quote from Kate Edgar, Sacks' assistant and editor

Julius Reizen in reviewing over Umberto Eco's index card system in How to Write a Thesis, defines his own "insurance card" as one which contains "hard-to-classify thoughts, questions, and areas for further inquiry". These he would keep together so that they don't otherwise get lost in the variety of other locations one might keep them

These might be akin to Ahrens' "fleeting notes" but are ones which may not easily or even immediately be converted in to "permanent notes" for one's zettelkasten. However, given their mission critical importance, they may be some of the most important cards in one's repository.

link this to - idea of centralizing one's note taking practice to a single location

Is this idea in Eco's book and Reizen is the one that gives it a name since some of the other categories have names? (examples: bibliographic index cards, reading index cards (aka literature notes), cards for themes, author index cards, quote index cards, idea index cards, connection cards). Were these "officially" named and categorized by Eco?

May be worthwhile to create a grid of these naming systems and uses amongst some of the broader note taking methods. Where are they similar, where do they differ?

Multi-search tools that have full access to multiple trusted data stores (ostensibly personal ones across notebooks, hard drives, social media services, etc.) could potentially solve the problem of needing to remember where you noted something.

Currently, in the social media space especially, this is not a realized service.

How to ZK a fiction book! Zettelkasten for Fiction- Where Imagination Finds Order'- Book WIP ep. 78 by [[Victoria Crowder]]

meh... interested in the mention, but nothing directly actionable here. Perhaps in her other material?...

Not that it couldn't be done, but I'll suggest that following the structure/order of a Luhmann-artig zettelkasten may be a bit more limiting or difficult for creating fiction.

There's a rich history of researching, outlining, and writing with card indexes as part of the creative process. Perhaps looking briefly at some examples particularly focusing on fiction may be helpful? Once you've done this, you can pick and choose the portions and affordances that work best for your preferred way of thinking and working.

Some quick examples:

• Vladimir Nabokov https://www.openculture.com/2014/02/the-notecards-on-which-vladimir-nabokov-wrote-lolita.html
• David Lynch process via Frank Daniel: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%27David+Lynch%27
• Variations of this method include:
  • Dustin Lance Black https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrvawtrRxsw
  • Ben Rowland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwKjuBvNi40
• Randy Ingermanson. “The Snowflake Method For Designing A Novel.” Advanced Fiction Writing, circa 2013. https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/

Perhaps querying my digital zettelkasten may be helpful for you? Start with: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%27card+index+for+writing%27

Ultimately, you can only spend so much time going down the rabbit hole of how you ought to do this work and taking suggestions or reading about how others have done it. The more difficult but more fruitful portion is to pick a method which seems like it will work for you and experiment with it by actually using or evolving it for yourself. How you start may not necessarily be how you end, but you won't know what's best for you if you don't start. Practice, practice, practice will get you much farther faster.

reply to u/Atreides_Lion at https://reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1ft4r3z/a_very_important_matter_for_me/

I think this is a good example of a misleading marketing ploy that shouldn't exist in technical documentation.

Robert Caro's method of writing

The additional "hidden context" is that the rachet/gear seen in many of these diagrams is usually attached to a radial spring (or some other device) which, as it is wound, stores energy which is later used by the bigger device in which the rachet and pawl are encased. Examples include the stem of watches, which when wound, store energy which the watch later uses to run as it counts the seconds. Another example is the mainspring of a typewriter which is attached to a ratchet/pawl set up; when you push the carriage to the right, the spring gets wound up and stores energy which is slowly expended by the escapement a space or a letter at a time as you type. In the zettelkasten analogy, the box and numbered cards placed in it act as the pawl (the wedge that prevents backward movement), as you add more and more information, you're storing/building up "potential energy" in small bits. This "stored energy" can be spent at a later time by allowing you to more easily write an article, paper, book, etc. In some sense, the zettelkasten (as most tools do) allows you a "mechanical advantage" in the writing process over trying to remember everything you've ever read and then relying on your ability to spit it all back out in a well-ordered manner.

reply to Muhammed Ali at https://discord.com/channels/992400632390615070/992400632776507447/1286577013439594497

continuation of https://hypothes.is/a/GTPIPnYiEe-GTUu4YcdeAQ

Typewriters? In 2024? Are You Nuts? by Jesse M. Slater for [[Raconteur Press]]

A short, but relatively solid typewriter 101 story for someone looking for a distraction-free writing machine. Certainly not completist, but enough to get your toes wet.

