It Was A Dark And Stormy Night ....

This thread will meander gently down its terrain with posts on the quotidian aspects of writing, on writing as craft and general musings on the written word with examples, good and bad, tossed in. I am sure that the millions of readers all rushed to read the essays by Orwell and Zinsser, taxing servers all over the English-speaking world. In the next few posts, we consider tools essential for writing. We will split them into three categories: research, writing and editing/proofing.

Obviously, I will restrict myself to the tools I actually know and use. This comes with a problem - since I live and work in the United States, not everything I mention may be easily available in India. I don't know of any substitutes, since I've been away for a long time. I hope readers in India (if any!) will forgive me for this.

 

Two assumptions:
A workman is only as good as his tools.
Good writing is mostly good editing.
Keep that in mind as you go over the list of tools I use every day.
Whether you are writing the Great Indian Novel or posts for your blog, I regard these tools as – well, if not indispensable (as they have become for me), then at least as very useful and well worth your consideration.

 

Let’s first get the word-processor out of the way.

MS-Word (or equivalents): I am assuming that you are not writing your novel in emacs or Vim, wonderful though they are. Almost everyone, except for a few determined holdouts (and another one), uses some kind of word-processor these days.

Writing longhand has much to recommend it. When I put pen to paper, I can tangibly feel the connection between hand, brain and mind. This is useful, if only to slow my thought down to the speed of scratch. I like writing longhand, but it’s hard to do for academic texts. So MS-Word it is, with all its bloat.

However, when I am at a talk, I still take notes in longhand (well, a kind of shorthand-pidgin-longhand!). The chaps clicking away, taking notes on their laptops, are impressive, but I have never been able to manage that. I remain a hunt-and-peck typist, still waiting for that top-of-the-line VR software they promised me at the World’s Fair in the 50s, along with the flying cars.

Writing with pen and paper helps me focus and avoid those little vacations that my mind is determined to embark on. I can organize my thoughts as I listen. (The lazy student’s route. The more you do this, the less you have to study – to get by that is. Being a star might require some actual effort, although I wouldn't know about that).

 

This next set of tools allows me to manage my research and writing. Note that, for me, all of these tools come before word-processing in MS-Word. From these, I export into Word for the near-final versions. Also keep in mind that although there are benefits, there is a learning curve with these. They are most useful when you have multiple ideas in various stages of research and development. In that case, the effort expended on learning to use the software can pay off downstream.

I will not ramble on about them. There is a lot of material on the web, including reviews and YouTube how-to's. Demo versions of the software are available. Since the inception of this thread was partly motivated by @Gauri03 's blogging plans, I am including the software I use. You can check them out and see if they will help you:

(1) Evernote: Simple collection of 'notes'. Good free-form store of anything and everything you come across in your research. I find the search a bit clunky (i.e. a little too inclusive, returning a lot of results), but that's probably because I haven't delved into it in detail. I still use it to stash stuff I think I may need someday, maybe.

(2) OmniOutliner: All my writing projects evolve from an outline. This piece of software may be overkill for most people, but for a blogger tracking current and future projects, it may be useful.

(3) Ulysses: This is a good app to manage your writing. It allows you to manage you research and your writing. This is generally step two i.e. all the flotsam and jetsam go into Evernote and then acquire primitive but malleable form in Ulysses or the next one down the list, Scrivener.

(4) Scrivener: Does pretty much the same thing as Ulysses, but has many more features, which can be agood or a bad thing. I like Ulysses for its clutter-free interface and simple visual impact. However, I use Scrivener too. As of yet, I have no logic for when I switch from one to other. It's more a function of mood than anything else. Either one will suffice. You don't need both.

I have simply presented a bare bones intro here. There are many ways in which these packages can be used to achieve what you want to do with your research and writing. It would take too long to lay it all out here. I would encourage you to follow the links or google to find out whether they may be of any use to you. If anyone has questions, I can try to answer them later.

 

Some additional notes:

(1) The feature I use the most in Evernote is the web-clipper. It is extremely convenient to save bookmarks, articles and videos that I want to save. This is one reason I tolerate the somewhat klutzy 'search' function.

(2) I don't work in MS-Word. Most of my research, organization and writing is done either in Ulysses or Scrivener. Only late pre-final versions get into MS-Word.

