This is the final post in the series describing my own writing process. I will admit that putting the ideas you have collected together for a public product can be very time-consuming, but less dependent on tools/services others have not encountered. I write mostly in Google docs. I write most blog posts in WordPress (the same tool that organizes and presents my posts to the public). I have experimented with other writing environments and for those wanting to try something different I will describe my favorite.
Scrivener is a tool for organizing resources and turning these resources into a final product. You can try the tool at no expense, but I did purchase my copy at the educational rate of $40.
I would describe Scrivener as a tool for larger projects that involve the organization of many resources, exploring what your final product might look like, and working on a product that will take some time to complete. I wrote this series of blog posts using Scrivener (the total of all the posts was a major project) and I wrote one edition of our textbook using this tool. Because of its system for storing and organizing resources, Scrivener could be used to explore the Smart Note writing process before fully investing in the multitool process I have described over the past several posts.
The three panel system shown below works this way. The binder (leftmost panel) provides access to content (background, original written products). The content selected appears in the middle panel (this happens to be the previous post in this series). The right-most panel provides access to metadata associated with the content in the middle panel (tags, notes, etc.).
Scrivener has other tools (views) for working with and organizing ideas. The following is the corkboard which allows the identification of ideas that can then be organized and expanded into text.
Scrivener is expandable and has an active community contributing templates for various types of products (blog posts, screenplays, scientific articles, etc.). Templates establish the organizational structure of the Binder. If you want, the content of a Scrivener project can be composed and output in formats for different purposes. For example, you can output the product you are working on in a format appropriate to upload to Kindle (.mobi). This is a very powerful tool I admit I use to introduce some variety into the time I spend writing. I have learned enough about the product that I can use it from time to time and move content back and forth to other tools without a lot of wasted time.
The impetus for writing this series of posts was a couple of insights I gained from Ahren’s book (How to take smart notes) which I have described in past posts (a link to the Amazon source for this book is included at the end of this post). I have tried to convey several of these insights in this series. Perhaps the most important insight was that writing is a process (not really that new) and what most think of as writing should begin earlier in this process. Smart notes are what we should be writing earlier.
It is not uncommon to engage in the highlighting and annotation processes I described in an earlier post and it is not uncommon to try to use the ideas selected by these processes in later writing. What is missing for most writers is the opportunity to identify, externalize (write), and organize individual ideas as an intermediate step that makes the transition from the input of reading to the output of writing much easier.
Ahren’s uses Luhman’s Zettelkasten to offer a model for a more productive model for shaping the ideas gleaned from original sources into various final products. The difference here is understanding that we often imagine a process in which we work backward from a final product. We start with a goal and then try to either generate from scratch or search within our collection of rather raw inputs for the content to meet this goal. Ahren proposes instead that we see our initial effort as resulting in carefully generated insights/ideas gleaned from the original sources and associated with other insights that can later be examined and played with to generate the outline for final products.
Referencing the Zettelkasten again, Ahrens describes what he means by a smart note. A Zettel, one note stored within a Zettelkasten, should contain one thought expressed in your own words. Zettel is “paper slip” in German. The Zettelkasten was a box within which the slips are kept and organized. A smart note is more an individual idea. Smart notes are linked via what might be described as hypertext in a digital Zettelkasten. The notion that the digital Zettelkasten is a tool to think with requires this combination of thoughts that can be associated with other thoughts in flexible and evolving ways.
As I rethink my “note-taking” over the years, I have decided I typically fail to get beyond highlighting. If I do, I might add a general summary in some type of reference collection system. When I had a goal of producing something specific, it took considerable effort to explore this collection of references and create a collection of ideas I would then shape into an original work. The idea of smart notes is to do the work of personalizing and externalizing individual ideas soon after the initial encounter while reading and exploring how new ideas can be associated with older ideas. Some in offering takes on the Zettelkasten differentiate literature or fleeting notes from permanent notes. Permanent notes are written so that an idea can stand alone. A smart note is linked with other permanent notes in a bi-directional way. Exploring this collection from time to time offers the opportunity to find new connections. Adding new contributions and finding new connections makes the Zettelkasten an external tool to think and learn with.
Zotero is a free tool, but provides a limited amount of online storage at the free level (300 MB). For 2 GB, you would pay $20 annually. Zotero allows the storage of a lot of different types of files including pdfs and web snapshots. If you store this type of information, 300MB will not be sufficient. I store all pdfs in other ways so I am waiting to see how fast the free storage capacity goes.
I am using Zotero to store my summary insights and references. I can store links to the other sources such as annotated files stored in Diigo (previous post). The right-hand panel in the image below shows what one of my notes looks like. The key to Zotero use are the additions stored in the area at the bottom (the red box). Here I can add tags and links to related notes in the system. A tag cloud also accumulates and can be seen at the bottom of the left-hand panel. So, this might be considered a version of a Zettelkasten and the idea would be to build this collection and periodically visit to explore ideas and add links among ideas.
Obsidian is another tool recommended as a Zettelkasten. It is a free tool and I can store the files it generates in a way that is local, but is also synched to the cloud (iCloud). This means I have cloud storage and that I can access my resources from other devices that access this same online storage.
The files used in Obsidian are written in markdown text. A system such as this should be familiar to any older tech folks who used tags to add links and text styles in the early days of HTML use or wiki tools. You can see some of these tags if you look closely at the bottom of the top image. The red square surrounds tags that can serve as the target of searches (#tagname) and the green box surrounds an internal link to another note [[file name]]. Other tags provide external links, text style, etc. You can get by just learning three or four tags so adding these additions is not difficult.
While a markup system may seem primitive, the great advantage is that the files that are stored (each entry ends up as a separate file) can be read by pretty much any tool (e.g., word processing program, text editor). The concern is about longevity. Should something happen to Obsidian, the files stored in a safe way (locally and in the cloud) and can always be salvaged.
Obsidian creates backlinks any time two files are linked. It is possible to visually see and explore the system of files that is created (see below) and these visual representations can be refined using a filtering system.
The longevity issue
The idea of a Zettelkasten is intended to create a manageable repository of content that will exist for maybe decades (see the comment about text markup in my description of Obsidian). This may sound grandiose, but for any of us at the tail end of a career that involved information problem solving for several decades the struggle to transition from one system to another is real. I had notes on paper note cards in a box and a file cabinet filled with highlighted copies of journal articles with other articles still in the decades of journals on my office shelves. A collection of pdfs was the next stage. Then various systems such as EndNote for trying to manage the collection of pdfs. Now, I am trying something new. With digital content, I think there are advantages and ways to build on what you have and not start over.
Getting started
It is possible to be attracted to new tools and spend too large a proportion of time learning the tools. I see some role in the latter stages of my own career to be exploring tools so that others do not have to do this on their own. So, how would I get started? I think I would start with a pdf tool and a tool for organizing and saving ideas/insights. You could use Mendeley Desktop (pdfs) and either of the tools I have described here at no cost.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
You must be logged in to post a comment.