https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/8650/0/more-on-robert-caros-research-writing-methods
>)...
>
>So now for some history, since after better evaluating the term
>“hierarchy”, it’s time to define “outline”:
>
>I had always done outlining, but on paper, and then necessarily tearing
>those sheets into slips, glueing them afterwards on new sheets, and so
>on: terrible!
>
>Thus, I tried to become an “early adopter” of ThinkTank (Windows
>version), and, according to https://jessems.com/outliner-list , that had
>Expand / collapse items
>Drag and drop items to re-order*
>Hoisting
>
>(*=not by mouse, mind you, there was no mouse then; it might have been
>added later on though)
>
>I don’t remember the hoisting, but I remember that I very quickly
>discarded it, since there was no way to “develop” a little bit, except
>of course by adding another 1-line child item for the “commentary” or
>whatever your further ideas, and given the screens of the time, with
>each line up to 80 chars, this was unusable by my standards.
>
>Now I think I have already developed this idea in this forum, but I’m
>not sure, whatever: By writing an outline just as a naked outline, you
>even DROP ideas / elements, instead of collecting and preserving them,
>for development, since most (i.e. quantitatively at least) ideas /
>elements within an outline will be developed WITHIN the outline
>elements, i.e. “further down”, HIDDEN BY the (naked) outline, i.e. by
>“what’s in the tree”, and an outliner like ThinkTank WAS “tree-only”, so
>it made me LOSE ideas, instead of preserving them, oh my!
>
>Today, that’s different, i.e. even the (rare) one-pane outliners all
>have “room” for “content”, but as said, that was not (yet) the case in
>those times, and those outlines you learn in school, are, we all know
>that, unfortunately of the ThinkTank type, why? Because, as your
>schoolmasters (correctly!) said, if you did all the development within
>the outline (which on paper is possible, cf. supra = just what I’ve said
>before), you wouldn’t have time left for your body-text!
>
>Yes, they were correct in saying this, but it was utterly misleading
>though: They misconceived outlining as a preliminary step in some
>waterfall model, and in class, they forced you to do it that - i.e.
>their - way…
>
>whilst in reality, outlining - if really you want to give it a name - is
>just what you, from beginning to end, just jumping around ad libitum, a
>100 times, 10,000 times… while writing, be it writing wherever in the
>“tree” or wherever in whatever “content”... writing, cutting,
>inserting… in other words, you create a jungle, then swing around in
>it with the help of the already-created lianas, or the ones you will
>have to create to “cut” your way… and at some point, it’s not really a
>jungle anymore, but will have become a landscape into which you will
>have laid a given, determined pathway for the “reader” (i.e. your
>audience).
>
>Thus, what you will have written up to any given moment, does not lead
>your further way into some fixed direction, but you may discard
>elements, creating new ones instead, so calling this “outlining” is
>really misleading, since if you do writings / changes within the “tree”
>or the “content” is just a question of level, of “directions” or
>“details” in case.
>
>The above also implies that “outliners vs. pantsers” is a false
>dichotomy if you understand both concepts in their traditional - and
>wrong - meaning which is:
>
>outlining = first create a frame(work), polish it (do a ThinkTank, i.e.
>naked outline), then fill it up with text (write your novel or whatever)
>
>pantsing = have some idea(s) in your head, then sit down and write, more
>or less from the beginning to the end of your intended final output
>(“work”)
>
>Thus, the respective allegations between these concepts being, the
>outliner knows where they are going, they “write by numbers”, it’s just
>that themselves created those “numbers” beforehand, instead of buying
>them from some book (or from Dramatica, hoho!); the pantser has just got
>some idea(s), but hasn’t any, or any very precise, idea where they will
>be going: at any given time, what they will have written, will “guide”
>them (i.e. the pantsers) for what they will have to (!) write further
>down the line…
>
>As you can see, the only difference within those technical stratagems is
>how much developed the “project” ideas of the two writers where when
>they start “writing”: it’s more “I clearly see the pic of ...” for the
>“outliner”, whilst it’s more or less “yoghurt”, which then “forms itself
>into ...” for the pantser: both will then try to remain faithful to what
>they will have written up to then, since nobody wants to throw away up
>to 90 p.c. of what they will have written, and ironically, it’s the
>“outliner” who will have the much better chances to remain flexible,
>they will just create less (which then would become) waste in-between,
>hopefully…
>
>Which brings us to another aspect: The “pantser” obviously need to have
>already written lots of details, in order to fuel their further
>inspiration, whilst the “outliner” (in the above definition: waterfall!)
