Happiness is a Warm Typewriter: 10½ Years On, the Story Stays the Same<br /> by [[Robert Messenger]]<br /> accessed on 2025-09-05T11:21:50

The incipit line of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bulwer-Lytton

A curation tool for the Hive platform. With feature requests to enhance content discovery. See its practical applications for curating posts in various niches.

Author of the Week is a LeoThreads initiative. Where authors are reselected due to voting issues. Boosting community participation and quality content creation.

Hive Post Curation Tool (PCT) helps users find and curate quality posts. With enhanced search features. Such as word count filters and insights into post rewards. It highlights recent updates and encourages community feedback and donations to support ongoing development.

Avoiding Internal Typewriter Distractions - YouTube<br /> by [[Joe Van Cleave]] <br /> accessed on 2025-08-28T11:08:56

Typewriter distractions<br /> - troublesome mechanical issues<br /> - need for finger strength - poor imprint

Well-tuned standard typewriters are excellent for minimizing distractions, especially internal ones.

Joe Van Cleave thinks the 5TE Smith-Corona electric typewriters are the best of their class.

Large horizontally oriented typewriter mats can be useful in that they create a buffer zone that covers the carriage movement and helps to prevent one from accidentally putting their beverages in the way of the carriage.

Essential guidance for new users on the Hive Blockchain. Understanding community etiquette. Avoiding plagiarism. Engaging meaningfully with content. To foster growth and success within the platform. Learn best practices for content creation and community involvement. To enhance reputation and rewards.

Learn the concept of "value" in the context of content creation on HIVE. By breaking it down into quadrants that examine individual and community value, both internal and external. See the potential for community engagement. And the ways in which value can be derived from both individual contributions and collective interactions.

A humorous celebration of the value of quality blogging within the Hive Blogger Ecosystem. Learn that true merit lies in the art of writing rather than superficial metrics or visual content. Content creation is not merely driven by algorithms or financial incentives. But by the integrity and passion of writers dedicated to sharing insightful narratives.

Opinion : AI Writing Disclosures Are a Joke. Here’s How to Improve Them.<br /> by [[Yasha Hartberg]] August 15, 2025

https://typewriterchicago.com/contest

mindr is an open-source R package that converts mind maps to Markdown documents. Easily organize ideas and create structured content for writing posts. It can also generate mind maps from markdown files. A valuable tool for writers and mind map enthusiasts.

Ray Bradbury's Rules to Writing: Don't Think!<br /> accessed on 2025-08-12T09:45:59

"...you must never think at the typewriter, you must feel." —Ray Bradbury

This also cleverly goes against the idea that "writing is thinking". Bradbury frames it as "writing is feeling" or "writing is being."

https://www.facebook.com/groups/artdeco1930/posts/10161193224076561/

Like many, da Vinci didn't publish much from his copious notebooks. He had huge volumes of material, but really not much to show for it in the end.

Let Yourself Be Partial by [[Chris Osmond]]

On writing and first drafts... meh

https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/writerly-life-joan-didion

apparently quoted from Joan Didion: The Last Interview

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

Dinah Lenny mentioned this poem at LAAC Writer's Club 2024-04-18

Seamus Heaney mentions how his father and grandfather worked the land to dig and grow potatoes, yet he chooses to do his "digging" with his pen.

See also and cross-date his other poem about digging potatoes: https://nationalfamineway.ie/seamus-heaneys-at-a-potato-digging/ "At a Potato Digging"

What does Josephs say about himself? (Peter Brier)

I get my education writing about things that until I actually do write about them I don't know that much about. I read. up I think through. I write out.

00:09:57

How can we redefine "writing" in the 20th century? Is this a conversation that exists only in feminist-theory based, higher-ed., environments? Is this redefining writing completely, adding new facets to the definition, or reworking the original?

Finding Forrester: The Key to Writing

The Screenless Writer by [[Steven Budden Jr.]] (aka Classic Typewriter)

"My screenless computer, which is a box of these [handmade] cards. The NEXUS which stands for Network of EXperiences Synchronicities and UnderStanding." —Steven Budden, Jr.

for - example - language - assumptions - I am writing this chapter

for - question - language training - ALG - listening and speaking first - when does reading and writing appear?