Slater uses his typewriter for a first draft, then edits the second draft as he re-types it into his computer to have a digital copy for further editing and distribution.

https://web.archive.org/web/20231121081108/https://www.humanwordsproject.com/

Found via Richard Polt's blog.

Site no longer exists in 2024

Makes reference like whatever we do, the result will depend of our decisions or choices

“The Da Vinci Code” Trial: Dan Brown’s Witness Statement Is a Great Read by [[Peter Lattman]]

sasssssy

Typewriter Video Series - Episode 147: Font Sizes and the Writing Process by [[Joe Van Cleave]]

typewriters for note making

double or 1 1/2 spacing with smaller typefaces may be more efficient for drafting documents, especially first drafts

editing on actual paper can be more useful for some

Drafting on a full sheet folded in half provides a book-like reading experience for reading/editing and provides an automatic backing sheet

typewritten (or printed) sheets may be easier to see and revise than digital formats which may hide text the way ancient scrolls did for those who read them.

Jack Kerouac used rolls of paper to provide continuous writing experience. Doesn't waste the margins of paper at the top/bottom. This may be very useful for first drafts.

JVC likes to thread rolls of paper into typewriters opposite to the original curl so as to flatten the paper out in the end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixedink

MixedInk was a startup that provided web-based, collaborative writing software enabling large groups of people to create text that expresses a collective opinion, such as a mission statement, editorial, political platform, open letter or product review.

I want a bookwheel for my typewriter collection.

Isaac Azimov had multiple typewriters and used each of them for work on a different writing project.

would be a good title for a book

Cothran, Ann, and George E. Mason. “The Typewriter: Time-Tested Tool for Teaching Reading and Writing.” The Elementary School Journal 78, no. 3 (1978): 171–73. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1001415

No new results here, but a modest overview and literature review of research on typewriters in classrooms.

M. W. Tate's 1934 typewriter studies showed student gains in language usage and spelling. Now that computers have automatic spell-checkers and students less frequently use dictionaries or study spelling in particular, does spelling ability in modern classrooms keep pace with numbers from earlier in the century when more emphasis was put on that portion of writing pedagogy?

One must wonder if the early use of typewriters to teach reading and writing research matches that of modern day use of computers and tablets in the same classrooms?

Interesting thought. This guy relates the upcome of AI (non-fiction) writing to the lack of willingness people have to find out what is true and what is false.

Similar to Nas & Damian Marley's line in the Patience song -- "The average man can't prove of most of the things that he chooses to speak of. And still won't research and find the root of the truth that you seek of."

If you want to form an opinion about something, do this educated, not based on a single source--fact-check, do thorough research.

Charlie Munger's principle. "I never allow myself to have [express] an opinion about anything that I don't know the opponent side's argument better than they do."

It all boils down to a critical self-thinking society.

Really useful video about the generation of story beats.

A great podcast about writing which will help you explore the work, practice and philosophy of writing fiction through a light-hearted conversation

—Larry, Throw Momma from the Train, 1987

Best article on Deep POV I have ever read.

9/8g The card index technique is based on the experience that one cannot think without writing – at least not in demanding, selectively accessing memory-based contexts.

This also means that one cannot think without making allowances for differences.

I like this slightly more differentiated instantiation for thinking better than Ahren's assertion that one can't think without writing. Luhmann qualifies it over and above Ahrens who elides meaning if this was the source he may have been tangentially referencing. (Was it an explicit reference? check...)

https://www.blog.goat.ai/goat-st/

https://web.archive.org/web/20240711102003/https://longnow.org/ideas/moonbound/

via Frank Meeuwsen https://frankmeeuwsen.com/2024/07/10/dragons-on-the.html

On writing [[Moonbound by Robin Sloan]] , Sloan makes a few remarks about his notes that support his writing process.

