- Jan 2023
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www.cambridge.org www.cambridge.org
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One common definition of ‘writing’ is that it is written language, i.e. not only acts as a notational system but one which has a connection to the phonetic form of the language spoken by the writer (Van de Mieroop Reference Van de Mieroop1999).
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Using a database of images spanning the European Upper Palaeolithic, we suggest how three of the most frequently occurring signs—the line <|>, the dot <•>, and the <Y>—functioned as units of communication.
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forum.artofmemory.com forum.artofmemory.com
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Those interested in archaeology and anthropology with respect to art and memory may appreciate this new paper which could push the date of our earliest writing systems back several thousands of years. (cc @LynneKelly)
Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological Calendar<br /> https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeological-journal/article/an-upper-palaeolithic-protowriting-system-and-phenological-calendar/6F2AD8A705888F2226FE857840B4FE19
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www.vice.com www.vice.com
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Local file Local file
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I couldn’t have written this book without the aid of laying out all of thedifferent sections on my desk. I created a hub of cards that had collectivecardlinks on them. Each card was organized by topic and contained subtopicsthat pointed me to various card addresses in my Antinet. I then moved themaround a large table to create the perfect logical layout for this book. Here’sa picture of it:
Despite doing the lion's share of the work of linking cards along the way, Scheper shows that there's still some work of laying out an outline and moving cards around to achieve a final written result.
compare this with Victor Margolin's process: https://hypothes.is/a/oQFqvm3IEe2_Fivwvx596w
also compare with the similar processes of Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene
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www.animenewsnetwork.com www.animenewsnetwork.com
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Let's say you want to tell your audience that your character is angry. You could just have them say “I'm angry.” But how often does a person in real life ever plainly announce their anger that way? Have you ever been able to tell someone was angry without them telling you? What if instead of having our character say “I'm angry,” you write them entering their house and slamming the door behind them so hard that picture frames fall off the wall and shatter on the floor. Air hisses out of their mouths as they huff and puff through gritted teeth. That's usually better writing. That's what “show, don't tell” means. But what if I told you that Kare Kano breaks this golden rule of writing, and does so with incredible results?
I agree with this assessment of Kare Kano -- it made great use of a "tell before show" approach in its first episode, which remains one of the great opening episodes of any anime series. However, notwithstanding my agreement with the author, my first thought was that I have come across people who tell rather than show, which inspired an article. Maybe the general writing rule needs some fine-tuning.
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hedgehogreview.com hedgehogreview.com
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Educators are now administering the Turing test in reverse: What are questions that only humans can answer well? What kinds of thinking does writing make possible for us?
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GPT-3 threatens to “[undermine] the kind of writing intensive course that had served as the backbone of [his] teaching for two decades.” “I was less worried about whether GPT-3 is genuinely intelligent,” Symons writes, “and more worried about whether the development of these tools would make us less intelligent.”
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- Dec 2022
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I’m a screenwriter. One of the reasons I use Obsidian is the ability to hashtag. It sounds so simple, but being able to tag notes with #theme or #sceneideas helps create linkages between notes that would not otherwise be linked. My ZK literally tells me what the movie is really about.
via u/The_Bee_Sneeze
Example of someone using Obsidian with a zettelkasten focus to write screenplays.
Thought the example appears in r/Zettelkasten, one must wonder at how Luhmann-esque such a practice really appears?
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Is the ZK method worth it? and how it helped you in your projects? .t3_zwgeas._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionI am new to ZK method and I'd like to use it for my literature review paper. Altho the method is described as simple, watching all those YT videos about the ZK and softwares make it very complex to me. I want to know how it changed your writing??
reply to u/Subject_Industry1633 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zwgeas/is_the_zk_method_worth_it_and_how_it_helped_you/ (and further down)
ZK is an excellent tool for literature reviews! It is a relative neologism (with a slightly shifted meaning in English over the past decade with respect to its prior historical use in German) for a specific form of note taking or commonplacing that has generally existed in academia for centuries. Excellent descriptions of it can be found littered around, though not under a specific easily searchable key word or phrase, though perhaps phrases like "historical method" or "wissenschaftlichen arbeitens" may come closest.
Some of the more interesting examples of it being spelled out in academe include:
- Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
- Webb, Sidney. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
- Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
- Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife. (Particularly ch 7 if I recall correctly)
For academic use, anecdotally I've seen very strong recent use of the general methods most compellingly demonstrated in Obsidian (they've also got a Discord server with an academic-focused channel) though many have profitably used DevonThink and Tinderbox (which has a strong, well-established community of academics around it) as much more established products with dovetails into a variety of other academic tools. Obviously there are several dozens of newer tools for doing this since about 2018, though for a lifetime's work, one might worry about their longevity as products.
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paulgraham.com paulgraham.com
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You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well. And I mean that last "well" in both senses. You have to be good at reading, and read good things.
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Talking about your ideas with other people is a good way to develop them. But even after doing this, you'll find you still discover new things when you sit down to write.
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if you need to solve a complicated, ill-defined problem, it will almost always help to write about it. Which in turn means that someone who's not good at writing will almost always be at a disadvantage in solving such problems.
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Bun is written in Zig, a low-level programming language with manual memory management.
Very awkwardly stated.
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www.justinwelsh.me www.justinwelsh.me
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Don’t try to convince everyone that what you say, feel, think, or have done is better than everyone else.
This is pretty normal for those of us who are academically inclined so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch - after all a lot of the time what we're doing is thinking about other peoples' works critically
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My goal with my content is to make it so recognizable that you would know it was me even if it didn't have my name on it. The same style. The same thought process. The same character.
building a recognisable tone of voice can help with repeat visitors
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Local file Local file
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But Thamus replied, " Most ingenious Theuth, oneman has the ability to beget arts, but the ability tojudge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their usersbelongs to another ; and now you, who are the fatherof letters, have been led by your affection to ascribeto them a power the opposite of that which theyreally possess. For this invention will produce for-getfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it,because they will not practise their memory. Theirtrust in writing, produced by external characterswhich are no part of themselves, will discourage theuse of their own memory within them. You haveinvented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding ;and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom,not true wisdom, for they will read many thingswithout instruction and will therefore seem to knowmany things, when they are for the most part ignorant
and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise." pp 563-564
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Local file Local file
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even Socrates himself, we learnby way of his followers, derided the emerging popularity of taking physicalnotes.
I recall portions about Socrates deriding "writing" as a mode of expression, but I don't recall specific sections on note taking. What is Ann Blair's referent for this?
The "emerging popularity of taking physical notes" seems not to be in evidence with only one exemplar of a student who lost their notes within the Blair text.
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you’ll spend the beginning phases learning by readingbooks in brand new fields and noting down brand new ideas. You’ll mostlybe writing reformulation notes in this phase.
Yet another new name for a sub-type of notes, here he uses reformulation notes as a shorthand for the old advice to rewrite ideas you find in your own words. This advice is often suggested to accomplish two things: - avoid plagiarism - restatement of ideas in your own words is related to the Feynman Technique and assists one in learning and ensuring they understand the concepts
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the Antinet can serve both states. It can assist someone who’s in thegrowth state (without a clear end goal), and it can also assist someone who’sin the contribution state (with a clearly defined book or project).
This could be clearer and "growth state" and "contribution state" feel like jargon which muddles:
two of the broad benefits/affordances of having a zettelkasten: - learning and scaffolding knowledge (writing for understanding) - collecting and arranging material for general output
Tags
- ruminant machines
- memory vs. writing
- types of notes
- writing for understanding
- note taking affordances
- Bloom's taxonomy
- zettelkasten affordances
- zettelkasten output
- note collection loss and damage
- Socarates
- plagiarism
- memory vs. note taking
- Feynman Technique
- reformulation notes
- definitions
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Fact-based disciplines such as natural sciences have less potential for deeply linked, atomic zettel notes than arts and humanities. There is not much to discuss about or 'generate insight' on photosynthesis, algebra or network protocols if you are not a scientist.
Again note taking is the wrong tool for fact-based acquisition. Apparently this is not advice given in most sources. Spaced repetition and mnemonic methods are far better suited for memorizing and remembering basic facts.
Take notes on the surprising and unique. Take notes as writing you'll reuse later. Take notes to understand.
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For example I had a few notes on principles of modern cryptography that came in handy when I had to write a paper about a related topic for my studies. But these cases were rare at best, most of these notes were never looked at again.
The one shining moment in the whole essay and they don't seem to realize where the benefit or use actually was. They finally had a reason to have taken notes and the ideas shone here. But they've written off the tools because they didn't understand when to use them.
Hammers are cool, but unless you're a professional carpenter, you don't carry it around all the time and use it constantly to hammer things. The same is true of note taking as a tool. You might use it regularly if you're a writer or an academic perhaps, but for hourly use in your day-to-day? Almost definitely not.
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genizalab.princeton.edu genizalab.princeton.edu
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Goitein accumulated more than 27,000 index cards in his research work over the span of 35 years. (Approximately 2.1 cards per day.)
His collection can broadly be broken up into two broad categories: 1. Approximately 20,000 cards are notes covering individual topics generally making of the form of a commonplace book using index cards rather than books or notebooks. 2. Over 7,000 cards which contain descriptions of a single fragment from the Cairo Geniza.
A large number of cards in the commonplace book section were used in the production of his magnum opus, a six volume series about aspects of Jewish life in the Middle Ages, which were published as A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (1967–1993).
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www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com
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“I thought that art schools should just be places where you thought about creative behavior, whereas they thought an art school was a place where you made painters,” he said later.
We should do better at teaching and training creative behavior in schools. We say that we encourage exploration but somehow do it in all the wrong ways such we discourage it wholly.
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www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
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The extraordinary ignorance on questions of society and history displayed by the men and women reshaping society and history has been the defining feature of the social-media era.
