path: root/2023/talks/nabokov.md

[[!meta title="Why Nabokov would use Org-Mode if he were writing today"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2023 Edmund Jorgensen"]]
[[!inline pages="internal(2023/info/nabokov-nav)" raw="yes"]]

<!-- Initially generated with emacsconf-publish-talk-page and then left alone for manual editing -->
<!-- You can manually edit this file to update the abstract, add links, etc. --->


# Why Nabokov would use Org-Mode if he were writing today
Edmund Jorgensen (he/him) - <https://tomheon.com>, <mailto:ewj@inkwellandoften.com>

[[!inline pages="internal(2023/info/nabokov-before)" raw="yes"]]

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.


[[!inline pages="internal(2023/info/nabokov-after)" raw="yes"]]

[[!inline pages="internal(2023/info/nabokov-nav)" raw="yes"]]