>MUST have lots of inspiration, even without yet knowing about the
>details - and since that’s simply not the case, even for most “writers”,
>they then fill fervent- and ardently out all those forms in (freaked
>out) “writers’ planning” tools, their monthly subscription price being
>the real help since “it’ll help me. you get what you pay for. amen.”
>(You see here that even those alleged “outliners” go into some “detail”,
>for some “core elements”, like “characters”... whilst they don’t trust
>their core concept, they adhere to its waterfall model though…)
>
>Well, I’d say that’s real bad timing, both paradigms are, and thus, we
>should FREE ourselves from such ridiculous concepts, since both HARM
>your “inspiration” (or whatever you call it), by imposing that (just
>differently embodied) “first things first” challenge (“first the rack”
>vs. “chronological writing”, which is nothing else then the totally
>unnecessary claim that for writing chapter 2, chapter 1 should already
>have been written)...
>
>and yes, “first things first”: first, you should learn something about
>writing (by whatever means, and allow for irony, so Stephen King’s
>writers’ manual: “Don’t by writers’ manuals!”, I cite from memory…),
>but then, swing freely between outline (“tree”) and “work” (“body
>text”), ALL the time!
>
>You will have to finally discard much LESS of your work than most
>writers identifying as “outliners” AND “pantsers” in the traditional,
>devoid-of-sense, sense of the terms.
>
>(Ok, I don’t know how Danielle Steel works, I just know that she has
>written about 200 novels, which “made” about 800 millions, and that she
>has shifted from 4 to 6 novels p.a., that she works 20 hours a day, 7/7
>(“my husband and my boys are out of the house, I need almost no sleep,
>I’ve got nothing else to do, I don’t like hobbies” and so on, I cite
>from memory), but I suppose her - predominantly female? - readership
>might love her “numbers”? (Well, her boys certainly will love hers when
>the day will come… oh, no, that’s nasty! writer’s envy is a special,
>ugly thing!)
>
>As for Tinderbox, can’t say, but have doubts… Bernstein’s expensive
>StorySpace (always Mac-only, 149$) might be one of the less useless map
>tools, whilst I can’t imagine MindJet and similar (alleged) “mind map”
>tools being useful for anything but in presentation situations (i.e.
>after “work”).
>
>“Curio (...) particularly since those references can appear as duplicate
>instances in multiple places.” - yes, transclusion is a sine qua non; I
>personally don’t understand how anybody can accept (less alone then
>evangelize) a writing or other organizational tool (paid by subscription
>or up-front) coming without.
>
>
>“A chapter in a reference should have a deliberate scope.” - I had
>intended to comment on that in its context above, but then postponed my
>comment, except for saying I fully agree. In fact, you speak about the
>problem of “information atomization and regrouping” here, and that’s the
>conceptual and technical unresolved problem.
>
>So we all have to find intermediate solutions, for our individual means,
>and for external resources, I do it this way: I download the full text
>of the resource, together with its url of course, but without all the
>crap - the broader the audience for the resource, the more crap to
>discard (even before copying, I have this semi-automated, so it’s very
>quick; I also download graphics, into the text, if I think they are
>relevant for my means); then, I bolden the text parts I think are
>important for me, very important parts I then also underline (which in
>theory leaves the “underline” format for something else, but I have
>never used it yet); I bolden important entries within the tree; I “blue”
>tree entries which I want to refer to, e.g. I “blued” some tree entries
>to “prepare” this forum post; afterwards, I’ll put them back into their
>“original” format (i.e. regular or bold).
>
>Then, when I have got some element from the (“original”, “downloaded”
>i.e. and e.g. text-copied-from-web) “compound” item I want in some
>other, or in “its own”, “context”, I cite from there, i.e. I
>(half-automatically) create a “child” item, with just that passage, and
>with the original item title, the original url and the original web page
>title, and with an indication that it’s a citation = an excerpt; also,
>my scriptlet puts a “this/these paragraphs copied for
>TitleOfTheNewPage”, me manually putting an indicator which paragraphs
>are concerned if more than one; I then put the new child item into
>whatever context it belongs, and in rare cases, even cloned in several
>contexts. (The above is not perfected since I leave out the internal,
>unique itemID of the original item, and in there, I leave out the
>itemIDs of the “citation” items (alternatively, I could create “links”,
>which I do neither); on the other hand, UR’s search being quite good,
>it’s obvious that with my remarks, here and there, i.e. in the
>“original” and in the “target(s)”, I could easily “look up” (i.e. find)
>both the “original” from the “target(s)”, and vice versa, and even other
>“targets” from any one of them; in practice, that need never arises
>though, since all the core info is “on both sides”.