His writing process is for several weeks to go through notes, just looking through them, let it mingle in his head. Then put things together and look for emergent clusters / topics.

Meaningful writing needs a driving personally urgent question. Sounds about right. Meaningful to whom though, and urgent at what scale? I think my own more continuous urgent questions feed into my company and the 'carrying' themes throughout my blogging, and sound through in how I share my ideas and stories in client orgs. In my blogging 'urgent' can be a few minutes thing, or a thing over a week, urging me to blog something in the now. It is forceful but temporary and localised. Vgl formulering v [[% Interessevelden 20200523102304]] [[Holding questions 20091015123253]]

https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/nabokov.jpeg via https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/typers.html

This photo, similar to others in the Carl Mydans series for LIFE Magazine is surely from his September 1958 photo series, though I couldn't find an original from the LIFE archive.

Nabokov, reading off of index cards in his zettelkasten, dictates to his wife Vera who is typing on what appears to be a 1949 or 1950 Henry Dreyfuss Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriter.

Notice metal strip on the back of the typewriter with small rectangular blocks. This is the Royal's tabulator set up which distinguishes the Quiet De Luxe model from the Arrow model.

The body styling of this typewriter changed in 1950 from Dreyfuss' original 1948 design. Because it's light gray it has to be from '49 or '50 as the '48 original was a black body with dark gray highlights and didn't have chrome across the front as this one does in an alternate angle.

The benefits of using a typewriter to write novels and poetry. by [[Classic Typewriter]]

Imminent crisis is prerequisite to a savior.

good example of well-designed grant

hm. old spy novels emphasized politicians as locus of control and businessmen as villains. villains in the sense of antagonists. what about villainous businessmen who are in the locus of control?

The most masculine thing is devising covers for activities you enjoy, but may be considered feminine or frivolous.

Language is essential for the expression of thought, be it novel or ancient.

The complexity of the topic is determined by the content of the discussion the topic is about.

To me, it seems that Adler et al., are arguing that a topic should be stated as a phrase with varying degrees of complexity, determined by ?

Some examples of topics that are formulated and used in the original syntopicon.

A topic should never be suggestive, for it would not be a topic in that way.

https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/faq/what-is-perplexity-pages

https://astrohaus.com/freewrite/

common technique that I haven't used; tell the full story up front, or at least allude to it, before dropping in deeper down below.

not an intro paragraph but like a different story to contain your story. this is literlaly just an intro. but whatever, like the introduction of a detail as a segue into a story anchored by another detail

This is great. I could definitely see Agrilinks blog posts being leveraged by teams and individuals to have that consistent space to write and share. I have a Wordpress blog but not everybody has their own site.

this would be a cool opening scene, the motorboats trailing the cargo ship

fun sentence

Naturalism was prevalent in the time of Rilke (circa 1900s). Rilke, however, had a mystical experience in Russia? (did he literally have an experience of unity and bliss?) He combined this mysticism with the objectivity that he learned from Auguste Rodin.

As a result, his writing had a mystical and objective bent to it. How exactly? Was this also present in his Apollo poems (1907)?

When you catch and idea, you see it in your mind's eye, and you feel it, and you can hear it. And then you write that idea down on a piece of paper, and you write it down in such a way that when you read it, the idea comes back in full.<br /> —David Lynch 3:05

Schools and districts must adhere to these requirements to help ensure the implementation of technically sound and educationally meaningful IEPs and to provide FAPE.

Interleaving

Interesting. Needs more research on my part.

This is because of the fact that one needs to think (process) before writing. One can't possibly write everything verbatim. Deep processing. Relational thinking.

