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<!-- Automatically generated by emacsconf-publish-after-page -->
<a name="writing-mainVideo-transcript"></a>
# Transcript
Intro
[[!template new="1" text="""Hello everyone, I'm Jeremy Friesen, pronouns he/him,""" start="00:00:00.000" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and today I'll be talking about""" start="00:00:04.560" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""how Emacs turbocharges my writing.""" start="00:00:05.880" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Quick intro: I've been programming since 1998""" start="00:00:08.600" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and blogging since 2011.""" start="00:00:11.800" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""In May of 2020 I switched to Emacs,""" start="00:00:14.080" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""having previously used a long list of different editors.""" start="00:00:16.640" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Curious about how Emacs impacted my writing,""" start="00:00:19.920" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I wrote some stuff on my personal site and""" start="00:00:23.040" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""found that I blogged about 95 words per day prior to Emacs,""" start="00:00:25.560" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and with Emacs I'm blogging about 340.""" start="00:00:30.400" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Now, this is not a fair comparison, many things changed.""" start="00:00:33.720" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""A pandemic removed 2 hours of commute every day""" start="00:00:37.960" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""as a big contributor.""" start="00:00:40.920" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Ultimately though, I've used Emacs and extended it""" start="00:00:44.200" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""to reduce barriers to capturing and writing and thinking,""" start="00:00:47.000" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and I'm always on the lookout for minor refinements""" start="00:00:50.320" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""that help me stay in my thinking.""" start="00:00:53.320" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
How I got here
[[!template new="1" text="""How I got here was I started in WordPress,""" start="00:00:57.120" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""then I moved to Jekyll, and then to Hugo,""" start="00:00:59.240" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and through that process I started writing in Markdown.""" start="00:01:02.600" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And when I was learning Emacs,""" start="00:01:05.440" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I also didn't want to learn Org Mode,""" start="00:01:07.120" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""it felt intimidating because it could do so many things.""" start="00:01:09.360" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I later learned Org Mode grows with you,""" start="00:01:12.400" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and that's where I'm at now.""" start="00:01:15.520" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
Friction
[[!template new="1" text="""But I didn't realize that friction""" start="00:01:18.400" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""between writing Markdown for my public blog""" start="00:01:20.000" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and then adopting Org Mode locally""" start="00:01:23.360" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""for writing and time tracking and things like that.""" start="00:01:25.480" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And also, where did I put things,""" start="00:01:28.520" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""because migrating the formats was just a little clunky.""" start="00:01:31.120" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So ultimately I spent some time thinking about the data flow""" start="00:01:35.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and where I would put things,""" start="00:01:38.200" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""this kind of pre-thinking,""" start="00:01:39.520" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""where does stuff go when it comes into and out of my brain.""" start="00:01:41.040" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
Domains for notes
[[!template new="1" text="""So I have many domains where I'll write towards.""" start="00:01:45.960" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""The ones for this presentation are going to be""" start="00:01:49.400" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""blog posts, epigraphs, glossary, and melange.""" start="00:01:51.120" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Melange is, I don't know where it goes,""" start="00:01:54.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but now I do, I just throw it in melange.""" start="00:01:56.320" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So I began exploring Org Mode via Org Roam,""" start="00:02:01.000" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but I've ultimately switched from Org Roam""" start="00:02:04.480" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""to the simplified Denote package.""" start="00:02:07.560" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I didn't use a lot of the functionality""" start="00:02:10.640" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and I appreciate the plain text reality of Denote.""" start="00:02:13.200" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
Demo
[[!template new="1" text="""So let's hop into the demo.""" start="00:02:15.920" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I'm going to split my screen.""" start="00:02:18.800" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Over on the right is going to be""" start="00:02:19.920" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""where I'm going to be live typing stuff.""" start="00:02:21.960" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So let's get going.""" start="00:02:24.200" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""You'll notice I don't do a lot of screen splitting.""" start="00:02:27.320" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""It just makes it easier to focus.""" start="00:02:29.800" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So let's create a note.""" start="00:02:32.240" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""All right, I have bound hyper to my command key,""" start="00:02:34.040" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""my right command key.""" start="00:02:41.280" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""This opens up a whole world.""" start="00:02:42.520" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I'm going to create a blog post""" start="00:02:43.680" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and we're going to name it the ever popular "hello world".""" start="00:02:45.560" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""It's Emacs.""" start="00:02:49.800" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Great.""" start="00:02:50.800" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""We've saved it.""" start="00:02:51.520" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