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www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
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Which is why I wonder if this may be the end of using writing as a benchmark for aptitude and intelligence.
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Perhaps there are reasons for optimism, if you push all this aside. Maybe every student is now immediately launched into that third category: The rudiments of writing will be considered a given, and every student will have direct access to the finer aspects of the enterprise. Whatever is inimitable within them can be made conspicuous, freed from the troublesome mechanics of comma splices, subject-verb disagreement, and dangling modifiers.
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I’ve also long held, for those who are interested in writing, that you need to learn the basic rules of good writing before you can start breaking them—that, like Picasso, you have to learn how to reliably fulfill an audience’s expectations before you get to start putting eyeballs in people’s ears and things.
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www.theparisreview.org www.theparisreview.org
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Then there were the three lots of blank notebooks, tied with twine. They went for $9,000, $11,000, and $11,000 each. They were empty, some still wrapped in plastic, yet they were totally talismanic. I wondered: Would you write in these notebooks, having paid that price? Perhaps that’s the whole appeal—to write in a blank space that Didion might once have intended to use herself. Maybe the buyer had a hidden wish that somehow her intent might infiltrate their own work—that in owning these notebooks they might crack some secret code to making sentences like hers. There are sillier superstitions. But more likely, I think, you would have paid too much for these notebooks to ever touch them, and they would sit in a drawer or on a desk, unused and empty, just as they sat on hers.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Duolingo or whatever French and I had this idea well basically what it reminds me of is Stefan's Vig the Austrian
https://youtu.be/r9idbh-U2kM?t=3544
Stefan Zweig (reference? his memoir?) apparently suggested that students translate authors as a means of becoming more intimately acquainted with their work. This is similar to restating an author in one's own words as a means of improving one's understanding. It's a lower level of processing that osculates on the idea of having a conversation with a text.
tk: track this reference down. appropriate context?
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meso.tzyl.nl meso.tzyl.nl
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if people annotate a generated text, is that a diminished conversation compared to one with a human authored text?
🤔
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edward-slingerland.medium.com edward-slingerland.medium.com
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This generally fits my criteria for submission as an example to https://boffosocko.com/2022/07/12/call-for-model-examples-of-zettelkasten-output-processes/
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https://edward-slingerland.medium.com/there-is-only-one-way-to-write-a-book-637535ef5bde
Example of someone's research, note taking, and writing process using index cards.
Broadly, this is very similar to the process used by Ryan Holiday, Robert Green, and Victor Margolin.
While he can't recall the name of the teacher, he credits his 7th grade English teacher (1980-1981) for teaching him the method.
Edward Slingerland is represented by Brockman Inc.
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That sounds challenging, of course, but I find that the writing, at this stage, is actually relatively easy: the card organization has already done most of the work. The cards tell the story, you now just need to (skillfully!) weave them together.
Anecdotal evidence that the final "writing" portion of a card index process is "relatively easy" as the majority of the work has already been done.
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This is the absolute hardest part of the writing process, in my mind. The most exciting, too, because you’re never quite sure where it’s going to end up.
Anecdotal evidence that categorizing and arranging index cards/ideas for a writing project for subsequent writing is one of the most difficult portions of the process.
Niklas Luhmann subverted portions of this by pre-linking his ideas together either in threads or an outline form as he went.
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I’ve also got a vague sense in my head of how they should be organized — that is, what the structure of the book is going to be. This is generally when I write the formal book proposal. I know enough about the topic, now, that I have a good idea of what my central arguments are going to be and how I am going to organize the chapters.
At what point in the process does one have a conceptualization for the overall outline of what they're writing?
In cases where it's earlier than others, then heavy linking and organization may not be as necessary.
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I have a very specific method for organizing my research and thoughts whenever I’m writing anything longer than a short article. I learned this method from a teacher in middle school, and I cannot imagine how a human being could write a book any other way.
Example of someone who learned an index card based commonplace book method for note taking and writing.
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- Nov 2022
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library.oapen.org library.oapen.org
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For whom do we make knowledge and why? This question could not be timelier as humanists and administrators seek to make disciplines appear more relevant to students, applicable to social problems, and attendant to political, social, and economic exigencies” (2019, p. 351)
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library.oapen.org library.oapen.org
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When we are collecting new data to address a research question addressed in another context, it can be near impossible to re-create ex-act contexts with participants; researchers simply do not have that sort of control over any research context. This suggests that reproduction, rather than replication, may be a more useful goal.
reproduction rather than replication may be a more useful goal for research work setting.
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theinformed.life theinformed.life
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Mark: Yeah. And I actually think the Agile revolution in software development is software development catching up to the fact that it’s a writer-ly art. Writers don’t know where they’re going or how they’re going to express it when they start out. Neither, it turns out, does software developers. They can pretend by writing it the first time in a spec language and then coding it and then, checking the specification, then finding out that they’ve written the wrong thing and writing a new specification. That was when I was getting started, the right way to write software.
Agile software development is akin to the design of the writing process.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI
<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Intrigue</span> in intrigue (<time class='dt-published'>08/29/2022 15:00:52</time>)</cite></small>
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“In literacy education, particularly for developing writers, instructors are looking for the level of desirable difficulty, or the point at which you are working yourself just as hard so that you don’t break but you also improve,” Laffin told Motherboard. “Finding the right, appropriate level of desirable difficulty level of instruction makes their capacity to write grow. So if you are doing compensation techniques that go beyond finding that level of desirable difficulty and instructing at that place, then you’re not helping them grow as a writer.”
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stackoverflow.com stackoverflow.com
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Honestly, at this point, I don't even know what tools I'm using, and which is responsible for what feature. Diving into the code of capybara and cucumber yields hundreds of lines of metaprogramming magic that somehow accretes into a testing framework. It's really making me loathe TDD despite my previous youthful enthusiasm.
opinion: too much metaprogramming magic
I'm not so sure it's "too much" though... Any framework or large software project is going to feel that way to a newcomer looking at the code, due to the number of layers of abstractions, etc. that eventually were added/needed by the maintainers to make it maintainable, decoupled, etc.
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www.oscarberg.com www.oscarberg.com
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And with diagrams as text close to the code chances are they will be kept to up to date (and created to begin with…).
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medium.com medium.com
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Fifty years ago, coinciding with the centennial of the release of Darwin’s manuscript, author Morse Peckham collected all six editions into a single “variorum” text. Peckham painstakingly created a reference system that denotes the modifications and changes between editions. The text was created by Peckham’s careful enumeration of every sentence from every edition, copied onto index cards; from these cards, he carefully assembled them into a final text.
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www.inkandswitch.com www.inkandswitch.com
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above
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hthunboxed.org hthunboxed.org
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I’m much less worried about free writes happening all the time, than that kids are writing with purpose about topics they care about
I disagree somewhat on this. Certainly writing with purpose about topics students care about is key. However, my experience has been that #freewrites are a great tool to help students (and myself!) to "loosen up" and learn to breathe about writing.
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Abrams, Douglas. “Historian Barbara W. Tuchman on the ‘Art of Writing’ (Part II).” Precedent 9, no. 1 (January 1, 2015): 18–21. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2581159
Interesting view of writing and a short collection of reasonable writing advice. Perhaps a bit too much focus on other writers given the title of the piece. Not sure it was all brought together in the nice bow it may have otherwise had, but interesting nonetheless.
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Justice Louis D.Brandeis instructedlawyers that “there is nosuch thing as good writ-ing. There is only goodrewriting.”23
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“Broadly speaking, the shortwords are the best, and the old wordswhen short are best of all,” attestedformer British Prime Minister WinstonChurchill,
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“Usethe smallest word that does the job,”advised essayist and journalist E. B.White.20
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“[T]here is always a short word for it,”Rogers said. “‘I love words but I don’tlike strange ones. You don’t under-stand them, and they don’t understandyou. Old words is like old friends– you know ‘em the minute you see‘em.”17
17 betty roGerS, wiLL roGerS 294 (1941; new ed. 1979) (quoting Rogers).
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Novelists Ernest Hemingway and Wil-liam Faulkner, for example, went backand forth about the virtues of simplic-ity in writing. Faulkner once criticizedHemingway, who he said “had nocourage, never been known to use aword that might send the reader to thedictionary.” “Poor Faulkner,” Heming-way responded, “Does he really thinkbig emotions come from big words?He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollarwords. I know them all right. But thereare older and simpler and better words,and those are the ones I use.”15
15 A.E. Hotchner , PAPA heminGwAy 69-70 (1966) (quoting Hemingway).
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Justice Felix Frankfurter,a prolific writer as a Harvard lawprofessor before joining the SupremeCourt, was right that “[a]nything thatis written may present a problem ofmeaning” because words “seldomattain[] more than approximate preci-sion.”12
12 Felix Frankfurter, Some Reflections On the Reading of Statutes, 47 CoLUm . L. rev. 527, 528 (1947), reprinting Felix Frankfurter, Sixth Annual Benjamin N. Cardozo Lecture, 2 Rec. Bar Ass'n City of N.Y. (No. 6, 1947).
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Guy de Maupassant, was no lawyer,but his advice can help guide lawyerswho seek precision in their writing.“Whatever you want to say,” he assert-ed, “there is only one word to expressit, only one verb to give it movement,only one adjective to qualify it. Youmust search for that word, that verb,that adjective, and never be contentwith an approximation, never resortto tricks, even clever ones, and neverhave recourse to verbal sleight-of-hand to avoid a difficulty.”11
11 Guy de Maupassant, Selected Short Sto- ries 10-11 (Roger Colet ed., 1971) (Maupassant quoting French writer Gustave Flaubert).
