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[[!meta title="Emacs Writing Studio"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2024 Peter Prevos"]]
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# Emacs Writing Studio
Peter Prevos (he) - <mailto:peter@prevos.net> , <https://peterprevos.com> , @danderzei@aus.social
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Emacs Writing Studio is a comprehensive guide and configuration
for authors using Emacs. The book covers everything from
organising ideas and writing distraction-free to publishing in
multiple formats. The book itself was fully written and published
with the configuration it describes. This talk outlines the proces
of developing this configuration and the book and some
perspectives on using Emacs as a tool to write for humans.
About the speaker:
Peter Prevos is a water engineer and social scientist. In this
talk Peter introduces Emacs Writing Studio, a starter kit and
associated manual for authors with no Emacs experience.
# Discussion
Technical issues connecting to the BigBlueButton room, so no live Q&A
- Q: What's Emacs composition proposition above focused/opinionated packages but below full config bases (Doom/Spacemacs) -- say for "js/ts devel with the kitchen sink", or "writer studio" like this? Akin to Doom/Spacemacs "modules" and such. Just other packages? If so, why haven't these caught up, and convenient libraries of those emerge? We're typically composing at the lowest levels of packaging, and proliferation of base configs could be a symptom(?)
- A: (not yet answered)
- Q: For writers who procrastinate, it's very tempting to fall into
the time sink of configuring Emacs rather than simply writing, even
with the optimal Emacs writing setup. Is this something you've
encountered, and do you have any suggestions for how to combat it?
- A: As probably all beginning Emacs users I spent a lot of time
tinkering. I decided that I should work with rather than on
Emacs and thus EWS was born. My prod config is 99% EWS with some
enhancements. My config developed by just starting with vanilla
Emacs and only add what I needed, as the need arose.
- Don't try to develop the ideal system in your mind and then
build it, let it grow organically.
- Q: How much success have you had getting writers to use Emacs \--
and *stick with it* \-- using EWS? I've had people ask me about
using Emacs for technical writing and/or coding, and start off well,
but move to another editor in two months. The main reason is when
they want to do something with Emacs, can't figure out how, and
find a plugin (for Obsidian or VSCode, say) that does the thing they
want with no further setup or tweaking required.
- A: I have had some good feedback from readers, but I cannot
attest to their personal success. The aim of EWS is to get
things working without the need for much config. However, Emacs
will never bny an easy point and click system such as the ones
you mention.
- Q:When I was learining Emacs I bounced off it the first couple of
times, after reading Mastering Emacs and hearing it was the
tinkerers editor I got the right mental model to learn Emacs. Did
you have that? and what made it worth using and teaching others?
- A: The best way to learn anything is to teach other people. So I
used EWS as a project to imporve my understanding of Emacs. Not
only did it force me to fully understand how things works, but
also develop new fucntions and packages where I saw a need.
- Q: I love using org to write prose. For me, I like writing the final
version of the text in org, and I prefer paper to brainstorm ideas
and draft things. How was the brainstorming experience and the
process to organize your thoughts to write the book using org-mode?
- A: I do my brainstorning in a paper notebook. The first EWS idea
is a sketch in my notebook. In my weekly review I transfer notes
worth keeping to Denote (scan graphic notes). Writing by hand
has many advantages for idea generation. Denote is my
repository, not a thinking tool.
## Notes
- Thanks for the great questions. Apologies for the technical glitch.
- Very interesting talk
- YouTube comment: ❤
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