Tuesday, 8.53pm
Sheffield, U.K.
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. – W. Somerset Maugham
I have too many books to fit on my bookshelves so I have been boxing them up to give away and keeping just the ones I think are important. This has resulted in a shelf just full of books on writing. These include:
- “On Writing” by Stephen King
- “Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes”
- “Stylish Academic Writing” by Helen Sword
- “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser
- “Draft No. 4” by John McPhee
- “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott
- “A Slip of the Keyboard” by Terry Pratchett
and many more….
I am probably not alone in being curious about the act of writing, this thing that many of us are compelled to do. Many people want to have written, as I read somewhere, but few want to actually write. To sit at their desk, propelling a pencil or tapping at the keyboard to make the words come out and make some kind of sense.
Although I have not been posting on this blog I have been writing. I’ve been working on papers and multiple revisions of a thesis, writing and rewriting and then throwing away and starting again.
I’ve written a first draft in pen, and in pencil. I’ve written on index cards and in notebooks. I’ve written in text files and LibreOffice documents. I’ve tried writing in pieces which are then stitched together and writing in one go.
I don’t think any one way is going to work for the long term and I flip flop between approaches. Perhaps a change is good because it lets you come at the same material in a different way. If you’re stuck at the computer try writing on paper and vice versa.
The most recent advice I’ve gotten has helped me with my writing right now. There are two parts to this.
First, start writing in one document and write from start to finish.
I have been working on different sections of my thesis with a small amount of content in each one. That’s made it difficult to find a flow or be clear on the narrative.
So I’ve started again, right at the beginning and I’m now working forwards a sentence at a time and trying to get ideas to line up in order.
It’s like someone else said – doing this kind of work is a bit like driving in the dark. All you can see is the bit of road ahead illuminated by your headlights but if you keep going you can get the whole journey done that way.
The second this is about managing your research. Use Zotero – it’s great as a way to integrate your references and it works with LibreOffice, markdown and Lyx (for when you’re using Latex). But the actual point is to have your research in one text file – all the notes, jottings, points from papers – all that stuff – keep it in one file. That’s because you can search for keywords and find related content more easily than if it’s locked away in a notebook or in multiple documents.
It’s possible that someone at this point will suggest tools to use like Notion or some other Zettelkasten type thing.
The benefit of keeping things simple – a text file for your notes and the document tool of your choice to write the actual thesis or book or whatever – is that you aren’t distracted by the features and possibilities of the tools. The point is to get the word count up day after day. That’s what matters and what you get marked on. Anything that gets in the way is not helping.
And now I had better get back to writing.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 