Tags
- precision
- language
- rewriting
- Felix Frankfurter
- words matter
- shifts in meaning
- words
- E.B. White
- Will Rogers
- courage
- Ernest Hemingway
- Barbara Tuchman
- small words
- simplicity in writing
- emotions
- writing
- writing advice
- Louis D. Brandeis
- references
- word choice
- writing for understanding
- friends
- popular history
- dictionaries
- William Faulkner
- meaning
- read
- Winston Churchill
- Guy de Maupassant
- quotes
- semantics
- simplicity
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ueMHkGljK0
Robert Greene's method goes back to junior high school when he was practicing something similar. He doesn't say he invented it, and it may be likely that teachers modeled some of the system for him. He revised the system over time to make it work for himself.
- [x] Revisit this for some pull quotes and fine details of his method. (Done on 2022-11-08)
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Origin of Robert Greene's (May 14, 1959 - ) note taking system using index cards:<br /> Greene didn't recall a specific origin of his practices, but did mention that his mom found some index cards at his house from a junior high school class. (Presuming a 12 year old 7th grader, this would be roughly from 1971.) Ultimately when he wrote 48 Laws of Power, he was worried about being overwhelmed with his notes and ideas in notebooks. He naturally navigated to note cards as a solution.
Uses about 50 cards per chapter.
His method starts by annotating his books as he reads them. A few weeks later, he revisits these books and notes to transfer his ideas to index cards. He places a theme on the top of each card along with a page number of the original reference.
He has kept much the same system as he started with though it has changed a bit over time.
You're either a prisoner of your material or a master of your material.
This might not be the best system ever created, but it works for me.
When looking through a corpus of cards for a project, Robert Greene is able to make note of the need to potentially reuse a card within a particular work if necessary. The fact that index cards are inherently mobile within his projects make them easy to move and reuse.
I haven't heard in either Robert Greene or Ryan Holiday's practices evidence that they reuse notes or note cards from one specific project to the next. Based on all the evidence I've seen, they maintain individual collections for each book project for which they're developing.
[...] like a chameleon [the index card system is] constantly changing colors or [like] something that's able to change its shape at will. This whole system can change its shape as I direct it.
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doctorow.medium.com doctorow.medium.com
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Samuel Johnson’s maxim, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”
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www.cold-takes.com www.cold-takes.com
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https://www.cold-takes.com/learning-by-writing/
Meh... generic process. Nothing broadly new here. The extended example is flawed because it's a broad thesis by a top level aggregator who doesn't have their own expert level experience (seemingly). Better to start from there, but delving more deeply into the primary literature of people who may have that experience.
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ibogost.substack.com ibogost.substack.com
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https://ibogost.substack.com/p/all-i-want-is-a-place-to-quip
writing, but to what end and for what audience?
Why not keep a waste book like Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and simply publish it? Do you need the approbation?
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delong.typepad.com delong.typepad.com
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the front endpapers are oftenthe most important. Some people reserve them for a fancybookplate.
Adler and Van Doren indicate that outlining the arguments and structure of a book on its endpapers is a better and higher measurement of one's ownership of a text compared to a bookplate which only indicates the lower level of "financial" ownership.
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writing your reactions downhelps you to remember the thoughts of the author.
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Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tendsto express itself in words, spoken or written. The person whosays he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually doesnot know what he thinks.
Active reading is thinking, and thinking requires expression which can come in many forms including both spoken and written ones.
I like that he acknowledges that expression (and thus thinking) can be done in both oral or written forms.
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en.wikisource.org en.wikisource.org
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A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial, reason, that "great wits have short memories;" and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day's reading or conversation. There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men, as you think fit to make your own, by entering them there. For, take this for a rule, when an author is in your books, you have the same demand upon him for his wit, as a merchant has for your money, when you are in his. By these few and easy prescriptions, (with the help of a good genius) it is possible you may, in a short time, arrive at the accomplishments of a poet, and shine in that character[3].
"Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia, is unquestionably true, with regard to every thing except poetry; and I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by proper culture, care, attention, and labour, make himself whatever he pleases, except a good poet." Chesterfield, Letter lxxxi.
See also: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Works_of_the_Rev._Jonathan_Swift,_Volume_5.djvu/261 as a source
Swift, Jonathan. The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift. Edited by Thomas Sheridan and John Nichols. Vol. 5. 19 vols. London: H. Baldwin and Son, 1801.
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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Mason Currey’s book “Daily Rituals: Women at Work.” It gives cheerful summaries about how some of the most prolific, successful artists managed their time.
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<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Billy Oppenheimer</span> in The Notecard System: Capture, Organize, and Use Everything You Read, Watch, and Listen To (<time class='dt-published'>11/03/2022 16:53:44</time>)</cite></small>
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billyoppenheimer.com billyoppenheimer.com
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When he was coming up as a writer, the author and journalist Rex Murphy would write out longhand favorite poems and passages. He was asked, what’s that done for you? “There’s an energy attached to poetry and great prose,” Murphy said. “And when you bring it into your mind, into your living sensibility, by some weird osmosis, it lifts your style or the attempts of your mind.” When you read great writing, when you write down a great line or paragraph, Murphy continues, “somehow or another, it contaminates you in a rich way. You get something from it—from this osmotic imitation—that will only take place if you lodge it in your consciousness.”
This writing advice from Rex Murphy sounds like the beginning portions of Benjamin Franklin's advice on writing and slowly rewriting one's way into better prose styles.
Link to Franklin's quote
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David Brooks talks about what he calls the “theory of maximum taste.” It’s similar to what Murphy is saying. “Exposure to genius has the power to expand your consciousness,” Brooks writes. “If you spend a lot of time with genius, your mind will end up bigger and broader than if you [don’t].”
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“There is then creative reading as well as creative writing,” Emerson said. “The discerning will read…only the authentic utterances of the oracle—all the rest he rejects.”
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The novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler said he avoided reading books written by someone who didn’t “take the pains” to write out the words. (It used to be common for writers to dictate into a recorder then have an assistant transcribe those words.) “You have to have that mechanical resistance,” Chandler wrote in a 1949 letter to actor/writer Alex Barris. “When you have to use your energy to put those words down, you are more apt to make them count.”
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If you are like Lebron James or Paul Simon, if you were born with a gift for recall, you might not need a note-taking system.
I would suggest that this is wholly wrong as both of the memories described are honed for specific situations and not broadly applicable.
Even those with good natural memories as well as those with significant mnemonic practices can benefit from a structured note taking practice.
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- Ralph Waldo Emmerson
- Benjamin Franklin
- modality shifts
- writing process
- note taking affordances
- writing as memory
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- resistance
- card index as memory
- reading practices
- osmosis
- creative writing
- Raymond Chandler
- writing advice
- barriers to entry
- activation energy
- Rex Murphy
- David Brooks
- barriers to collection
- creative reading
- skin in the game
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- tools for thought
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glyphsapp.com glyphsapp.com
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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Zettelkasten with the complicated digestive system of a ruminant. All arbitrary ideas, all coincidences of readings, can be brought in. The internal connectivity then decides.
another in a long line of using analogizing thinking to food digestion.... I saw another just earlier today.
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A recent writer has called attention to apassage in Paxson's presidential address before the American Historical Associationin 1938, in which he remarked that historians "needed Cheyney's warning . . . not towrite in 1917 or 1918 what might be regretted in 1927 and 1928."
There are lessons in Frederic L. Paxson's 1938 address to the American Historical Association for todays social media culture and the growing realm of cancel culture when he remarked that historians "needed Cheyney's warning... not to write in 1917 or 1918 what might be regretted in 1927 and 1928.
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the writer of "scissors and paste history" ;
One cannot excerpt their way into knowledge, simply cutting and pasting one's way through life is useless. Your notes may temporarily serve you, but unless you apply judgement and reason to them to create something new, they will remain a scrapheap for future generations who will gain no wisdom or use from your efforts.
relate to: notes about notes being only useful to their creator
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None of these notes wasever used in his writing; probably they were taken with no thoughtof specific use, but out of absorption in the American scene.
It's quite likely that one will take a large number of notes with no immediate goal or plan for use and this is completely acceptable. Often these notes go towards the more immediate goal of forming one's own understanding and setting of a broader tableau for material one will write in the future.
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the author must not merely articulate his sources; he mustdigest them. A long passage quoted or closely followed "remainsan undigested bit of foreign matter." "Over quotation may meanunder thought."
relatable to: https://hypothes.is/a/wIyvtm0oEeyNypNtc--Clw
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- examples
- social media
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- Cheyney's warning
- quotations
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- historical method
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- quotes
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- writing for understanding
- reading for understanding
- tools for thought
- Frederic L. Paxson
- note taking why
- writing process
- card index for writing
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‘What tho’ his head be empty, provided his common-place book be full?’ sneered Jonathan Swift.
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I feel sympathy for Robert Southey, whose excerpts from his voracious reading were posthumously published in four volumes as Southey’s Common-Place Book. He confessed in 1822 that,Like those persons who frequent sales, and fill their houses with useless purchases, because they may want them some time or other; so am I for ever making collections, and storing up materials which may not come into use till the Greek Calends. And this I have been doing for five-and-twenty years! It is true that I draw daily upon my hoards, and should be poor without them; but in prudence I ought now to be working up these materials rather than adding to so much dead stock.
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It is possible to take too many notes; the task of sorting, filing and assimilating them can take for ever, so that nothing gets written.
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www.kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com
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benwerd.substack.com benwerd.substack.com
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Given your talents, if you've not explored some of the experimental fiction side of things (like Mark Bernstein's hypertext fiction http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/Fiction.html, Robin Sloan's fish http://www.robinsloan.com/fish/ or Writing with the Machine https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/writing-with-the-machine/, or a variety of others https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22experimental+fiction%22), perhaps it may be fun and allow you to use some of your technology based-background at the same time?
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www.robinsloan.com www.robinsloan.com
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https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/writing-with-the-machine/
Related work leading up to this video: https://vimeo.com/232545219
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www.sumologic.com www.sumologic.com
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will improve collaboration
The article contains no proof of this statement.