>
>I postponed these comments because you also wrote, in your next
>paragraph, “There are other needs for the writer, though, such as
>consistent private notes related to more than one place in your work.
>You can make those notes lower levels in an outline, but if the same
>note applies to more than one topic in your work your notes are a little
>less easy to keep consistent and relevant.” - Here again, you address a
>core problem: “Where to put items which, more or less for their
>individual contexts then, would not have to be “cloned” just once or
>twice, but multiple times?”
>
>It’s obvious to me that such notes should placed not, as I understand
>from your writing, deeper down, but in some “Generalities” parent items’
>sub-trees, higher-up, and then, when you work upon “things potentially
>concerned”, you just read, and re-read, those higher-up “instructions”
>(i.e. guidelines to bear in mind, etc.), once a week for example; I
>don’t know any better way since, since repeating “something more or less
>present” dozens of times (which technically would be easy) and “wherever
>it might apply” will go on your own nerves: “yes, yes, I know… shove
>it!”... but then, if you don’t remind yourself of those things here and
>there (e.g. once a week, for important considerations), you might lose
>sight of them after all… Thus, in practice, and to honor our current
>context, there might be a higher-up “Allg” for “Writing”, but further
>down another “Allg”, for “Writing Thrillers”... “Allg” standing in for
>“Allgemein”, the beauty of that German term being that, contrary to
>“Generalities”, it starts with an “A”, so that even in (more-or-less)
>alphabetically-ordered (otherwise all-English) lists, it appears on
>top…
>
>And yes, the concepts of atomization, variation and transclusion are
>intimately linked… well, interwoven… amalgamated in the end…
>
>As for variants - you mentioned them in your second citation of mine
>here -, I currently (i.e. have always done, up to finding “something
>better”, but that would imply me coding it then, so…) and always
>preserve the above procedure, i.e. do not fiddle with the citations, but
>then “comment” them where appropriate, i.e. ADD text beneath the
>original, copied text chunks, and clearly distinguished from those, so
>as to not mix up the (in case, contextual) “addition” with the
>“citation”...
>
>At the end of the day, my “system” is not so much different from
>“academic citing”, where you would, in case, cite the same (your own or
>third party’s) source again and again, just with different text chunks,
>in different contexts.
>
>
>Finally, citations from Kühn’s (cf. ) defunct blog: (
>http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2018/08/popper-on-writing-and-objective.html
>), “Popper on Writing and Objective Knowledge” (1919) and Quentin
>Quencher’s “Popper on Writing and Objective Knowledge” (
>https://www.achgut.com/artikel/meine_offlinegedanken_ein_experiment ;
>you could use google translate or something similar):
>
>“Sir Karl Popper made a sharp distinction between subjective and
>objective knowledge. Subjective knowledge is, he thought, deficient. It
>is expressive of our concrete mental dispositions and expectations; it
>consists of concrete world 2 thought processes. Objective knowledge is
>far superior. But how do we get from subjective to objective knowledge?
>
>Popper believed that objective knowledge comes about by writing ideas
>down:
>
>“Putting your ideas into words, or better, writing them down makes an
>important difference. For in this way they become criticisable. Before
>this, they were part of ourselves. We may have had doubts. But we could
>not criticize them in the way in which we criticize a linguistically
>formulated proposition or, better still, a written report.”“
>
>and
>
>“Um mich herum das übliche Bild, rund 80 Prozent der Mitreisenden
>im Zug sind in ihre Smartphones vertieft (...)
>Hier preschte ich nun mit einem Erklärungsansatz heran, der
>natürlich nicht neu ist, aber auch nur meist als Ausrede gebraucht
>wird, wenn das Verhalten von Menschen, manchmal gar das eigene,
>irgendwie unlogisch erscheint: „Die Gefühle bestimmen das
>Denken, nicht die Argumente, die dienen am Ende nur der
>Rechtfertigung.“ (...)
>Es könnte ja sein, dass meine Gedanken völliger Humbug sind
>und andere, längst bewiesene naturwissenschaftlich beschriebene
>Vorgänge das Denken steuern. (...)