Alternate angle at http://images.google.com/hosted/life/81b7b3f24bbe1b3a.html

Nabokov used index cards for his research and writing. In one index card for research on Lolita, he creates a "weight-heigh-age table for girls of school age" to be able to specify Lolita's measurements. He also researched the Colt catalog of 1940 to get gun specifications to make those small points realistic in his writing.

syndication link

via 1949 April 06, Naugatuck Daily News, Walter Winchell In New York, Page 4, Column 5, Naugatuck, Connecticut. (NewspaperArchive)

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/14/writing-bleed/

definitely a trend of popular theories aligned with woke narratives being beat back

Polt, Richard. The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion for the 21st Century. 1st ed. Woodstock, VT: Countryman Press, 2015.

annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:65fe580cf845ed035c4e57ad02a987cf

alternate annotation URL

Woody Allen Has Used the Same Typewriter for 50 Years! by [[Roger Friedman]] in Showbiz411

Referenced documentary is from PBS: American Masters Woody Allen: A Documentary (2011)

Williams, Alex. “Paul Auster, the Patron Saint of Literary Brooklyn, Dies at 77.” The New York Times, May 1, 2024, sec. Books. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/books/paul-auster-dead.html.

digging the words into the page sounds adjacent to Seamus Heaney's "Digging" which analogizes writing to digging: https://hypothes.is/a/J-z8OgfQEe-0adtJyXyb3g

There's something here which suggests pens, typewriters, keyboards, etc. as direct extended mind objects as tools for thought. A sense of rumination and expulsion simultaneously.

Digging by [[Seamus Heaney]]<br /> via Poetry Foundation

https://web.archive.org/web/20240430091654/https://pdworkman.com/writing-a-novel-in-markdown/

A full description of PD Workman's workflow writing a book in markdown and Obsidian. Mentions using Canvas and Excalidraw to visualise plot development, as well as Kanban style boards. Mentions compiling tools to create manuscript from loose files. Seems similar to Scrivener except that has this baked in and thus less flexible?

https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/typers.html

Typewriters provide a tangible sense of accomplishment when a writer finishes a page.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181536/quotes

In this quote from Finding Forrester (Columbia Pictures, 2000) Forrester (portrayed by Sean Connery) turns the idea that writing is thinking on its head.

Find research that backs this up.

Great Books tend to arise in the presence of great audiences. by [[Naomi Kanakia]]

Kanakia looks at what may have made 19th C. Russian literature great. This has potential pieces to say about how other cultures had higher than usual rates of creativity in art, literature, etc.

What commonalities did these sorts of societies have? Were they all similar or were there broad ranges of multiple factors which genetically created these sorts of great outputs?

Could it have been just statistical anomaly?

Quotations are easier to collect than writing things out in one's own words, not only because it requires no work, but we may be afraid of changing the original meaning by changing the original words or by collapsing the context and divorcing the words from their original environment.

Perhaps some may be afraid that the words sound "right" and they have a sense of understanding of them, but they don't quite have a full grasp of the situation. Of course this may be remedied by the reader or listener not only by putting heard stories into their own words and providing additional concrete illustrative examples of the concepts. These exercises are meant to ensure that one has properly heard/read and understood a concept. Psychologists call this paraphrasing or repetition the "echo effect" (others might say parroting or mirroring) and have found that it can help to build understanding, connection, and likeability between people. Great leaders who do this will be sure to make sure that credit for the original ideas goes to the originator and not to themselves simply because they repeated it, especially in group settings where their words may have more primacy amidst their underlings.

(I can't find it at the moment, but there's a name/tag for this in my notes? looping?)

Beyond this, can one place the idea into a more clear language than the original? Add some poetry perhaps? Make the concept into a concrete meme to make it more memorable?

Journalists like to quote because it gives primacy of voice to the speaker and provides the reader with the sense that they're getting the original from which they might make up their own minds. It also provides a veneer of vérité to their reportage.

Link this back to Terrence's comedy: https://hypothes.is/a/xe15ZKPGEe6NJkeL77Ji4Q

Kaiser says that "description and illustration are complementary, they give together a more complete picture than either without the other" and this sentiment is similar to Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren's pedagogy of restatement and providing concrete examples a means of testing understanding.

See: - https://hypothes.is/a/RgUa-mOcEe6PChv_seYXZA - https://hypothes.is/a/B3sDhlm5Ee6wF0fRYO0OQg

John Barth, Writer Who Pushed Storytelling’s Limits, Dies at 93 by [[Michael T. Kaufman]], [[Dwight Garner]]

• i love that she knew how to translate her writing skill and talent to a bigger cause

Framework for message framing

Blogging as a way to "find your voice?"