If someone knows of research that proves this, please let me know.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Much like the way the Obsidian journal plugin counts words within one's daily journal page, this app counts zettels within a folder to help encourage one to maintain some level of output.
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Creating a ZK Don't Break the Chain Calendar in Obsidian
For those interested in the research on the "Write Every Day" mantra:
Sword, Helen. “‘Write Every Day!’: A Mantra Dismantled.” International Journal for Academic Development 21, no. 4 (October 1, 2016): 312–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2016.1210153.
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ead.nb.admin.ch ead.nb.admin.ch
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https://ead.nb.admin.ch/html/comment_0.html
The layout and format of this online archive is highly reminiscent of a digital zettelkasten and could even be used as a user interface for implementing one. It has a nice alpha-numeric form.
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www.creativelive.com www.creativelive.com
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For Tim, the practice is managed by routine.“My quota for writing is two crappy pages a day,” he explains. Those two pages help him get started, matter what other commitments he is meeting that day. And even if they’re bad, they’re at least done.The idea is to set goals that are “easily winnable” so you don’t panic when one day passes and you don’t make that goal, because you always know you can easily pick back up the next day.“If I don’t write my two pages I don’t panic and go into the spiral.”
Tim Ferris has a routine for writing and has indicated "My quota for writing is two crappy pages a day." and "If I don't write my two pages, I don't panic and go into the spiral."
(summary); possibly worth watching video for verifying quotes and pulling out additional practices.
Note that this piece seems to indicate that his writing practice includes an idea of doing "morning pages", but this implication is likely false as Ferriss likely isn't doing this, but writing toward productive goals rather than to "clear his mental space" as is usually implied by morning pages.
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boffosocko.com boffosocko.com
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As an example, in The Crown season 1 episode 4 “Act of God” (Netflix, 2016) there is a scene portraying former British Prime Minister Clement Atlee in his office in which he is prominently bookended in the background by two four drawer card indexes: one 3 x 5″ and the other 4 x 6″.
This example comes directly from my notes: https://hypothes.is/a/Cz7e_lHKEe2Qv79IbEgmNw
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stephanango.com stephanango.com
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I’m excited to see community efforts like Obsidian Ava
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The sentence in italics above was not written by me. It was autocompleted as I wrote in Obsidian, using the Text Generator plugin.
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In some ways it is surprising that filtering text is so technically challenging. Text seems like it would be easier to manipulate than images.
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thecreativeindependent.com thecreativeindependent.com
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don’t take critiques from someone who wouldn’t work as hard on their art as they are telling you to work on yours, they have no frame of reference, they have no foot in reality. Rae works as hard as I do, who better to take advice from?
Having put in the work is a frame of reference for providing feedback. To ensure it matches up with the reality of the effort. This goes beyond the context of writing/art, I tie this to cybernetics, thinking about feedback in networks and systems.
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Repairing my errors has always led to the actual interesting places in the work, slowly emerging out of some fog, to surprise me
Author talks about repair, then mentions emergence. The latter is probably the more important observation. Repeatedly revisiting things and making incremental changes also points back to author's earlier point of the qualitative effects of quantity through paying attention. Says this creates the most interesting value from his work. I'd say this is probably a crucial piece of work. Interacting with ones own material, like linking and going through cards, adding to them is the work. Makes it like Luhmann's communication and writing of books, and Sohrens notion that the written work emerges from the previous work put into the cards.
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Later, I have to fix everything. Tie it all up, make it gel. Connect the dots even further, which is just a way of saying ‘reverse engineering.’ I have a clerical mess to rearrange, but while I’m rearranging all of it logistically, I get a chance to enhance the language so it matches the characters and the place, which I had to discover through writing it all anyway.
The process of connecting written fragments is not just editing, it is also creation: make the story work logistically, and improve the language to match characters and locations. The latter can only be done at this stage, because the writing process reveals characters to the author. Author calls this reverse engineering, which is an interesting metaphor.
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Then for the next draft I make a little punch list/index card of new scenes to create to properly finish ‘the thing.’ The cards become a vague map I can leaf through when I get stuck. Working through that punch list often happens out of linear order, too. Just jumping to which new scene I feel most like working on.
After writing the first things based on energy, the author makes cards (vgl those in scrivener) that would help complete the story. Cards serve as a tentative map, not as a rigid outline to complete (see advice above wrt rigidity). Works through those to select what to write next, again based on energy/excitement.
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That’s what I mostly do. Write about things I’m really excited about. In the beginning I don’t have a plan, maybe just one or two scenes but I write them, and bumble towards creating things around them that thrill me in some way
A non-linear approach to writing, starting from where your own energy is. Apparently combined with the earlier mentioned showing-up to do things repeatedly. Akin to non-linear reading?
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Be ready, as soon as you have read or heard the thing, to repeat it exactly in as far as you want to fix it in your memory. If it is a book, do not leave it without being able to sum it up and to estimate its value. Ta
Sounds much like the Feynman technique and is quite similar to the advice of Sonke Ahrens.
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www.cs.cmu.edu www.cs.cmu.edu
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You are all computer scientists. You know what FINITE AUTOMATA can do. You know what TURING MACHINES can do. For example, Finite Automata can add but not multiply. Turing Machines can compute any computable function. Turing machines are incredibly more powerful than Finite Automata. Yet the only difference between a FA and a TM is that the TM, unlike the FA, has paper and pencil. Think about it. It tells you something about the power of writing. Without writing, you are reduced to a finite automaton. With writing you have the extraordinary power of a Turing machine.
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web.archive.org web.archive.org
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Anybody who writes knows you don’t simply write what you believe. You write to find out what you believe, or what you can afford to believe. So when I write something and it sounds good, I leave it in, usually, to see what it sounds like to someone else. To somebody else it might sound awful or brash, but I want to be able to have the courage of my brashness. I don’t leave things in that I know to be terrible, or that I don’t, as it were, find interesting—I don’t do that—but if there’s a doubt about it and it sounds interesting, I’ll leave it in. And I want to be free to do that, because that’s why I write. When I write, things occur to me. It’s a way of thinking. But you can perform your thinking instead of just thinking it.
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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if you're thinking without 00:03:26 writing chances are you're fooling yourself we're only
If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking. —Leslie Lamport.“Thinking Above the Code.” Lecture presented at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, Microsoft Research, July 15, 2014. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/leslie-lamport-thinking-code/. Timestamp: 03:26
Link to:<br /> https://hypothes.is/a/rvisgFDXEe2s-SuJJGw3cA<br /> https://hypothes.is/a/yEFMHoCkEeyl34fItJe__w
Note that the spoken quote is different from the written quote.
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www.wired.com www.wired.com
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In the words of the cartoonist Dick Guindon:Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.
https://www.wired.com/2013/01/code-bugs-programming-why-we-need-specs/
apparently quoted from Guindon: Michigan So Far<br /> see: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3403680-guindon-michigan-so-far#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWriting%20is%20nature's%20way%20of,how%20sloppy%20your%20thinking%20is.%E2%80%9D
Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/yEFMHoCkEeyl34fItJe__w along with the commentary there. This quote is another example of this fallacy.
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minnstate.pressbooks.pub minnstate.pressbooks.pub
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In the second case, checking “Connection” in my Index would lead me to this card. I might then compare this thought to others that use the same keyword, to see how it supports or modifies the idea of connection.
The reliance upon tag-like keywords in physical note-taking of this type seems to be a limitation compared to digital systems that allow full text search. That said, the benefits of full text search might be somewhat overblown, as found search terms say nothing of the context and would need either tags or a quick read of the text to provide that context.
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I might even say the best books are the best books because they stubbornly defy being reduced to a synopsis and some notes. Another way of saying that is, great books have so much in them that many different people with many different interests can all find something they’ll value in their pages.
This might be said of art, design, or any pursuit. Any design might comprise hundreds of design decisions. The more there are, the more depth to the design, the more facets of the problem space it has examined, the more knowledge it may contain, the more potential to learn.
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Andere Sammlungen sind ihrem Verwendungszweck nie zugeführt worden. Der Germanist Friedrich Kittler etwa legte Karteikarten zu allen Farben an, die dem Mond in der Lyrik zugeschrieben worden sind. Das Buch dazu könnte jemand mit Hilfe dieser Zettel schreiben.
machine translation (Google):
Other collections have never been used for their intended purpose. The Germanist Friedrich Kittler, for example, created index cards for all the colors that were ascribed to the moon in poetry. Someone could write the book about it with the help of these slips of paper.
Germanist Friedrich Kittler collected index cards with all the colors that were ascribed to the moon in poetry. He never did anything with his collection, but it has been suggested that one could write a book with his research collection.
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Blumenberg’s near-obsessive reliance on this writing machinery
Helbig indicates that Hans Blumenberg had a "near obsessive reliance on [his Zettelkasten as] writing machinery.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Film making is like note taking
Incidentally, one should note that the video is made up of snippets over time and then edited together at some later date. Specifically, these snippets are much like regularly taken notes which can then be later used (and even re-used--some could easily appear in other videos) to put together some larger project, namely this compilation video of his process. Pointing out this parallel between note taking and movie/videomaking, makes the note taking process much more easily seen, specifically for students. Note taking is usually a quite and solo endeavor done alone, which makes it much harder to show and demonstrate. And when it is demonstrated or modeled, it's usually dreadfully boring and uninteresting to watch compared to seeing it put together and edited as a finished piece. Edits in a film are visually obvious while the edits in written text, even when done poorly, are invisible.
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Ryan Holiday does touch on all parts of his writing process, but the majority of the video is devoted to the sorts of easier bikeshedding ideas that people are too familiar with (editing, proofreading, title choice, book cover choice). Hidden here is the process of researching, writing, notes, and actual organizing process which are the much harder pieces for the majority of writers. Hiding it does a massive disservice to those watching it for the most essential advice they're looking for.