>Ist die permanente Selbstüberprüfung förderlich?
>Aber ich bin offline, also spinne ich meinen Gedanken weiter.” (...)
>Was mich zur nächsten Frage bringt: Wie verändert es unsere
>Gedanken, wenn wir sie ständig überprüfen können?
>(...)
>Kann sich Individualismus überhaupt entwickeln in einer
>Onlinegesellschaft mit ihrer permanenten Möglichkeit der
>Selbstüberprüfung der eigenen Gedanken?”
>
>Now, we are here at the core of creation, and you could translate
>Kühn’s “Objective knowledge is far superior. But how do we get from
>subjective to objective knowledge?”, in our context, into “how to get
>from the yoghurt to the finished work?”, to adapt even that passage to
>what we’re after, and which is,
>
>How to get the yoghurt, the mesh, plasma, shaped, tangible?
>
>Here -
>https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/9759/0/musings-on-tools-for-thought
>-, I had said, fountain pens ain’t fast enough in order to scribble
>down, the first element, the “yoghurt”, and before, I had said, in
>another thread here, that I use a little, portable dictation device to
>do that, one with real keys (but you could use your “smartphone” instead
>if you are sufficiently familiar with it), and then, afterwards, I use
>dictation (Dragon), from those audio “notes” - it’s here that I “think
>again” about what I had “noted”; here’s “time”, here now, I could use a
>fountain pen indeed if it was 1980: it’s the first “screen editing
>time”, for (first screen) weighting, selecting, discarding,
>reformulating (so I listen to my notes in reverse order, in order to not
>to do unnecessary work onto previous audio passages I had already
>discarded, “judged inferior” in later audio notes)...
>
>And yes, often in my audio notes, I “derailed”: I developed something
>which appears “impossible” (or “illogical” or whatever), in view of
>other parts of my “writing”... and I would NOT have noted these passages
>in other (i.e. screen) circumstances: I would have “known” “this is not
>possible”, etc.
>
>But thus, these “notes” are there, they exist now, and so I have to
>decide upon them: are they to be discarded because they are “not in
>sync”, or should I “integrate” them, them “bettering” the “work”?
>Kühn (see in context above): “For in this way they become
>criticisable. Before this, they were part of ourselves.” - NOW we have
>the “full context” (of what has been “written”, devised before), whilst,
>when “scribbling”, human memory problems left out some beacons,
>signals… but then, were those beacons, signals “good enough” in order
>to be preserved, or is it rather that we had needed them before, as a
>“way” of stewing something more valid, while on errance? (new word for
>“erroneous wandering”) - At the end of the day, that’s what our heroes
>do “all the time”, so why could we be safely shielded from it? In this
>context, think again about “outlining” and “pantsing”: both concepts
>will hold you back from doing the necessary adjustments… they might
>just be too devastating, psychologically, new ideas coming in “too late”
>to be taken into consideration, so an iterative approach (i.e. tree,
>content, tree, content… “ad infinitum”... well, up to that certain
>“finish” beacon (you must find indeed…) seems to me the only valid
>one?
>
>
>You will remember that years ago, some experts said that writing
>on-screen (and even by typewriter, years before) altered “your” style,
>perhaps even “produced content” - could it be that with handwriting (or
>with audio notes) you get quite often into that situation where you
>simply don’t remember “important details”, “street signs”, then go awry,
>on first sight, and then do rewrites you would never even have thought
>of, had you been sitting in front of a screen on which “everything”
>anytime is available by looking it instantly up, or even before a pile
>of typed pages, but considering visually “going thru” such a pile is
>quite easy at least in direct comparison with an often much thicker
>(well, that would not have been the case for Nabokov indeed) pile of
>handwritten “material” (here meaning “work”), with or without then
>scribbles of all sorts, making it more or less unreadable in-between,
>i.e. before (paid) final typing?
>
>Quencher speaks about notes written down when he’s just “on his own”,
>i.e. without web (or other) access to any “info”, and he says it’s the
>feeling - the wading in the yoghurt in my - well, Allen’s - allegory,
>and then, after having found “something”, you “reason”, in order to
>“better shape” them, to make them “presentable” - for a more faithful
>translation run the citation (“Die Gefühle bestimmen das Denken,
>nicht die Argumente, die dienen am Ende nur der Rechtfertigung.”) thru
>the translator of your choice.
