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[[!meta title="Why Nabokov would use Org-Mode if he were writing today"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2023 Edmund Jorgensen"]]
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# Why Nabokov would use Org-Mode if he were writing today
Edmund Jorgensen (he/him) - <https://tomheon.com>, <mailto:ewj@inkwellandoften.com>
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I've written several novels in Emacs. One of them grew into a monster with a
baker's dozen twisty, interconnected subplots.
When I started to revise that novel, I had to use an outline to keep all the
subplots straight, but I found it nearly impossible to keep that external
outline consistent with the prose.
Finally I landed on a workflow using org-mode to keep the outline and the
prose together, which significantly reduced the burden of keeping the two
consistent as I moved and modified sections. I also found a way to use tags
and sparse views over them to enable quick read-throughs of subsets of the
book for continuity checks (which I plan to demo).
Later--long after finishing the book--I realized this process was essentially
the Emacs update to the writing process that Nabokov used: he wrote on index
cards that served as both prose and outline, so that he could move them around
(which he did incessantly).
There's something deeply beautiful about org-mode's refusal to treat structure
and prose as different things in a piece of writing--something I think Nabokov
would have appreciated, and something I definitely appreciate, because it
saved my novel.
About the speaker:
I'm Edmund Jorgensen, a software engineer by day and a writer by night, using
Emacs for both. When one of my novels threatened to collapse under the weight
of its own subplots, org-mode's powerful blending of structure and prose
rescued it. I'd like to show you how that worked, and how much of org-mode's
power for writing comes from its similarity to Nabokov's famous
index-card-based writing process.
# Discussion
## Notes
- It looks like the Zettelkasten slipbox for nabokov
- James Howell also like the idea using small slide to convey single
idea to the reader. In emacs, we have `narrow` function. Yes! I
use various narrow functions to present text with Emacs. (I use
narrow a bunch when editing, it really helps focus on a chapter or
scene)
- The funny thing about narrow functions, I mean the first time I
saw it in the manual, there is a warning to the new user. That
would be afraid of this kind of functionality, and you have to
be careful, haha...
- I saw that warning too and avoided narrow for a long time as a
result! But it's not really that bad...
- Exactly, I use narrow a lot, you know, every time I'm
working on any single type of writing or writing a code or
writing a piece of manuscript. It's really helped me to
narrow down my attention and to kind of release any other
thoughts that is not directly connected to the current
things I'm working on. And that really is an underestimated
functionality for the Emacs.
- The most valuable thing that Org will bring to the writer is the
structure, how we can navigate between different structures of
thoughts.
- The idea is using tag to narrow down a single person's timeline in
the whole context of stories. It's something very interesting.
- ewj.io/emacs
- 👏 I'll start writing my masterpiece tomorrow!
- I need to use tags more, org-sparse-tree is handy
## Questions and answers
- Q: Does the index really matter here? I mean, his colleague is also
using some A4 paper, and do you think that the index card is the
most important thing here?
- A:
- portbablity win!
- Q:How do you export the second level headings (scenes in this
example) without the heading itself, just the content?
- A:3 ways for this: ox-ignore (it was visually annoying), dumb
awk script, pandoc filters in lua
- I would say the org-transclusion works very well for this
kind of demand.
- Q: Slightly offtopic: where can we see your novels?
- A: there are on Amazon: two of them, and a book of short-stories
- Links:<https://www.amazon.com/World-Enough-Time-Edmund-Jorgensen/dp/0984749233>
- <https://www.amazon.com/Other-Copenhagens-Stories-Edmund-Jorgensen-ebook/dp/B00O4OQCBE>
- Q: Have you looked at the Denote Signature features. The
hierarchical nature of luhman IDs and index cards work well with
Denote Signatures
- A:I haven't, but I will take a look!
- <https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote#h:f9204f1f-fcee-49b1-8081-16a08a338099>
- The part that I like with signatures is they can be optional
with your zettelkasten as another way to use it.
- Q: Do you have a workflow combining hand-written index cards and org
mode?
- A:
- Maybe just take a picture and OCR for your small index
cards, but at the end of the day you always have to go back
to your main Org files.
- Ooh, I have a workflow for using Google's OCR to grab
the text from my sketches (esp. the ID) so that I can
link to my sketches in Org with ID and completion -
sachac
- haha, nice to see different approach, I personally
didn't do that because I still most of my work is
on the computer so yeah in the future if i have lots
of handwriting notes in my working I will reconsider
Google solution
- Q:
- A:
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