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www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>u/taurusnoises</span> in One of the ways I use my zettelkasten (though Obsidian) to write essays : Zettelkasten (<time class='dt-published'>08/10/2022 12:28:58</time>)</cite></small>
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read.aupress.ca read.aupress.ca
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The freedom to play with ideas, and to explore new ways of thinking, critiquing, deploying, and analyzing ed tech provided by metaphors, is much needed if we are to develop a better appreciation of its possibilities, implications, and limitations.
"Playful" activity as inherently "free" and actively necessary - compare to earlier sentence about whether that's "appropriate in the formal requirements" of a job.
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johannadaniel.fr johannadaniel.fr
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Fichiers et fiches de lecture autour des Souffrances du jeune Werther de Goethe
Files and reading sheets around the Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe
And you thought your slip boxes were DIY?!?
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Here again we seethe emphasis on writing as a movement that resists reification andall the intimidations of language. It is not surprising that Barthesshould have sought a form that would foster this infinite process. Theform lay, not in the fragment as such, but in the organization orarrangement that could be made from the fragments. He underlinedthis on an unpublished index card from 16 July 1979: ‘I can clearlysee this much (I think): my “notes” (Diary) as such, are not enough (Iincline towards them but in fact they’re a failure). What’s needed isanother turn of the screw, a “key”, which will turn these Notes-Diaryinto the mere notes of work that will be constructed and writtencontinuously: basically, to write notes, the index cards: to classifythem, turn them into bundles, and as I usually do, compose by takingone bundle after another.’11
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The most important thing about research is to know when to stop.How does one recognize the moment? When I was eighteen orthereabouts, my mother told me that when out with a young man Ishould always leave a half-hour before I wanted to. Although I wasnot sure how this might be accomplished, I recognized the advice assound, and exactly the same rule applies to research. One must stopbefore one has finished; otherwise, one will never stop and neverfinish.
Barbara Tuchman analogized stopping one's research to going out on a date: one should leave off a half-hour before you really want to.
Liink to: This sounds suspiciously like advice about when to start writing, but slightly in reverse: https://hypothes.is/a/WeoX9DUOEe2-HxsJf2P8vw
One might also liken these processes to the idea of divergence and convergence as described by Tiago Forte and others.
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Sincecopying is a chore and a bore, use of the cards, the smaller thebetter, forces one to extract the strictly relevant, to distill from thevery beginning, to pass the material through the grinder of one’s ownmind, so to speak.
Barbara Tuchman recommended using the smallest sized index cards possible to force one only to "extract the strictly relevant" because copying by hand can be both "a chore and a bore".
In the same address in 1963, she encourages "distill[ing] from the very beginning, to pass the material through the grinder of one's own mind, so to speak." This practice is similar to modern day pedagogues who encourage this practice, but with the benefit of psychology research to back up the practice.
This advice is two-fold in terms of filtering out the useless material for an author, but the grinder metaphor indicates placing multiple types of material in to to a processor to see what new combinations of products come out the other end. This touches more subtly on the idea of combinatorial creativity encouraged by Raymond Llull, Matt Ridley, et al. or the serendipity described by Niklas Luhmann and others.
When did the writing for understanding idea begin within the tradition? Was it through experience in part and then underlined with psychology research? Visit Ahrens' references on this for particular papers to read.
Link to modality shift research.
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- modality shifts
- when to start x
- educational psychology
- reading with a pen in hand
- note card sizes
- note taking advice
- ars excerpendi
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- Barbara Tuchman
- combinatorial creativity
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Local file Local file
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Deutsch himself pointed to criticswho called him a ‘chiffonier’ or historical rag-picker, though he defended his ‘incon-venient though undeniable facts’ (Deutsch, 1916). A number of contemporaries recog-nized the limits of his interest in individual facts. ‘I get the impression’, one figure put it,‘that the charm of the facts of history, was so great for Deutsch, he lost himself socompletely . . . in the study of them, that he was never altogether able to say he is throughwith studying them and that he is ready for writing’ (Schulman, 1922). One review ofDeutsch’s Scrolls (1917), which collected some of his scattered articles, reflected thatthe articles lacked organization. ‘In order to obtain value,’ the reviewer insisted, ‘factsmust be organized . . . Isolate a fact as one isolates a germ in the laboratory, such a factbecomes worthless for historical purposes’ (Leiber, 1917).
Just as people chided Niklas Luhmann for his obtuseness in writing based on his zettelkasten, Gotthard Deutsch's critics felt he didn't write enough using his.
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journals.sagepub.com journals.sagepub.com
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Does Deutsch’s index constitute a great unwritten work of history, as some have claimed, or are the cards ultimately useless ‘chips from his workshop’?
From his bibliography, it appears that Deutsch was a prolific writer and teacher, so how will Lustig (or others he mentions) make the case that his card index was useless "chips from his workshop"? Certainly he used them in writing his books, articles, and newspaper articles? He also was listed as a significant contributor to an encyclopedia as well.
It'd be interesting to look at the record to see if he taught with them the way Roland Barthes was known to have done.
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forums.nanowrimo.org forums.nanowrimo.org
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https://forums.nanowrimo.org/t/linking-up-zettelkasten-or-card-index-method-writers/433719
Looking for writers who are using an index card-based, Zettelkasten (German translation: slip box), or fichier boîte method for writing. Both traditional methods in the vein of Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Ende, Anne Lamott, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, or Robert Pirsig as well as Niklas Luhmann-esque methods (perhaps better for non-fiction) are fine.
Commonplace book practitioners are also welcome.
How many index cards will it take you to get to 50,000 words? (Reminder: It’s easier to write a few sentences or an index card at a time than focusing on thousands of words a day…)
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forums.nanowrimo.org forums.nanowrimo.org
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Writing4ever_3
Even if your raw typing is 60+ wpm, it doesn't help if you're actively composing at the same time. If the words and ideas come to you at that speed and you can get it out, great, but otherwise focus on what you can do in 15 minute increments to get the ideas onto the page. If typing is holding you back, write by hand or try a tape recorder or voice to text software.
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archive.org archive.org
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https://archive.org/details/refiningreadingw0000meij/page/256/mode/2up?q=index+card
Refining, reading, writing : includes 2009 mla update card by Mei, Jennifer (Nelson, 2007)
Contains a very generic reference to note taking on index cards for arranging material, but of such a low quality in comparison to more sophisticated treatments in the century prior. Apparently by this time the older traditions have disappeared and have been heavily watered down into just a few paragraphs.
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archive.org archive.org
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Goutor only mentions two potential organizational patterns for creating output with one's card index: either by chronological order or topical order. (p34) This might be typical for a historian who is likely to be more interested in chronologies and who would have likely noted down dates within their notes.
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I love the phrasing of the title of his penultimate section "Making the card-file work", which makes it seem like the card file is ultimately doing the work of writing. Ultimately however, it's the work that was put into it that makes the card file useful, a sentiment that Jacques Goutor emphasizes when he says "How well this succeeds depends partly upon what was put into the file, and partly on how it was put in." (p34)
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For physical note taking on index cards or visualizations provided by computer generated graphs, one can physically view a mass of notes and have a general feeling if there is a large enough corpus to begin writing an essay, chapter, or book or if one needs to do additional research on a topic, or perhaps pick a different topic on which to focus.
(parts suggested by p7, though broadly obvious)
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Local file Local file
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From these considerations, I hope the reader will un-derstand that in a way I never " s t a r t " writing on a project;I am writing continuously, either in a more personal vein,in the files, in taking notes after browsing, or in moreguided endeavors
Seems similar to the advice within Ahrens. Did he have a section on not needing to "start" writing or at least not starting with a blank page?
Compare and contrast these, if so.
Link to: https://hyp.is/DJd2hDUQEe2BMGv-WFSnVQ/www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1360144X.2016.1210153
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At any rate, someof this writing leads me to feel uneasy about the assump-tion that all the skills required to put a book together areexplicit and teachable, as are the deadbeat methods ofmuch orthodox social science today.
"deadbeat methods"... wowza!
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certainly surrounding oneself with acircle of people who will listen and t a l k - - a n d at times theyhave to be imaginary characters--is one of them
Intellectual work requires "surfaces" to work against, almost as an exact analogy to substrates in chemistry which help to catalyze reactions. The surfaces may include: - articles, books, or other writing against which one can think and write - colleagues, friends, family, other thinkers, or even imaginary characters (as suggested by C. Wright Mills) - one's past self as instantiated by their (imperfect) memory or by their notes about excerpted ideas or their own thoughts
Are there any other surfaces we're missing?
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he taking o f anote is an additional mechanism for comprehension ofwhat one is reading.
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In the file, onecan experiment as a writer and thus develop o n e ' s ownpowers of expression.
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I had readBalzac off and on during the forties, and been much takenwith his self-appointed task of " c o v e r i n g " all the majorclasses and types in the society of the era he wished tomake his own.
We write to understand, to learn, to make knowledge our own.
Tags
- knowledge work
- examples
- intellectual surfaces
- continuous writing
- Honoré de Balzac
- muses
- learning
- zettelkasten
- rhetoric
- writing skills
- academic writing
- internalizing knowledge
- blank page
- inspiration
- writing
- Hemingway's White Bull
- writing advice
- writing for understanding
- conversations with the text
- conversations between texts
- card index as writing teacher
- conversations
- a writer writes always
- card index for writing
Annotators
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- Sep 2022
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media2-production.mightynetworks.com media2-production.mightynetworks.com
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Writing%has%never%given%me%any%pleasure.%
Good lord. Then don't write.
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Whenever%the%writer%writes,%it’s%always%three%o’clock%in%the%morning,%it’s%always%three%or%four%or%five%o’clock%in%the%morning%in%his%head.