Working in public as a way to avoid fooling yourself (a la Feynman).

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself– and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.” -Richard Feynman-

¶5

The book is ostensibly in the form of a card index with numbers laid out in running order to create a book. The index is also done keyed to these paragraph numbers rather than by page as has traditionally been done.

As a result, one could cut up the book (or two copies to get both sides) and turn it back into a card index with very little work.

https://qnnnp.medium.com/is-a-second-brain-superior-to-no-brainer-writing-c494dc86d429

David Witzel said:

I was trying to find David Roodman's "open book" on microfinance from 2010. Lots of link rot - not sure where it best lives now.

He had interesting stories about how difficult/useful the open writing process was. https://www.cgdev.org/article/microfinance-open-book-blog-qa-david-roodman

Luhmann his output might be a result of his work ethic and routines. Attributing productivity merely to his zettelkasten is misleading. Also Chris Aldrich on The Cargo Cult of Zettelkasten https://chrisaldrich.wordpress.com/2023/02/03/a-note-on-the-cargo-cult-of-zettelkasten/

that they had themselves been writing all those years.

Baker describes the library card catalog as a massive book made up of 3 x 5 inch pages describing all the other books. Sadly he laments, they never bothered to catalog this meta-book itself.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240208185222/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00349-5

Paper by author Lizzie Wolkovich refused because of inaccurate suspicion of ChatGPT usage. Another cut to the peer review system? She had her GitHub writing receipts. Intriguing. Makes me think about blogging in Obs while having a private blogging repo that tracks changes. n:: use github while writing for [[Reverse Turing menszijn bewijs vaker nodig 20230505100459]] purposes.

McCullough, David. “David McCullough Interview with NEH Chairman Bruce Cole.” Humanities 23, no. 4 (August 2002). https://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/david-mccullough-biography.

Compare with: https://hypothes.is/a/yEFMHoCkEeyl34fItJe__w (Luhmann on thinking/writing in Sonke Ahrens)

This seems to be the duality of Millard Kaufman (and certainly other writers'?) advice that to be a good writer, one must first be well read.

Of course, perhaps the two really are meant to be a hand in a glove and the reader should actively write as they read thereby doing both practices at once.

Doto, Bob. “What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Bottom-Up?’” Writing by Bob Doto (blog), January 25, 2024. https://writing.bobdoto.computer/what-do-we-mean-when-we-say-bottom-up/.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240118140434/https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary Intriguing post, albeit for me fait divers, on using a dictionary to improve one's writing. But it takes a dictionary that explains the differences in meaning between synonyms/alternatives for a word. At the end a process is shared to get an out of copyright English dictionary (an old Webster's) that works like that into a digitally usable form. https://hypothes.is/u/acct%3Apeterhagen%40hypothes.is Peter Hagen in 2021 mentions that process didn't work and used https://github.com/mortenjust/webster-mac as alternative that did. Found via Chris Aldrich on h.

Hawk Sugano was introduced to index cards circa 2001 by means of Watanabe Shoichi's book “知的生活の方法” (A Method of Intellectual Life".

https://web.archive.org/web/20170530033313/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/2006/08/20/me-and-indexcard/

https://web.archive.org/web/sitemap/https://machines.kfitz.info/ss22/

Archives of Kathleen Fitzpatrick's machines.kfitz.info sites for teaching/past courses.

read [[Stephen Robertson]] in A New Graduate Course for 2022: Digital Scholarship

https://communicationnation.blogspot.com/2009/09/designing-narrative-with-index-cards.html

https://hcommons.org/groups/academic-job-market-support-network/docs/

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/job_search_writing/preparing_an_application/writing_the_personal_statement/index.html

https://peculiargenres.commons.msu.edu/schedule/

overflow of writing advice!

[[Kathleen Fitzpatrick]] in Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing

Read [[John Halbrooks]] in Respect for Working Writers

Syllabus: Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing<br /> https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:44397/ by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

https://funnyhow.substack.com/p/how-chris-rock-and-jerry-seinfeld