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.

for - question - embodying paradox - writing - Is he saying that I am alternating between subject and object?

The majority of Scheil's critiques of desired material seems to have been filled in broadly by:

Henley, Georgia, and Joshua Byron Smith, eds. A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth. Brill’s Companions to European History 22. Brill, 2020. http://archive.org/details/oapen-20.500.12657-42537.

Obviously this isn't an inconsequential amount of scholarship (575+ pp) to have included in Reeve's volume.

While it's nice to identify what is not in the reviewed volume, it's probably better to frame it that way rather than to seemingly blame the authors/editors for not having included such a massive amount of work. This sort of poor framing is too often seen in the academic literature. Reporting on results and work and putting it out is much more valuable in the short and long term than worrying so much about what is not there. Authors should certainly self-identify open questions for their readers and create avenues to follow them up, but they don't need to be all things to all people.

Writing The Long Goodbye by [[Mark Coggins]]

Why chatGPT can't replace writing

The Nonwriter's Guide to Writing A Lot by [[James Horton]]

Horton describes writing as a top down process rather than a bottom up one, but tries to frame it in a bottom up one. No wonder people have issues with writing, especially non-fiction stuff. Too many different processes going on all at once in too many directions.

He uses the phrase "splat draft" in the sense that others might call a "vomit draft", but not in the sense of Mozart's peeing cow.

Perez-Riverol, Yasset, Laurent Gatto, Rui Wang, Timo Sachsenberg, Julian Uszkoreit, Felipe Da Veiga Leprevost, Christian Fufezan, et al. 2016. “Ten Simple Rules for Taking Advantage of Git and GitHub.” Edited by Scott Markel. PLOS Computational Biology 12 (7): e1004947. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004947.

10 rules to use github and git for academic writing

Brunson, Daniel Burke. 2024. “Leveraging Git and GitHub for Academic Collaboration.” Daniel B. Brunson. August 21, 2024. https://www.dbbrunson.com/docs/effective-online-presence/need-and-toolkit/leveraging-git-github/.

Quick review of the benefits of git and github for academic writing and collaboration

I seems to me that the key. Luhmann and others have their own methods and they weren´t searching for the perfect writing system, they work with what they have.

I think that it is the hyperconecction and the perfectionism that trap us in a infinite loop of the perfect system rather than the imperfections but productive outputs..

Maybe what is needed is a feedback loop that do not scare us so we can write more and better with time..

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-memex-method-238c71f2fb46

Original version (or owned copy) at: https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

method and madness by [[Alan Jacobs]]

via In which I describe my writing “methods." by [[Alan Jacobs]]

reply:

@ayjay Thanks for sharing this. My method is often very much like yours. Lots of internal distillation, slowly over time. I remember hearing a story that Mozart wrote music "like a cow pees" (in one giant and immediate flood and then done). I feel like large works of writing, composing, etc. springing, as if fully formed from the head of Zeus is more common than is acknowledged. Cory Doctorow hints at a similar sort of method in his own work in The Memex Method. I'm also reminded of bits of what neuroscientist Barbara Oakley calls "diffuse thinking" or a more internalized version of Michael Ondaatje's "thinkering" described in The English Patient.

Local writers host ‘typewriter revivals’ by [[Algernon D'Ammassa Las Cruces Bulletin]]

Rosenwald, Michael S. “Peter Elbow, Professor Who Transformed Freshman Comp, Dies at 89.” The New York Times, February 27, 2025, sec. Education. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/education/peter-elbow-dead.html.

Creating on Small Typewriters by [[Joe Van Cleave]]

Portable typewriters give up a level of professionalism in one's documents for their size and ease of portability.

In particular, the slug alignments may be slightly off compared to larger machines. Ideally they allow for one to be good enough, especially for first draft documents or journaling.

Typewriter Strike Out Corrections by [[Joe Van Cleave]]

truly the tension between priming and sparking..

reply to u/Sept-27 at https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1itbduv/how_to_begin_storytelling_with_smart_notes/

Ahrens' book will likely leave you with more questions than answers and really has nothing directly to say on the practice of fictional storytelling. Doto's book does a better job of filling in these pieces but approaches writing in general rather than specifically fiction.