Interesting, and for those of us awake then, writing poems and songs and stories in the dark (sometimes, alas, that has been me), the night seems endless.
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The%writer%trusts%nothing%he%writes
Thus, the revisions
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The%moment%a%writer%knows%how%to%achieve%a%certain%effect,%the%method%must%be%abandoned.
Interesting. I like that it suggests forever exploration.
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A%writer%loves%the%dark,%loves%it,%but%is%always%fumbling%around%in%the%light.%
This feels about right, to me, most of the time. You?
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tracydurnell.com tracydurnell.com
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Prioritizing thinking or wordcraft is an intriguing way to divide writers.
It's indeed an interesting distinction. Does it represent a different approach in starting point, or is it a deeper difference in artisanship? And there's a bridge needed I suppose. Just thinking does not lead to writing, only wordsmithing not to thought through storyline. I can think of fun and great non-fiction books that read more thought out, and those where wording was leading it seems. But is that sense proof of the actual process? Read Venkatesh original text.
If this is a useful distinction and ignoring the fact I'm not an author, I fall on the thinking side mostly. Back at uni I wrote columns where the words were leading the way though. Where the verbal construct was the fun, not conveying a point or story.
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marymount.instructure.com marymount.instructure.com
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Do’s 1. Write twenty minutes a day over a period of four days. Do this periodically. This way you wont feel overwhelmed. 2. Write in a private, safe, comfortable environment. 3. Write about issues you're currently living with, something youre thinking or dreaming about constantly, a trauma you've never disclosed or discussed or resolved. 4. Write about joys and pleasures, too. 5. Write about what happened. Write, too, about feelings about what happened. What do you feel? Why do you feel this way? Link events with feelings. 6. ‘Try to write an extremely detailed, organized, coherent, vivid, emotionally compelling narrative. Don’t worry about correctness, about grammar or punctuation. 7. Beneficial effects will occur even if no one reads your writing. If you choose to keep your writing and not discard it, you must safeguard it. 8. Expect, initially, that in writing in this way you will have complex and appropriately difficult feelings. Make sure you get support if you need it.
On the other side of my notecard, I wrote a set of warnings I'd gleaned from Pennebaker: Don’ts 1. Don’t use writing as a substitute for taking action. 2. Don't become overly intellectual. 3. Don’t use writing as a way of complaining. Use it, instead, to discover how and why you feel as you do. Simply complaining or venting will probably make you feel worse. 4. Don’t use your writing to become overly self-absorbed. Over- analyzing everything is counterproductive. 5. Don't use writing as a substitute for therapy or medical care.
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I recommended Paul Silvia’s bookHow to write a lot, a succinct, witty guide to academic productivity in the Boicean mode.
What exactly are Robert Boice and Paul Silvia's methods? How do they differ from the conventional idea of "writing"?
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• Daily writing prevents writer’s block.• Daily writing demystifies the writing process.• Daily writing keeps your research always at the top of your mind.• Daily writing generates new ideas.• Daily writing stimulates creativity• Daily writing adds up incrementally.• Daily writing helps you figure out what you want to say.
What specifically does she define "writing" to be? What exactly is she writing, and how much? What does her process look like?
One might also consider the idea of active reading and writing notes. I may not "write" daily in the way she means, but my note writing, is cumulative and beneficial in the ways she describes in her list. I might further posit that the amount of work/effort it takes me to do my writing is far more fruitful and productive than her writing.
When I say writing, I mean focused note taking (either excerpting, rephrasing, or original small ideas which can be stitched together later). I don't think this is her same definition.
I'm curious how her process of writing generates new ideas and creativity specifically?
One might analogize the idea of active reading with a pen in hand as a sort of Einsteinian space-time. Many view reading and writing as to separate and distinct practices. What if they're melded together the way Einstein reconceptualized the space time continuum? The writing advice provided by those who write about commonplace books, zettelkasten, and general note taking combines an active reading practice with a focused writing practice that moves one toward not only more output, but higher quality output without the deleterious effects seen in other methods.
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. Remove Boice from the equation, and the existing literature on scholarly writing offerslittle or no conclusive evidence that academics who write every day are any more prolific,productive, or otherwise successful than those who do not.
There is little if any research that writing every day has any direct benefits.
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Sword, Helen. “‘Write Every Day!’: A Mantra Dismantled.” International Journal for Academic Development 21, no. 4 (October 1, 2016): 312–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2016.1210153
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twitter.com twitter.comTwitter1
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@BenjaminVanDyneReplying to @ChrisAldrichI wish I had a good answer! The book I use when I teach is Joseph Harris’s “rewriting” which is technically a writing book but teaches well as a book about how to read in a writerly way.
Thanks for this! I like the framing and general concept of the book.
It seems like its a good follow on to Dan Allosso's OER text How to Make Notes and Write https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/ or Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes https://amzn.to/3DwJVMz which includes some useful psychology and mental health perspective.
Other similar examples are Umberto Eco's How to Write a Thesis (MIT, 2015) or Gerald Weinberg's The Fieldstone Method https://amzn.to/3DCf6GA These may be some of what we're all missing.
I'm reminded of Mark Robertson's (@calhistorian) discussion of modeling his note taking practice and output in his classroom using Roam Research. https://hyp.is/QuB5NDa0Ee28hUP7ExvFuw/thatsthenorm.com/mark-robertson-history-socratic-dialogue/ Perhaps we need more of this?
Early examples of this sort of note taking can also be seen in the religious studies space with Melanchthon's handbook on commonplaces or Jonathan Edwards' Miscellanies, though missing are the process from notes to writings. https://www.logos.com/grow/jonathan-edwards-organizational-genius/
Other examples of these practices in the wild include @andy_matuschak's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18 and TheNonPoet's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sdp0jo2Fe4 Though it may be better for students to see this in areas in which they're interested.
Hypothes.is as a potential means of modeling and allowing students to directly "see" this sort of work as it progresses using public/semi-public annotations may be helpful. Then one can separately model re-arranging them and writing a paper. https://web.hypothes.is/
Reply to: https://twitter.com/BenjaminVanDyne/status/1571171086171095042
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As I write this book, for instance, I am sitting in a small room, beforea laptop computer, surrounded by books, papers, and magazines—all ofwhich I am, in some metaphorical sense, “in conversation with” (in muchthe same way I am also in conversation with you, my imagined reader).But what I am actually doing is working with a set of materials—lookingfor books on my shelves and flipping through them, folding pages over ormarking them with Post-its, retyping passages, filing and retrieving print-outs and photocopies, making notes in margins and on index cards, and,of course, composing, cutting, pasting, formatting, revising, and printingblocks of prose. I am, that is, for the most part, moving bits of text and paperaround.
Joseph Harris uses a mélange of materials to make his writing including books, papers, magazines, from which he is copying sections out, writing in margins, making notes on index cards and then moving those pieces of text and pieces of paper (the index cards, and possibly Post-it notes) around to create his output.
He doesn't delineate a specific process for his excerpting or note taking practice. How does he organize his notes? Is he just pulling them from piles around him? Is there a sense of organization at all?
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Harris, Joseph. Rewriting: How To Do Things With Texts. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2006. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/9248
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Courtney, Jennifer Pooler. “A Review of Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts.” The Journal of Effective Teaching 7, no. 1 (2007): 74–77.
Review of: Harris, Joseph. Rewriting: How To Do Things With Texts. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2006. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/9248.
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Joseph Harris' text Rewriting: How to do things with texts (2006) sounds like a solid follow on text to the ideas found in Sönke Ahrens (2017) or Dan Allosso (2022).
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Murray, D. M. (2000). The craft of revision (4th ed.). Boston: Harcourt College Publish-ers.
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Elbow, P. (1999). Options for responding to student writing. In R. Straub (Ed.), Asourcebook for responding to student writing (pp. 197-202). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.
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many students andteachers confuse revising with editing.
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Countering represents a writer attempting to “suggest a different way ofthinking” as opposed to attempting to “nullify” a writing (p. 57).
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Harris further illustrates hisown idea of voices adding to an author’s text; each chapter contains multiple “intertexts,”which are small graphics with citation references to outside materials addressed nearby inthe text. These intertexts reinforce the practice of adding voices to the author’s docu-ment. These illustrations are effective; essentially, Harris is reflecting and modeling thepractice.
I quite like the idea of intertexts, which have the feeling of annotating one's own published work with the annotations of others. A sort of reverse annotation. Newspapers and magazines often feature pull quotes to draw in the reader, but why not have them as additional voices annotating one's stories or arguments.
This could certainly be done without repeating the quote twice within the piece.
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too often students arelocked into a restricted win/lose view of academic writing.
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This text fills a gap in the professional literature concerning revision because currently,according to Harris, there is little scholarship on “how to do it” (p. 7).
I'm curious if this will be an answer to the question I asked in Call for Model Examples of Zettelkasten Output Processes?
Tags
- countering
- Dan Allosso
- Sönke Ahrens
- voices
- reverse annotations
- composition
- modelling behavior
- revision
- writing process
- book reviews
- want to read
- revising
- Peter Elbow
- note taking
- open questions
- editing
- reading practices
- Donald Murray
- argumentation
- intertexts
- writing
- writing advice
- references
- game theory
- annotations
- read
- nullification
- active reading
- zettelkasten output
- tools for thought
- Joseph Harris
- card index for writing
- marginalia
Annotators
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mleddy.blogspot.com mleddy.blogspot.com
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https://mleddy.blogspot.com/2005/03/writing-and-index-cards.html
Looser tradition here for using index cards for writing. Comment have some interesting potential examples from circa 2005
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mleddy.blogspot.com mleddy.blogspot.com
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Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair.
source? date? (obviously on/before 2005-09-22)
Any relation to Robert Boice's work on writing every day?