Dabbrev and hippie-expand
[[!template new="1" text="""One of the things I encourage everybody to do""" start="00:02:55.440" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""is to watch Jay Dixit's presentation, Emacs for Writers.""" start="00:02:57.400" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""It showed me the utility of Dabbrev for quick auto correction.""" start="00:03:02.040" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And I also love using hippie-expand.""" start="00:03:08.080" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""When I watch VS coders code, it's always a little sad pants""" start="00:03:11.480" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""because they're thinking about coding or writing""" start="00:03:14.640" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""in terms of their code.""" start="00:03:17.320" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""But I have found as a programmer, I tend to write more tech,""" start="00:03:19.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""more like English instead of programming code.""" start="00:03:24.240" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So I think it's important to understand these tools""" start="00:03:27.800" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""that help me write better.""" start="00:03:30.720" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
Links
[[!template new="1" text="""All right, we're going to go with links.""" start="00:03:32.840" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Links are foundational for the web.""" start="00:03:34.880" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I'm going to insert a public link,""" start="00:03:37.000" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""which is a role playing game that I love,""" start="00:03:41.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Worlds Without Number.""" start="00:03:43.440" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And I'm going to go ahead and describe it.""" start="00:03:45.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""A role playing game.""" start="00:03:48.400" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""But I don't want to always say role playing game.""" start="00:03:49.240" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I'm going to abbreviate it.""" start="00:03:53.480" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So I wrote a function that will transform it.""" start="00:03:54.600" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And let's take a look at what that looks like on the inside.""" start="00:03:57.080" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""When I do this real quick, it's toggling it back and forth.""" start="00:04:00.240" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And I'll just keep doing that.""" start="00:04:06.280" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I also have the idea of public notes and private notes.""" start="00:04:10.120" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Public is things that's going to have a URL.""" start="00:04:13.000" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I met a person at a conference.""" start="00:04:15.400" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""He gave a talk on something that I thought was very useful.""" start="00:04:16.880" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I didn't write down what he talked about on his note.""" start="00:04:19.640" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I wrote it where it was more relevant to the topic.""" start="00:04:23.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And I can use a backlink to go find that.""" start="00:04:26.280" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Next up, I demonstrate the abbreviation.""" start="00:04:31.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I also have dates.""" start="00:04:34.120" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""This is a semantic date in HTML5.""" start="00:04:35.840" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I can just have the year.""" start="00:04:38.000" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I can also just have something like that date is today.""" start="00:04:41.840" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And we have date links.""" start="00:04:48.360" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I don't have backlinks built up for that,""" start="00:04:52.240" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but I have ideas of how I go about doing it.""" start="00:04:54.200" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And last up, thank you Frank Herbert,""" start="00:04:56.960" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I want to introduce epigraphs.""" start="00:04:58.760" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So this is epigraph.""" start="00:05:00.800" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I just have that, any sufficiently, dot, dot, dot.""" start="00:05:04.360" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And that's my epigraph.""" start="00:05:08.720" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Backlinks, I mentioned that.""" start="00:05:10.360" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Let's go take a look at Jonathan, right?""" start="00:05:16.720" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""He's a Rubyist, but importantly is the backlinks.""" start="00:05:19.000" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""He gave a talk on, that's right, PDFs.""" start="00:05:23.120" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I can go look at what he spoke to""" start="00:05:27.320" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and I can reference that because I will remember""" start="00:05:28.960" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""that talk or I will remember, oh, I need to look up PDFs.""" start="00:05:31.880" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Oh, I have something in PDFs.""" start="00:05:36.680" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Again, it's about stumbling upon data in a good way.""" start="00:05:39.800" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So thinking of making linking easy helps me""" start="00:05:43.240" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""create more and more ways to find things,""" start="00:05:48.320" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""both by links, backlinks, indices, file searches, and so forth.""" start="00:05:52.