(3) Early stage doodling & brainstorming is done in OmniOutliner or in some mind-mapping tool such as xMind. Although most of the time, I like mind-mapping on paper. An iPad Pro with the pencil and a good mapping tool may combine the best of both worlds, but I haven't tested any.

(4) Migrating from any one of these platforms to another can be a drag. In general, most of these can handle the OPML format. So export-import should be doable. I haven't tested how klutzy that is. But be warned - if your research is important to you, collect and archive in a way that the effort is not wasted. Plan ahead. Nothing beats paper for sheer longevity. (Anyone old enough to remember zip-drives will understand!).

 

Continuing with research - Tools to manage paper:

I digitize as much as possible, but I still like paper. I don't like to work exclusively on the computer. All my handwritten notes are on paper. I might get closer to digital nirvana with an iPad pro, but I'm not there yet. So for managing research info on paper, I use Paper Tiger**. This works well for me. I have used it over a long time and stuck with it. Some thoughts:

(1) You don't need the software. You can implement this indexing in Evernote if you wish or get your teenager to set up a database with Paper-Tiger features. I stick with it more out of convenience and habit, in a 'don't fix it if it ain't broke' mode.

(2) The issue I face with paper is the following: do I file it under some subject heading or alphabetically under author (if multi-author, which one? If based on topic, which one to pick out of many options?). Figuring this out can be a real drag. What I learned from Paper Tiger was the following:

• Assign a location for storing files (Cabinet-4, Drawer-2 for example).
  
  
• Number each incoming piece of paper you want to keep. Any scheme will do - say C4-D2-28 (28th piece of paper stored in Cabinet-4, Drawer-2). This numbering is simply done sequentially. No thinking required.
  
  
• This info is stored in the Paper-Tiger database. What the software allows you to do is assign infinite keywords to each piece of paper. This avoids the problems described above. For example: Do you file a paper on the hyperloop under Elon Musk, HyperLoop, Oerlikon, futuristic transport systems, magnetic levitation, Dubai test track or whatever else? Does an article of the moon-landing go under Apollo Program, NASA, Conspiracy Theory, JFK, Neil Armstrong, Space Race or the 60s? You don't have to decide. You just give it a number, put it in a location and record that in the database. All the words above can be keywords, so any of them can be used to recover that piece of paper. Sort of like tags in Evernote.
  
  
• This system has two advantages for a lazy person like me: (a) it is easy to set up and maintain. (b) it is easy to put stuff back! When I see C4-D2-28 on a document, I know exactly where it goes instantly. And I actually put it back.
  
  
• Moreover, note that this will work for anything, including digitized material, PDFs, whatever. All you need are a location, a number and keywords. That's it. All random knick-knacks around the house are stored in this way. Bulbs? Batteries? Extension cords? Emergency flashlight? Sticky labels? Staples? Candles? Allen wrench? I can find out in a minute which box they are in.
  
  ** That Paper-Tiger link has a lot of fluff in it. I included it for completeness, but a quick skim should suffice.

 

Again, note that the Paper Tiger software itself is not mandatory. I mention it only because I happen to use it. It's the system that's important - it will work well in MS-Access or Evernote or any equivalent doodad. It's not perfect, but it suits me. One reservation is the following:

If you need to ferret out multiple papers on a single keyword, you have to do a keyword search, make a list of all the location numbers and then pull the papers out individually. This is not intolerable, not for me.

If you think some topic is going to dominate your thinking, you can always give it a specific location: all Elon Musk material from his divorces and remarriage, through his current girlfriend, to Tesla and the battery farm and SpaceX and HyperLoop can live in an EM location.

Again this is just an example of how I do it. If anyone else has better systems, you are welcome to share it. The question was how do you organize your research for a writing project?

 

If you need academic style reference management, there are many commercial options (Reference Manager, Endnote etc.), but the only free one I have used is Mendeley. This has all the power you need. There are premium options as well. Tutorials here.

Most people on IL won't need this. The people who do, know about it already, I'm sure. However, I include it here because your high-schooler or recent grad heading off to college will benefit from learning to use Mendeley (and also Ulysses). They can impress their professors during their freshman year. After that the other kids will catch on and catch up. Rats! No rest for the weary.

 

That's it for managing research material and the mechanical aspects of writing. At least from me, at least for now.
Next comes proofing/editing.
There's no end to that, but we'll make a start.