path: root/2023/captions/emacsconf-2023-nabokov--why-nabokov-would-use-orgmode-if-he-were-writing-today--edmund-jorgensen--main.vtt

WEBVTT captioned by bhavin192, checked by sachac

NOTE Introduction

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Hello, fellow Emacs enthusiasts.

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My name is Edmund Jorgensen.

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I'm a software engineer by day,

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but by night I love to write novels,

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and I lean on Emacs heavily

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for both of these activities.

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Today, I would like to talk to you about how Emacs,

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specifically with Org mode,

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has helped me manage some of the practical

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difficulties of writing long-form prose,

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novels in my case,

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and I'd like to get at this by talking about how

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another, much more famous novelist managed

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some of those same difficulties in a way

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that makes me suspect he might well use Emacs

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and Org mode himself

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if he were still alive and writing today.

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This talk will probably be

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of the most interest to listeners

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who either already write long-form prose in Emacs

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or are considering doing so,

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but I think that anyone

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with an interest in literature or Emacs

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will find something to take away.

NOTE Nabokov's process of writing novels

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So let's get to it.

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Here's a picture of a man lying on a bed,

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writing something on an index card.

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If we didn't know any better,

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we might think that he was just jotting down

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a recipe for beef stew or something like that.

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But in fact, this is not just any old man.

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This is Vladimir Nabokov, one of the most

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celebrated novelists of the 20th century,

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and he's not jotting down

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a recipe for beef stew in this picture.

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He's actually hard at work here,

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composing a classic of English literature

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on an index card.

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That's how he wrote all his novels, in fact,

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on index cards.

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I don't mean that he just took notes on these cards

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or wrote outlines on them.

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He did both of those things as well,

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but he also wrote the actual prose of his novels,

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word by word, sentence by sentence, on index cards.

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Let's see what that looked like at scale.

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This box you see here,

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full of groups of bundled cards,

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is what a novel in progress looked like for Nabokov.

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If you squint, you can see that these cards

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were from the composition of Lolita,

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probably his most famous novel.

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So why did he write novels on index cards?

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It's not necessarily an obvious choice.

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Yes, sadly, Emacs wasn't available to him at the time,

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but most writers in his day,

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if they weren't using typewriters,

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which were available,

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were using notebooks or loose-leaf sheets

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or something like that.

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Not these tiny little index cards.

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But Nabokov loved index cards.

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He swore by them because they represented

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an elegant solution

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to three of the most pressing practical problems

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that every novelist faces.

NOTE Three practical problems novelists face

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Writing a good novel

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is artistically difficult, of course.

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You have to write something interesting

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with a good story,

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something that people want to read.

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But writing any novel at all,

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whether it's good or bad,

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is brutally, practically difficult.

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You're hacking something like 100,000 words

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into unified shape over a long period of time,

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months or years.

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There are organizational challenges

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inherent in that process,

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and each writer needs practical techniques

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to manage those challenges.

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The most basic challenge, of course, is that,

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unless you're trying to bring back

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the Homeric Bard tradition

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of reciting books from memory in firelit halls,

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you need to actually set down

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those 100,000 words on some medium.

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In Nabokov's case, index cards worked fine for this.

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A little cramped, maybe, but workable.

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Secondly, as you're writing,

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you're bound to think of little but important things

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about the story that you want to record.

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I'm not talking here about big thematic notes

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or research that can go in a separate document,

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but smaller, more contextual notes

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that belong right along the prose that they refer to.

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These might be reminders, like,

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"Remember to clean up this sentence,"

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or questions for yourself

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to consider during rewrites, like,

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"Why does Shirley feel this way here?"

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Nabokov recorded these notes

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in the margins of his cards or on the backs.

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Paper, in general, is great for this kind of

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intertextual note-taking.

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That's not particular to index cards.

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But what Nabokov really loved about index cards

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was how they solved the novelist's

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third and most difficult practical problem,

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which is imposing some kind of structure

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on this mountain of words.

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To have any hope of wrangling a novel into being,

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you need some way to break it down

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into parts, chapters, scenes, snatches of dialogue.

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You need some kind of higher-level outline

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that you can read, navigate, and rearrange

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as you consider and reconsider your story.

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You need structure.

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Index cards gave Nabokov a really powerful way

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to impose this structure

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because they created small, independent

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chunks of prose

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that he could bundle together into groups,

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like we saw in the box.

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This let him navigate his novel in progress quickly.