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""It's all about information organization.""" start="00:05:57.120" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Next up is a really cool function of org capture.""" start="00:05:59.240" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So let's take a look here.""" start="00:06:04.880" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I'm going to start a clock.""" start="00:06:06.680" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""It's running.""" start="00:06:08.040" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And I'm going to bring up my browser.""" start="00:06:09.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And I'm going to go ahead and capture to the content to clock.""" start="00:06:11.480" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And it brings up this block quote, which is lovely.""" start="00:06:19.680" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And boom, I'm going to save it.""" start="00:06:23.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I'm going to close this.""" start="00:06:25.720" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""We're back here to my "hello world".""" start="00:06:28.200" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And it has grabbed a block quote for this.""" start="00:06:30.960" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Again, it helps me gather stuff up quickly.""" start="00:06:33.520" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I've bound that also in my RSS feed.""" start="00:06:38.040" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""We're going to skip over macros, blocks, and the abstract.""" start="00:06:41.120" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And we're going to get into the export""" start="00:06:44.200" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""because this is where we can see the magic""" start="00:06:45.480" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""that happens because I want to take things""" start="00:06:47.520" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""from private to public.""" start="00:06:49.600" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So I have bound a key.""" start="00:06:51.080" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""These are my menu of things I don't want to forget.""" start="00:06:53.200" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I will export.""" start="00:06:55.560" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And here we go.""" start="00:06:56.760" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Here is my blog post in markdown format with Hugo shortcodes.""" start="00:06:57.840" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So let's go take a look at what that looks like.""" start="00:07:04.960" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Localhost.""" start="00:07:07.400" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I'm not writing in Rails.""" start="00:07:09.360" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text=""""Hello world" right there.""" start="00:07:12.360" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""This is the epigraph.""" start="00:07:14.920" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And I have a mention of Worlds without Number.""" start="00:07:17.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And I have mentioned this as a abbreviation.""" start="00:07:22.280" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So I include the first time this text.""" start="00:07:24.800" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Here's also Jonathan.""" start="00:07:27.520" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""He is not a public reference thing.""" start="00:07:30.200" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Also, I have these things here.""" start="00:07:33.400" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And here's my captured information""" start="00:07:37.520" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""along with the citation link to it.""" start="00:07:39.400" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Again, helpful to be consistent.""" start="00:07:42.600" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
Conclusion
[[!template new="1" text="""In conclusion, when I started learning Emacs,""" start="00:07:49.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I quickly shifted to vanilla Emacs and just started writing.""" start="00:07:52.280" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""As I wrote, when I needed to do something that I'd previously""" start="00:07:55.880" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""done in a text editor, I'd find an experiment with a package.""" start="00:07:59.520" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I continue that mindset.""" start="00:08:03.000" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""As I write, I'm attending to what I'm doing.""" start="00:08:04.680" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And eventually, I realize if I were to just write""" start="00:08:06.840" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""a function that does this one thing,""" start="00:08:08.880" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I'd have a smoother writing experience.""" start="00:08:11.640" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""This helps me practice my craft, extend my editor,""" start="00:08:13.560" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""understand its capabilities, and begin exploring other things.""" start="00:08:16.360" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""The goal of this is all to minimize the distractions.""" start="00:08:20.000" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""As I'm thinking about it, I wanted to quickly add it""" start="00:08:23.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and then move along,""" start="00:08:25.760" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""basically creating breadcrumbs for me""" start="00:08:27.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""to follow my thoughts in the future.""" start="00:08:29.560" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And one of those functions is""" start="00:08:31.240" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I'd like to write an extender for my abbr,""" start="00:08:33.160" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""abbreviation export to work in Latex.""" start="00:08:36.480" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""It's like halfway there.""" start="00:08:38.680" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So I'm looking forward to getting that done""" start="00:08:40.280" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""when I have some time and can prioritize it.""" start="00:08:42.240" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""But for now, thank you.""" start="00:08:45.440" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And I look forward to your questions.""" start="00:08:47.800" video="mainVideo-writing" id="subtitle"]]
Captioner: bala
Questions or comments? Please e-mail [jeremy@jeremyfriesen.com](mailto:jeremy@jeremyfriesen.com?subject=Comment%20for%20EmacsConf%202023%20writing%3A%20Emacs%20turbo-charges%20my%20writing)
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