For fiction writers, I often recommend they don't practice putting Luhmann-artig numbers on their cards, but organize them in a more impromptu manner and allow them to shift more as you write. This allows things to shift more easily during the process and provides for a bit more creativity.

Some resources and examples for fiction with a ZK:<br /> - Vladimir Nabokov - David Lynch - take particular note of his method taught by Frank Daniel at AFI - Dustin Lance Black - Card index for fiction writing - The Zettelkasten Method for Fiction Writing

Take the inspiration these suggest, but don't go down the rabbit hole too deeply. You're going to want to evolve something that works best for you and your modes of writing, so trying to imitate someone else's system too closely will be the kiss of death.

for - Bayo writing about writing

"a degenerating research programme"

lmao, survivors survive

via Chris Aldrich h. annotations. Author posits succesful academic writing rest on behavioral, artisanal, social and emotional habits. That last part of this blurb suggest a connection to [[Personal Knowledge by Michael Polanyi]]'s point.

Sword, Helen. Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. https://amzn.to/4iYPhCE.

Scholars Talk Writing: Helen Sword by [[Rachel Toor]] in Chronicle of Higher Education, 2017-07-31 archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20210722062708/https://www.chronicle.com/article/scholars-talk-writing-helen-sword/

I like this framing!

for - new insight - second cause of human separation - after settling down, it was WRITING! intriguing! - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton - adjacency - sense of separation - first - settling down - human place - second - writing - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton

adjacency - between - sense of separation - first - settling down - human place - second - transition from oral to written language - adjacency relationship - Interesting that I was just reading an article on language and perception from the General Semantics organization: General Semantics and non-verbal awareness - The claim is that the transition from oral language to written language created the feeling of interiority and of a separate "soul". - This is definitely worth exploring!

explore claim - the transition from oral language traditions to writing led us to form the sense of interiority and of a "soul" separate from the body - This claim, if we can validate it, can have profound implications - Writing definitely led us to create much more complex words but we were able to do much more efficient timebinding - transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next. - We didn't have to depend on just a few elders to pass the knowledge on. With the invention of the printing press, written language got an exponential acceleration in intergenerational knowledge transmission. - This had a huge feedback effect on the oral language itself, increase the number of words and meanings exponentially. - There are complex recipes for everything and written words allow us to capture the complex recipes or instructions in ways that would overwhelm oral traditions.

to - article - General Semantics and Non-Verbal Awareness - https://hyp.is/BePQhLvTEe-wYD_MPM9N3Q/www.time-binding.org/Article-Database

for - new insight - second cause of human separation - after settling down, it was writing! intriguing! - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton

How to Choose a Typewriter for Serious Writing by [[Jonny Eberle]] on 2024-11-24

A good overview of some of the considerations one may want to make when looking for a typewriter.

Note making does create space for reflection, is the thinking. But even before notes, annotation does too.

n:: notes as thinking vgl 'writing is thinking' annotation as thinking vs conversation, conversation as thinking through expression

more detailed, specific on beliefs

I see this as collaborative writing with AI; no longer just the students work

https://trackbear.app/

What else is part of the DNA of online writing?

original source?

Reply to @Edmund https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/21907/#Comment_21907

Doto's book is the best and tightest yet for explaining both how to implement a Luhmann-artig zettelkasten as well as why along with the affordances certain elements provide. He does a particularly good job of providing clear and straightforward definitions which have a muddy nature in some of the online spaces, which tends to cause issues for people new to the practice. Sadly, for me, there isn't much new insight due to the amount of experience and research I bring to the enterprise.

I do like that Doto puts at least some emphasis on why one might want to use alphanumerics even in digital spaces, an idea which has broadly been sidelined in most contexts for lack of experience or concrete affordances for why one might do it.

The other area he addresses, which most elide and the balance gloss over at best, is that of the discussion of using the zettelkasten for output. Though he touches on some particular methods and scaffolding, most of it is limited to suggestions based on his own experience rather than a broader set of structures and practices. This is probably the biggest area for potential expansion and examples I'd like to see, especially as I'm reading through Eustace Miles' How to Prepare Essays, Lectures, Articles, Books, Speeches and Letters, with Hints on Writing for the Press (London: Rivingtons, 1905).