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www.takenote.space www.takenote.space
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I didn't see/couldn't find this image in the Life archive, but it was obviously contemporanous to the others
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twitter.com twitter.com
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But having a conversation partner in your topic is actually ideal!
What's the solution: dig into your primary sources. Ask open-ended questions, and refine them as you go. Be open to new lines of inquiry. Stage your work in Conversation with so-and-so [ previously defined as the author of the text].
Stacy Fahrenthold recommends digging into primary sources and using them (and their author(s) as a "conversation partner". She doesn't mention using either one's memory or one's notes as a communication partner the way Luhmann does in "Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen" (1981), which can be an incredibly fruitful and creative method for original material.
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www.tandfonline.com www.tandfonline.com
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Sword, Helen. “‘Write Every Day!’: A Mantra Dismantled.” International Journal for Academic Development 21, no. 4 (October 1, 2016): 312–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2016.1210153.
Preliminary thoughts prior to reading:<br /> What advice does Boice give? Is he following in the commonplace or zettelkasten traditions? Is the writing ever day he's talking about really progressive note taking? Is this being misunderstood?
Compare this to the incremental work suggested by Ahrens (2017).
Is there a particular delineation between writing for academic research and fiction writing which can be wholly different endeavors from a structural point of view? I see citations of many fiction names here.
Cross reference: Throw Mama from the Train quote
A writer writes, always.
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twitter.com twitter.com
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via
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>slide from tonight's class - when to write pic.twitter.com/6VjgdsUYNs
— Sister Sarah (@sarahdoingthing) June 20, 2017
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images.google.com images.google.com
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Uladimir Nabokov Ithaca, New YorkDate taken:1958Photographer:Carl Mydans
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images.google.com images.google.com
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Uladimir Nabokov Ithaca, New YorkDate taken:1958Photographer:Carl Mydans
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mleddy.blogspot.com mleddy.blogspot.com
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After a leisurely lunch, prepared by the German cook who came with the house, I would spend another four-hour span in a lawn chair, among the roses and mockingbirds, using lined index cards and a Blackwing pencil, for copying and recopying, rubbing out and writing anew, the scenes I had imagined in the morning. Foreword to Lolita: A Screenplay (1973)
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The manuscript, mostly a Fair Copy, from which the present text has been faithfully printed, consists of eighty medium-sized index cards, on each of which Shade reserved the pink upper line for headings (canto number, date) and used the fourteen light-blue lines for writing out with a fine nib in a minute, tidy, remarkably clear hand, the text of this poem, skipping a line to indicate double space, and always using a fresh card to begin a new canto. Pale Fire (1962) [From Charles Kinbote's foreword to his edition of John Shade's poem.]
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Posted byu/piloteris16 hours agoCreative output examples .t3_xdrb0k._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I am curious about examples, if any, of how an anti net can be useful for creative or artistic output, as opposed to more strictly intellectual articles, writing, etc. Does anyone here use an antinet as input for the “creative well” ? I’d love examples of the types of cards, etc
They may not necessarily specifically include Luhmann-esque linking, numbering, and indexing, but some broad interesting examples within the tradition include: Comedians: (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten for references/articles) - Phyllis Diller - Joan Rivers - Bob Hope - George Carlin
Musicians: - Eminem https://boffosocko.com/2021/08/10/55794555/ - Taylor Swift: https://hypothes.is/a/SdYxONsREeyuDQOG4K8D_Q
Dance: - Twyla Tharpe https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000SEOWBG/ (Chapter 6)
Art/Visual - Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/archive-collections/verkn%C3%BCpfungszwang-exhibition/mnemosyne-materials
Creative writing (as opposed to academic): - Vladimir Nabokov https://www.openculture.com/2014/02/the-notecards-on-which-vladimir-nabokov-wrote-lolita.html - Jean Paul - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00168890.2018.1479240 - https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC34721 (German) - Michael Ende https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Endes-Zettelkasten-Skizzen-Notizen/dp/352271380X
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Traditionally, doctoral students are expected to implicitly absorb thisargument structure through repeated reading or casual discussion.
The social annotation being discussed here is geared toward classroom work involving reading and absorbing basic literature in an area of the sort relating to lower level literature reviews done for a particular set of classes.
It is not geared toward the sort of more hard targeted curated reading one might do on their particular thesis topic, though this might work in concert with a faculty advisor on a 1-1 basis.
My initial thought on approaching the paper was for the latter and not the former.
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twitter.com twitter.com
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Jeff Miller@jmeowmeowReading the lengthy, motivational introduction of Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes (a zettelkasten method primer) reminds me directly of Gerald Weinberg's Fieldstone Method of writing.
reply to: https://twitter.com/jmeowmeow/status/1568736485171666946
I've only seen a few people notice the similarities between zettelkasten and fieldstones. Among them I don't think any have noted that Luhmann and Weinberg were both systems theorists.
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Bibliographical Index Card File
Note that here in the index, Eco differentiates the index card file with the descriptor "bibliographical" as there is another card file that will play a part.
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Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis
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Annotators
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Jeremy August 31 Flag I read the book based on your enthusiasm, Chris, and while I learned something from the chapters on making notes, I was very disappointed in the second half, on writing. He is so wrong on the passive I find it hard to believe he ever actually researched it. But no matter, he is in good company on that. I just hope not too many people think they will truly understand the passive after reading this book.
Repy to https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/16382/#Comment_16382
@Jeremy I certainly take your point on that score. I had read through a previous edition of just the writing portion which was originally written by S.J. Allosso from a prior generation, so I didn't read through all of the second half of this edition of the book. I haven't compared them, so I'm not sure how much revision, if any, has happened in the writing advice part of the text. I was definitely more interested in his take on note making in the first half.
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stackoverflow.com stackoverflow.com
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I wrote my own OAuth 2 implementation in the end, it actually wasn't that hard once you understand the spec.
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www.w3.org www.w3.org
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A disadvantage seemed to me to be that it is not obvious which words take one to particularly important new material, but I imagine that one could indicate that in the text.
I don't understand this.
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2012. Microsoft Writing Style Guide. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/welcome/.
Other recommendable technical–writing style guides:
- Google developer documentation style guide
- Apple Style Guide
- Write the Docs, Accessibility guidelines
- Write the Docs, Reducing bias in your writing
- IBM developerWorks Editorial style guide
- Red Hat Technical Writing Style Guide
- Splunk Style Guide
- DigitalOcean Documentation Style Guide
- Salesforce Style Guide for Documentation and User Interface Text
- Rackspace Writing guidelines
- OpenStack Writing style
- MongoDB Documentation Style Guide
- Conscious Style Guide
- 18F Content Guide
- A11Y Style Guide
- Mailchimp Content Style Guide
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Annotators
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Update now that I'm three years in to my PhD program and am about to start on my lit reviews and dissertation research... Holy Forking Shirtballs, am I glad I started my ZK back in 2020!!! * I cannot tell you how often I've used it to write my course papers. * I cannot tell you how often I've had it open during class discussions to back up my points. * I cannot tell you how lazy I've gotten with some of my entries (copying and pasting text instead of reworking it into my own words), and how much I wish I had taken the time to translate those entries for myself.
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www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
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When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his final and unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. But Nabokov’s wife, Vera, could not bear to destroy her husband’s last work, and when she died, the fate of the manuscript fell to her son. Dmitri Nabokov, now seventy-five—the Russian novelist’s only surviving heir, and translator of many of his books—has wrestled for three decades with the decision of whether to honor his father’s wish or preserve for posterity the last piece of writing of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.
Nabokov's wishes were that his heirs burn the index cards on which he had handwritten the beginning of his unfinished novel The Original of Laura. His wife Vera, not able to destroy her husband's work, couldn't do it, so the decision fell to their son Dimitri. Having translated many of his father's works previously, Dimitri Nabokov ultimately allowed Penguin the right to publish the unfinished novel.
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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Allosso, Dan, and S. F. Allosso. How to Make Notes and Write. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.
Annotatable .pdf copy for Hypothes.is: https://docdrop.org/pdf/How-to-Make-Notes-and-Write---Allosso-Dan-jzdq8.pdf/
Nota Bene:
These annotations are of a an early pre-release draft of the text. One ought to download the most recent revised/final/official draft at https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.
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threadreaderapp.com threadreaderapp.com
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While Heyde outlines using keywords/subject headings and dates on the bottom of cards with multiple copies using carbon paper, we're left with the question of where Luhmann pulled his particular non-topical ordering as well as his numbering scheme.
While it's highly likely that Luhmann would have been familiar with the German practice of Aktenzeichen ("file numbers") and may have gotten some interesting ideas about organization from the closing sections of the "Die Kartei" section 1.2 of the book, which discusses library organization and the Dewey Decimal system, we're still left with the bigger question of organization.
It's obvious that Luhmann didn't follow the heavy use of subject headings nor the advice about multiple copies of cards in various portions of an alphabetical index.
While the Dewey Decimal System set up described is indicative of some of the numbering practices, it doesn't get us the entirety of his numbering system and practice.
One need only take a look at the Inhalt (table of contents) of Heyde's book! The outline portion of the contents displays a very traditional branching tree structure of ideas. Further, the outline is very specifically and similarly numbered to that of Luhmann's zettelkasten. This structure and numbering system is highly suggestive of branching ideas where each branch builds on the ideas immediately above it or on the ideas at the next section above that level.
Just as one can add an infinite number of books into the Dewey Decimal system in a way that similar ideas are relatively close together to provide serendipity for both search and idea development, one can continue adding ideas to this branching structure so they're near their colleagues.