>
>And he mentions the limiting character of the presence of “all that’s
>there already”, vs. the freeing character of that not being the case,
>and, just like Kühn, he doesn’t speak of literary creation, but of
>the tangible-tangible, of third-party info (or fake info, whatever, of
>the “accepted, general knowledge” if I may say so: “Ist die permanente
>Selbstüberprüfung förderlich? Aber ich bin offline, also
>spinne ich meinen Gedanken weiter.”
>
>Then, he asks, how does a situation in which I constantly can check the
>congruence of my thoughts with the “above” (i.e. “their knowledge”;
>supra: “Um mich herum das übliche Bild, rund 80 Prozent der
>Mitreisenden im Zug sind in ihre Smartphones vertieft” - “as usual”, he
>says, 80 p.c. of the travelers bent over their smartphones…), alter
>these? (“Was mich zur nächsten Frage bringt: Wie verändert es
>unsere Gedanken, wenn wir sie ständig überprüfen
>können?”)
>
>And finally, his (rhetorical?) question: “Kann sich Individualismus
>überhaupt entwickeln in einer Onlinegesellschaft mit ihrer
>permanenten Möglichkeit der Selbstüberprüfung der eigenen
>Gedanken?” - What chances for so-called “individualism” to develop in
>our society in which is now possible for everyone - [and even asked for,
>from everyone, I might add] - to balance everything anyone thinks [I
>could have said “match”...] with what “they” might think on that matter?
>As said, my translations here are very “free” ones, thus my repeated
>invitations to use google translate…
>
>Oh, and drinking alcohol while “writing” may in part have the same
>effect, i.e. it not only disinhibits, but it also makes you temporarily
>forget aspects, and thus may empower you to leave that “highway” of
>originally “THEIR” thoughts and feelings, and in our context, to leave
>that “highway” built by your own preceding writings in that “project”...
>
>Or you just take notes anywhere, e.g. just a STEP OUT of the shower in
>some public bath, and without worrying - which in front of your screen
>you’d do, inevitably and preconsciously -:
>
>DOES IT FIT?
>
>Since when the priors look right over your shoulder, you don’t
>feel-n-think free anymore.
>
>(And the double entendre in “prior” says it all… and yes, thinking of
>“Stop! Or My Mum Will Shoot!“‘s inevitable now… and whatever they say,
>it’s a very funny movie indeed!)
>
>
>Here and everywhere, and Chris’s right: “Some Rights Reserved” by his
>forum site indeed - it not being a quarry though anybody’d be free to
>pillage…
>
Posted by 22111
Jun 15, 2022 at 10:06 AM
Linear writing vs. Erratic writing
Linear writing: which follows in the “work” is determined what precedes it (or you will have to throw away large parts of your “work” in case)
Erratic writing: as before, but also, “earlier” things are determined by “later” things, “earlier” and “later” meaning “by page count”, “in your “work”“, not necessarily (but most of the time, more or less…) also by plot’s chronology
More gifted writers may much more have (among other things) what I’d call the “presence of the opportunities”, i.e. they might “know” quite early the respective list of “options” for the “plot developments”, on the “macro level” - by which I mean additional or alternative “details”, but which may deeply affect the further “goings” / developments. Therefore, their decisions which are the respective “alternatives” to follow might be better “weighted”, which means that after writing another 30 or 100 pages, they will only rarely then discover new “alternatives” which would then make their “work” much “better”... but while invalidating 80 p.c. of what the will have written in-between…
Also, people really and more or less “writing by (their own) numbers” will probably have some “schema” and don’t deviate from that anyway, even if they’ve get further “inspiration” for “things already set”: a question of “good-enough quality”, and their alleged reaction to such after-thoughts: “I have to do a certain output, quantity-wise, and I’ll do it better next time, will develop something that idea then, will not integrate it in here, since that would me cost “n” days / weeks of work.
Writers who sit for years, working on one novel, see this differently, obviously: They are ready to throw away parts of their work in order to optimize the final output… and it’s obvious that those writers would be interested in having to throw away the strict minimum, too, so “erratic” working, not linear working, might be the best way of working, for them.