I could have had some more material in chapter 3 which has some fascinating, but still evolving work. Ideas like interstitial journaling and some of the related productivity methods are interesting, but Doto only barely scratches the surface on some of these techniques and methods which go beyond the traditional "zettelkasten space", but which certainly fall in his broader framing of "system for writing" promise.

Doto's "triangle of creativity", a discussion of proximal feedback, has close parallels of Adler and Hutchins' idea of "The Great Conversation" (1952), which many are likely to miss.

For those who missed out, Dan Allosso has posted video from the sessions at https://lifelonglearn.substack.com/ Sadly missing, unless you're in the book club, are some generally lively side chat discussions as the primary video discussion was proceeding. The sessions had a breadth of experiences from the new to the old hands as well as from students to teachers and everywhere in between.

Read A System for Writing by Bob Doto by [[Ton Zijlstra]] – Interdependent Thoughts

Doctorow analogizes his reading and writing in the same sort of chemistry/statistical mechanics method as I have in the past.

https://writingmonth.org/ Writing Month

A writing tracking project started in 2024 as a replacement for NaNoWriMo infrastructure

Example: Terence Eden https://writingmonth.org/~edent/

https://www.getoutline.com/

Mentioned by PK

Sounds like you're doing what Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren would call "inspectional reading" and outlining the space of your topic. This is both fine and expected. You have to start somewhere. You're scaffolding some basic information in a new space and that's worthwhile. You're learning the basics.

Eventually you may come back and do a more analytical read and/or cross reference your first sources with other sources in a syntopical read. It's at these later two levels of reading where doing zettelkasten work is much more profitable, particularly for discerning differences, creating new insights, and expanding knowledge.

If you want to think of it this way, what would a kindergartner's zettelkasten contain? a high school senior? a Ph.D. researcher? 30 year seasoned academic researcher? Are the levels of knowledge all the same? Is the kindergartner material really useful to the high school senior? Probably not at all, it's very basic. As a result, putting in hundreds of atomic notes as you're scaffolding your early learning can be counter-productive. Read some things, highlight them, annotate them. You'll have lots of fleeting notes, but most of them will seem stupidly basic after a month or two. What you really want as main notes are the truly interesting advanced stuff. When you're entering a new area, certainly index ideas, but don't stress about capturing absolutely everything until you have a better understanding of what's going on. Then bring your zettelkasten in to leverage yourself up to the next level.

• Adler, Mortimer J. “How to Mark a Book.” Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1940. https://www.unz.com/print/SaturdayRev-1940jul06-00011/
• Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated edition. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011.

reply to u/jack_hanson_c at https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1g9dv9b/is_scoping_the_subject_a_counterzettelkasten/

Books are about large blocks of uninterrupted time...

( ~13:00)

Perhaps. I don't think so. With a Zettelkasten I believe you can write without 4-hour deep work blocks... However, maybe he is right... I haven't really written yet so I can't be certain.

What about using the notes for comparison and/or contrast of ideas?

Overview of Bob Doto's suggested process:<br /> 1. having and capturing thoughts<br /> 2. refining thoughts into clear ideas that can be repurposed<br /> 3. connecting ideas across topics<br /> 4. developing connections and making them accessible<br /> 5. transforming notes into writing for readers 6. re-integrating writing back into the system (he lumped this in with 5, but I've broken it out)

How do these steps relate to those of others?

Eg: Miles1905: collect, select, arrange, dictate/write (and broadly composition)

Doto, Bob. A System for Writing: How an Unconventional Approach to Note-Making Can Help You Capture Ideas, Think Wildly, and Write Constantly - A Zettelkasten Primer. 1st ed. New Old Traditions, 2024. https://amzn.to/3ztjrfb.

Annotation url: urn:x-pdf:231323658d79d9bdf946e1cfbe01e500

Alternate annotation view

1962 Vintage IBM Typewriter Training Film IBM Selectric Proper Typing Procedures, w/ Bud McDole by [[Computer History Archives Project]]

Right at the Typewriter. 16 mm. San Francisco, CA: KQED, 1962. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPfHAW_OfGo.

On manual typewriters one "snaps" the keys while on an electric keyboard one "taps" the keys for maximum speed and accuracy.

Overview of functionality of an IBM typewriter.

To add longevity to one's carbon papers they should be rotated both top to bottom and front to back within one's packs.