Thus it's highly possible that the confluence of descriptions with the book and the outline of the table of contents itself suggested a better method of note keeping to Luhmann. Doing this solves the issue of needing to create multiple copies of note cards as well as trying to find cards in various places throughout the overall collection, not to mention slimming down the collection immensely. Searching for and finding a place to put new cards ensures not only that one places one's ideas into a growing logical structure, but it also ensures that one doesn't duplicate information that may already exist within one's over-arching outline. From an indexing perspective, it also solves the problem of cross referencing information along the axes of the source author, source title, and a large variety of potential subject headings.
And of course if we add even a soupcon of domain expertise in systems theory to the mix...
While thinking about Aktenzeichen, keep in mind that it was used in German public administration since at least 1934, only a few years following Heyde's first edition, but would have been more heavily used by the late 1940's when Luhmann would have begun his law studies.
https://hypothes.is/a/CqGhGvchEey6heekrEJ9WA
When thinking about taking notes for creating output, one can follow one thought with another logically both within one's card index not only to write an actual paper, but the collection and development happens the same way one is filling in an invisible outline which builds itself over time.
Linking different ideas to other ideas separate from one chain of thought also provides the ability to create multiple of these invisible, but organically growing outlines.
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english.stackexchange.com english.stackexchange.com
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Given that so much of the web environment isn't being written by writers who care, I'm increasingly seeing 'login' used as a verb.
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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Allosso, Dan, and S. F. Allosso. How to Make Notes and Write. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.
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www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com
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This piece would benefit from better editing—e.g. its use of pronouns with an unnatural (or too-far-away) antecedent, dubious phrasing like "all the more", etc.
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Selections from CarlyleEdited by H. W. BOYNTON. i2mo, cloth, 288 pages. Price, 75 cents.
And here I was not knowing who Carlyle was just a day or two ago and now I'm seeing advertisements for collections of his work! 😁
Apparently I've just been reading the wrong things and jumping back to the early 21st century is where it's all at.
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Dutcher, George Matthew. “Directions and Suggestions for the Writing of Essays or Theses in History.” Historical Outlook 22, no. 7 (November 1, 1931): 329–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/21552983.1931.10114595
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These Directions and suggestions were first cornpiled in1908, and the first edition was printed in 1911 for use in theauthor‘s own classes. The present edition is the result ofthorough revision and is planned for general use.
This will be much more interesting given that he'd first written about this topic in 1908 and has accumulated more experience since then.
Look for suggestions about the potential change in practice over the ensuing years.
Is the original version extant in his papers?
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Mere paraphrasing the work of an-other is as offensive as direct copying. The discovery of ma-terials, the research, the oqanization of the material, theplan of treatment, and the literary composition should eachbe strictly the independent work of the student. H e shouldlearn not merely to collect facts on paper but also to as-similate them in his own mind 4then express them interms of his own thinking, while adhering to strict accuracyin the statement of facts.
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Zn&tence on good style. Reasonable care in follow-ing these suggestions with regard to style is essential tothe production of an acceptable essay, and neglect of themwill affect unfavorably the grade to be assigned.
Sadly, he doesn't define "good style" here and only a paragraph after saying to avoid the style of Carlyle and Macaulay.
This paragraph is one of the several of the type that would more appropriately appear in a syllabus than in a published journal article on this particular topic. Thus the style is here is part journal article on writing, but also format which could be subsumed into syllabi by others.
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One can't help but notice that Dutcher's essay, laid out like it is in a numbered fashion with one or two paragraphs each may stem from the fact of his using his own note taking method.
Each section seems to have it's own headword followed by pre-written notes in much the same way he indicates one should take notes in part 18.
It could be illustrative to count the number of paragraphs in each numbered section. Skimming, most are just a paragraph or two at most while a few do go as high as 5 or 6 though these are rarer. A preponderance of shorter one or two paragraphs that fill a single 3x5" card would tend to more directly support the claim. Though it is also the case that one could have multiple attached cards on a single idea. In Dutcher's case it's possible that these were paperclipped or stapled together (does he mention using one side of the slip only, which is somewhat common in this area of literature on note making?). It seems reasonably obvious that he's not doing more complex numbering or ordering the way Luhmann did, but he does seem to be actively using it to create and guide his output directly in a way (and even publishing it as such) that supports his method.
Is this then evidence for his own practice? He does actively mention in several places links to section numbers where he also cross references ideas in one card to ideas in another, thereby creating a network of related ideas even within the subject heading of his overall essay title.
Here it would be very valuable to see his note collection directly or be able to compare this 1927 version to an earlier 1908 version which he mentions.
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The editors of the American historical re-vim suggest t o their reviewers that they should write “witlia scientific rather than a literary intention, and with definite-ness and precision in both praise and dispraise. I t is desiredthat the review of tlie book will be such as will convey t o thereader a clear and comprehensive notion of its nature, ofits contents, of its merits, of its place in the literature ofthe subject, and of the amount of its positive contributionto knowledge.
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A tentative oiitline should be prepared as soonas ossible after beginning reading on the subject and modi-f i e f a s the progress of the work requires.
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scottscheper.com scottscheper.com
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https://scottscheper.com/letter/36/
Clemens Luhmann, Niklas' son, has a copy of a book written in German in 1932 and given to his father by Friedrich Rudolf Hohl which ostensibly is where Luhmann learned his zettelkasten technique. It contains a 34 page chapter titled Die Kartei (the Card Index) which has the details.
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howaboutthis.substack.com howaboutthis.substack.com
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Below is a two page spread summarizing a Fast Company.com article about the Pennebaker method, as covered in Timothy Wilson’s book Redirect:
Worth looking into this. The idea of the Pennebaker method goes back to a paper of his in 1986 that details the health benefits (including mental) of expressive writing. Sounds a lot like the underlying idea of morning pages, though that has the connotation of clearing one's head versus health related benefits.
Compare/contrast the two methods.
Is there research underpinning morning pages?
See also: Expressive Writing in Psychological Science https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1745691617707315<br /> appears to be a recap article of some history and meta studies since his original work.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Following. I haven’t found anything in years. I’m planning on building my own scraper for my bank this winter if I can’t find anything by then
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Glad you liked it. That's an example of the "let's let the zettelkasten direct my writing" approach. This is different than the "I have something I'm working on. Let's see if there's anything in the zettelkasten to support/refute it" approach, which I also do. So, I might call one "directive," and the other "supportive." (Although, I'm just making that up).
Different modes/approaches to writing when using a zettelkasten:<br /> - directive: let the zettelkasten direct the writing project - supportive: one has a particular writing project in mind and uses their zettelkasten collection to support their thinking and writing for that.
Are there other potential methods in addition to these two?
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Hit me up. Happy to show my zettel-based writing, and how my notes translate into published content, both short- and long-form.
Thanks u/taurusnoises, your spectacular recent video "Using the Zettelkasten (and Obsidian) to Write an Essay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OUn2-h6oVc is about as close to the sort of public example of output creation I had been looking for!
I'm sure that there are other methods and workflows out there which vary by person, method, and modality (analog/digital) and it would be interesting to see what those practices look like as examples for others to use, follow, and potentially improve upon.
I particularly appreciate that your visual starting perspective of the graph view in Obsidian fairly closely mimics what an analog zettelkasten user might be doing and seeing within that modality.
I'm still collecting extant examples and doing some related research, but perhaps I'll have some time later in the year to do some interviews with particular people about how they're actively doing this as you suggested.
On a tangential note, I'm also piqued by some of the specific ideas you mention in your notes in the video as they relate to some work on orality and memory I've been exploring over the past several years. If you do finish that essay, I'd love to read the finished piece.
Thanks again for this video!
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www.ijcai.org www.ijcai.org
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Symbolic Synthesis of Fault-Tolerance Ratiosin Parameterised Multi-Agent Systems
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minnstate.pressbooks.pub minnstate.pressbooks.pub
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Writing about anything – a novel, a historical primary source, an exam question – is at least a three-way dialogue. In the case of this handbook the conversation is between me, the writer; you, the reader; and the material. Similarly, writing about something you have read or researched should serve at least three purposes: to explore the material; to describe your reactions to it; and to communicate with your reader.
Writing is a three-way dialog
First, it is a conversation between an author, a reader, and the material. It is also an exploration of your research, your reaction to the material, and what you—as the author—is trying to communicate to the reader. Keeping each component of these triplets in mind as the writing (and likely reviewing of the writing) happens makes for engaging reading.
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escapingflatland.substack.com escapingflatland.substack.com
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When I’m writing this, from March through August 2022
The author took time over a period of 5 months to put this essay together. That's impressive, in terms of effort put in and in terms of tenacity. How much of this time is to 'hold questions' as Johnnie Moore would say, to develop your thoughts iteratively. Could it have been done in index cards, under the radar, with the essay then a smaller effort, reduced to collating those index cards?
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ljvmiranda921.github.io ljvmiranda921.github.io
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I also mentioned Zettelkasten many times in this post, but I don’t do that anymore—I just did a 1-month dry run and it felt tiring. Pen and paper just gives me the bare essentials. I can get straight to work and not worry if something is a literature note or a permanent note.
What is it that was tiring about the practice? Did they do it properly, or was the focus placed on tremendous output driving the feeling of a need for commensurate tremendous input on a daily basis? Most lifetime productive users only made a few cards a day, but I get the feeling that many who start, think they should be creating 20 cards a day and that is definitely a road to burn out. This feeling is compounded by digital tools that make it easier to quickly capture ideas by quoting or cut and pasting, but which don't really facilitate the ownership of ideas (internalization) by the note taker. The work of writing helps to facilitate this. Apparently the framing of literature note vs. permanent note also was a hurdle in the collection of ideas moving toward the filtering down and refining of one's ideas. These naming ideas seem to be a general hurdle for many people, particularly if they're working without particular goals in mind.
Only practicing zettelkasten for a month is certainly no way to build real insight or to truly begin developing anything useful. Even at two cards a day and a minimum of 500-1000 total cards to see some serendipity and creativity emerge, one would need to be practicing for just over a year to begin seeing interesting results.
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