Above, I have presented the idea that “pantsers” and “outliners” (in the traditional sense for “outline”) do the same thing, at the end of the day: They are both “linear writers”, they both are BOUND what they will have written before, at any given moment, unless they are willing to throw away large parts of what they will already have written, it’s just that the “pantser” writes, and “sees where it goes”, whilst the “outliner” tries to foresee such “I took the bad junction” problems, and tries to hopefully eliminate them, by “outlining”, i.e. by early discovering the respective consequences, from the structure, without investing too much detail work which then would be invalidated but unwanted ramifications: They try to be “efficient”... and they fall for the same fallacy as do “forced outliners” do in school:
It’s in (later-on) details that you see the (preceding) outline’s misses and “errors”. (This is obviously very different in most technical and legal writing, where you will have “given frameworks” for any “situation”, which will then, at the most (i.e. if ever), present some “specifics”, “frameworks with minor variations” that is.
Whilst literary writing has NO such framework, or at least should not have, and sometimes, I’m amused by the self-concept of IT professionals who see themselves as “software architects” - I know what they mean, of course: they are the “planners”, within a given framework, e.g. it’s the “system analysts” who build a certain framework, from their analysis of (organizational) reality (be that in administration, in finance (banks), in manufactory…), and then they plan the technical realization: They are proud to do the higher-up work, above the (“mechanical”, subordinate) “coding”... but just as most (original) “architects” (in civil engineering), they are engineers indeed, they work within a given framework, and very rare are those who invent something (“something new” would be a pleonasm).
Now what the French call “littérature de gare” ou “roman de (hall de) gare”, here again the English do it short-and-crisp (and that’s a tautology, a literary device): pulp, or pulp fiction… and sometimes, some author has such an output that you ain’t so sure what to think about that output: should you dare defame it, or just accept the author is very much gifted indeed? (You encounter the same - there not so rare - phenomenon in music, I mean on the composers’ side of course…)
Thus, I use an “extended outliner” (i.e. the kind that gives access to the outline AND any “level” of real detail (“body text”), the only species that has survived as a software tool - and as explained above, for good reason!), in order to do “erratic writing”... but if “you” are highly gifted, or then would want to write by numbers (nobody here would want that, right? of course!), you might do linear writing indeed…
But of course, when I read some “high professional”‘s interview where they say they had away to throw away 3 or 4 times the final page count of their published work, in the process, I ineluctably wonder if their alleged linear, or traditional “outlined” writing (which would not be any other than more or less linear writing indeed, following (“waterfall”) their outlining, i.e. their - individual here - “numbers”), if their traditional writing methods, beyond giving them some feel of “security” allegedly, are really their very best choice indeed?
Ok, some (highly or then less gifted) writers need a lot of “hard work”, so that the final product can emerge in the end, they “need” their more or less completed errancies (“drain the cup”?), but then:
I never have “inspiration” in front of a screen, or hunched above a sheet of paper, so perhaps for other people, that sought way of doings things isn’t that ideal either, after all?
Above, I said (/implied) I take audio notes, in order to not lose ideas (anymore), speaking much faster than writing (or then, I couldn’t decipher those scribbles anymore), but it goes without saying that there are also lots of situations where writing wouldn’t be realistic: in your car for example (they lately criminalized this “all over” Europe, so you have to take measures against their cameras…), or then in bed, simply because turning on a light and jotting down some notes wouldn’t be impossible, you’re deadbeat… but even then, taking some audio notes is possible, not even opening your eyes, but the device faithfully waiting under your pillow, and safely guiding you with its specific beeps in the dark.
And, obviously, above, when I spoke of regular, bold, and blue tree entries, I meant “data”, “material”, for “work” / output I use all the 8 tree entry formats (“flags”) I had spoken of previously; similarly, when I use a somewhat deeper hierarchy than explained above (project, scenes*), that’s just for navigational purposes, my (“landscape”) screen visualizing some 45 list entries concurrently, not more, and including “comment” entries, so you need “chapters” (or whatever you call them) in order to avoid “endless” scrolling, and, as said, I also like to put “data”, “material” “where it belongs”, and that, in some cases, may then take another 1-2 indentation level, so then some “material” might be at level 5, but that’s rare: It’s the listing, and the flat hierarchizing capabilities of modern software that tremendously helps in organizing your things - as for inspiration, you should look elsewhere, i.e. into facilitating life situations: the computer - Mac or PC! - is an organizational device, one that makes your “piles of sheets” manageable - nothing more (and thus, “Musings on tools for thought” are more or less wishful thinking), but then, even at that task, most tools fail quite largely, from what I see.