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He could just flip through those bundles,

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bundle by bundle, instead of card by card.

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He could also impose on

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and modify the structure of his novel

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just by shuffling those bundles around.

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So that's why Nabokov loved index cards

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for writing novels.

NOTE Org mode for writing novels

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Now I'd love to talk about

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why I love Org mode so much for writing novels

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and how it helps me tackle those same challenges.

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The first practical challenge,

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recording your words on some medium,

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is pretty simple.

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Org mode is a part of Emacs,

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a text editor, so you can just type in your text.

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We're not going to spend any more time on that.

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For the second practical challenge,

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recording small intertextual notes,

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Org mode offers comments, like this one here.

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The comment, "maybe I need to say which store?",

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with the leading pound sign there.

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I think that comments are generally

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underappreciated outside of coding.

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When writing fiction, for example,

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I love that Org mode lets me keep these comments

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close to the prose they refer to.

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I can see right here that I'm talking about

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saying which store in this first line,

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"One day, Bob went to the store."

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I get to keep these things close to

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the prose they refer to

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without ever having to worry that

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they'll accidentally be exported to a reader.

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That's great.

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So let's talk about how Org Mode handles the third

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and most brutal challenge of all, which is structure.

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Here we've taken the same text

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and we've imposed some structure on it.

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Like index cards,

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this is where Org mode really shines.

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Org mode extends outline mode,

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which is built around the concept of header lines,

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with different levels denoted by

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different numbers of leading asterisks (`*`).

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Personally, I tend to use top line headers

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as chapters and second line headers as scenes.

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You can see that here, where chapter one says

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"Bob and Shirley meet."

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Here's a scene, "Bob goes to the store."

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And here below is chapter two, yet unwritten,

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where Bob goes to work.

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Pretty exciting. Since Org mode supports folding,

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I can read quickly through a summary of my novel

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at either the chapter or the scene level

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just by flipping through different levels of

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visibility, just like Nabokov could flip through

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different bundles of cards.

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So here's the chapter level.

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I can see at a chapter level,

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"Bob and Shirley meet", "Bob goes to work."

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And then I can get one level more specific

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and see the various scenes in the chapter

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at the second header level.

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And I can, if I want,

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I can go all the way back to the prose level.

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And just like Nabokov shuffling

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his index cards around,

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I can move scenes around as logical units.

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Let's say, for example,

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that we wanted to move Bob's thoughts about life,

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which are down here, up further.

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Well, I can grab "Bob thinks about life,"

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and I can move it up or down as a logical unit.

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But Org mode offers some even more powerful tricks

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for structuring and navigating your novel,

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beyond what even index cards can do.

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For example, you can use tags

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on your scene headings. You can see these here.

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They're the prominent colon separated words

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on the header lines.

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In this case, I'm using `bob` and `shirley`.

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These tags can represent characters

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who appear in the scene,

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which is what I'm doing here,

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or locations in which the scenes occur,

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or plot lines that the scenes further,

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really anything that you want.

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And you can then use Org mode's sparse view features

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to query a set of tags and trim your novel down to

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a subset of related scenes.

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For example, let's say we want to filter down to

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only the scenes in which Shirley appears.

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This could allow us to read quickly through

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just a subset of the prose,

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the prose that referred to Shirley in some way.

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Maybe we want to do that

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to check continuity for her character,

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or make sure that her character develops

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along a compelling arc,

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or even just to get a sense

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of how much airtime she gets in the novel.

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Thanks for listening to this whirlwind exploration

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of some of the practical challenges of writing

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novels and other long-form prose,

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and how Org mode can help tackle them.

NOTE Takeaways and next steps

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I'd like to leave you with a couple takeaways

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and next steps for those who are interested.

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First, if you're writing a novel

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or other long-form prose,

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or even considering doing so,

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take a look at Org mode,

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especially if you're already familiar with Emacs.

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It won't solve the artistic problem

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of writing an interesting book for you,

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not even with a ChatGPT plugin,

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but it's a fantastic tool for managing

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some of the practical challenges

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that come with hacking 100,000 words into shape

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over the months or years that that process takes.

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Second, if you're interested in learning more

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about some of the advanced features of Org mode

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and how they can help in this process,

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I wrote a long blog post about my difficulties

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writing a novel with 13 interconnected subplots,

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and how Emacs and Org mode saved it from imploding.

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I'll put a link here below. [ewj.io/emacs]

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Thanks for listening, and Emacs on!