Use plastic type cleaner, meant for cleaning type slugs, to clean the excess ink from a typewriter. Form it into a point and press it to the letter to erase several times. Then erase with eraser shield and eraser.

To type to the very bottom of the page, particularly with a carbon pack, to prevent slippage at the bottom, insert a "trailer sheet" about halfway down the first page. Insert it at the back of the pack just behind the original and between the first carbon sheet.

For typing small sheets of paper (index cards) fold a pleat into a regular sheet of paper and use the lip to hold the smaller sheet you're typing on.

To more quickly type envelopes, do the first then reverse the platen so that only about an inch of the top of the envelope is visible. Then insert the next envelope behind the first and continue reversing the platen. This will allow the finished envelopes to stack at the paper table and speed the threading and typing of envelopes in rapid succession.

Use of the divots on the typing guide for making horizontal or vertical lines while moving the carriage or rotating the platen respectively.

How to change the typeball and the ribbon cartridge on the IBM selectric.

What work exactly does Miles include in his description of preparation of a 30,000 word book in two hours?

He specifically excludes dictation. He does include selection of ideas and arrangement. He also says it includes "collection", but I'm supposing that he's taking a larger tranche of cards from a possibly massive collection and collecting only those he needs right now? Certainly the reading, thinking, and collecting work can't be included in this two hours of work.

Does he have a better definition of what he means by collection?

Miles doesn't specify how he comes by the practice of a "Card-System" other than "by degrees" as well as elaborating on it in the months before he writes this book.

(Having something more concrete would be nice though...)

At some point he read Barrett Wendell's book on composition (1891) to discover that he recommended cards as well.

He's repeating (and thus emphasizing) the admonition that a card system is not expensive, particularly in relation to the savings in time and effort.

This book was finally published in 1905. The introduction was written in 1899 and the mentioned Feb 1900 publication of How to Remember didn't happen until 1901.

Miles, Eustace Hamilton. How to Remember: Without Memory Systems or with Them. Frederick Warne & Co., 1901.

writing and waiting is useful in many instances, and particularly for clarity of expression.

see also: <br /> - angry letter https://hypothes.is/a/6OoqHofyEe-1mtOohGA63w - diffuse thinking<br /> - typewriter (waiting) <br /> - editing (waiting) https://hypothes.is/a/VxRNeofvEe-5n1dpCEM48Q

Recall: Abraham Lincoln's angry letter - put it in a drawer

It could be interesting/useful to create a checklist or set of procedures (perhaps a la Oblique Strategies") for editing a major work.

Sections in this TOC could be useful for creating such.

Even in 1905 writers had to wait interminably after submitting their writing...

it's only gotten worse since then...

The process of having a work typewritten forced the affordance of creating time away from the writing of a piece. This allows for both active and diffuse thinking on the piece as well as the ability to re-approach it with fresh eyes days or weeks later.

How is this accomplished exactly? How could one imitate this effect?

How do we break down his material and style to re-create it?

"Brevity is not always the same as Vigour, but the two generally go hand in hand." -Miles

Attempting to escape the huge list of potential "Chief faults in composition" is a solid reason not to try to cram a paper or essay in a single night/day.

One of the major affordances of using a zettelkasten or card index for writing is that it forces the writer to break things down into their constituent parts, thereby making the entire process of writing far easier and less complex. One can separately focus their attention on the smaller steps of collecting, selecting, and arranging the material before beginning to actually write.

Creating a comparison or illustration of an idea is a means of emphasizing it. It also serves as a form of repetition and aide-memoire.

Miles, Eustace Hamilton. How to Prepare Essays, Lectures, Articles, Books, Speeches and Letters, with Hints on Writing for the Press. London: Rivingtons, 1905. http://archive.org/details/howtoprepareessa00mileuoft.

evidence of a card system/zettelkasten method in this?

I found a copy and indeed there is evidence!

Step Back In Time At The Mesa Typewriter Exchange by [[Phil Latzman]]

Writing is thinking and most of the times when someone thinks its messy.

We should not only teach that how to think throug writing, but then how to edit and revise to present our thinking as argumentation

Typewriter Video Series - Episode 85: Integral Paper Rolls by [[Joe Van Cleave]]

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?...