MS Word, together with add-ins then (!), seems to be the “best” writing tool if you need intra-linking, simply because the (regularly 1-seat) developers of what we call “outliners” don’t have the means to implement the necessary code, but yes, as I see it, the foremost element of the - here ever recurring! - subject of “distraction-free” would not be the masking of buttons / menus / etc., but would have been the automatic hiding of the body text before, and after, the body text you’re writing on, which is NOT of course, a single line, but the body text between the previous and the next (sub-) heading - today, in order to achieve that, you will (as far as I see it) need to use an “outliner”, since none (?) of today’s “text processors” provide that functionality, with all their navigational functions (headings, etc. in an additional tree view) they may added in-between.
Posted by Amontillado
Jun 15, 2022 at 09:36 PM
22111, I’m happy to see some consistency between my 2019 and 2022 selves, but count me more as a pilgrim than an oracle. I continue to seek paths that work. Frankly, I hope that never changes.
Posted by 22111
Jun 17, 2022 at 09:14 AM
In my advice re fountain pens - https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/9759/30 - I forgot to mention that I also had a (14k) Montblanc one in those times, which I then resold after some months(’ heavy use) - that one wasn’t good enough either, in comparison with the “149” (as said, 18k); perhaps, they now also offer 18 with other models, but that wasn’t the case at the time.
Since I mentioned StorySpace (149$ plus VAT, so that’ll be near 200€) above, let me also mention Causality, which for the time being - that might change anytime for future versions, of course, but it’s desktop, too, not web, so… - remains free for users who just use its “graphics”, and they are very elaborate, see (among other YT vids) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxzXcKWgzWg - thus, for people who like / need such graphic tools, it may be an absolute “steal”; the developers aim it at screenwriting, but it might come (in the “right hands” then) to splendid use for any fiction writing.
Similar, just the other way round, for “The Novel Factory” (“factory”, ha-ha…), not only for novels, then, but on their “Pricing” page ( https://www.novel-software.com/buy-novel-writing-software/ ), they first ask you, “Are you ready to finally finish the book you’ve been dreaming of?”, in order to sufficiently frame their subscription, since that’s a whopping 75 to 600 bucks (probably plus VAT, and if not, that’ll make YOU a “criminal”, by European Union law) annually, and even about 20 p.c. more than that if you pay per month…
and don’t count about writing more than just ONE novel or whatever for the 75 bucks each year, then you’re automatically in for 198, and don’t count to store more than just a little bit of “materials” within in, since exceeding half a GB (which isn’t anything anymore nowadays) brings you to 600 (or 720 in 12 installments).
We’re clearly in fairy tale country here (“totem”) where women of my age pay $1,000 for a pot of smear (half an ounce) since that would make us “young” again for half of an evening.
But then, it - the subscription, not the smear pot - comes with “The Ultimate Character Questionnaire”, so…
Posted by Amontillado
Jun 17, 2022 at 01:47 PM
Regarding Mont Blanc pens, I’m not in that crowd. Truth to tell, I’ve got a desk set of four TWSBI Vac 700’s in fine, medium, broad, and stub, plus three Opus 88’s for my backpack in fine, medium, and stub. I’ve got a third of a single bespoke pen invested. :-)
I find steel nibs acceptable and mine are all very smooth writers. At least I graduated from Bic pens. Which, actually, will craft the same prose as anything else.
Thanks for the link to Causality. I suspect it’s a great tool, but it’s also planning by “this happened, then this happened.” Necessary in any story, but the planning for me has to focus on meaning.
That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the food for thought.
Aeon Timeline offers timeline and spreadsheet views, which are pretty much time-dictated, and you can also create multiple mind maps either before or after defining times and durations. Also, there is a narrative view. That’s where you can borrow timeline events to stack into chapters, acts, scenes, whatever.
Causality is also not dissimilar to Plottr, although Plottr is bound to a grid without freedom to adjust events within cells.
Regarding my current obsession, Curio, I see how a story could be presented Causality-style.
Curio doesn’t support swimlanes. At least a pale shadow of something similar is possible.
Pinboards in Curio are somewhat like magnetic shapes in Scapple. You can put multiple text blocks (figures, in Curio-speak) in a pinboard like you might add events in a cell in Causality.
Those pinboards can then be moved around.
Where there’s a will there’s a way, and purpose-built tools are very nice. Budget enters the picture at some point, although I try to keep my personal financial leash loose when it comes to software and writing tools.