TIL of a philosopher and prolific author who maintains at the heart of their working practice a collection of more than 148,000 notes. It’s a fascinating story, catnip for #zettelkasten fans, and you’ll be reading it here very soon.
Roland Barthes on the purpose of making notes
Note-taking should mainly serve as a means to enable writing rather than being an exhaustive record of knowledge. At least, that’s my approach.
My writing process oscillates between notes and drafts
Writing is a messy, iterative process involving rough ideas, multiple drafts, and the challenge of balancing note-taking with drafting to ultimately create coherent work.
I’m always comparing my sloppy first drafts with other people’s heavily-edited published work. So it’s no wonder I’m down on my own stuff; this is a completely unfair contest of my own making.
That’s why I’ve found Dan Harmon’s advice enduringly helpful:
💬 Switch from team “I will one day write something good” to team “I have no choice but to write a piece of shit.”
In other words, ‘perfect’ is for editing, not for writing.
I’ve been asking what comes after content?. Here’s one possibility, dreamed up by Burnout from Humans.
More at The Wild Chatbot. HT: Rowenwhite.
Nothing is immune from the law of fashion: what looks cutting edge today will date very quickly. Before long, AI-generated ‘content’ will be what you won’t be seen dead wearing. So what comes after content?
💬 This quote from Thus Spoke Zarathustra seemed to land for me.
💬“I had in my mind to write three books about the world as it was, using concepts and images almost like characters. But I ended up making a long detour.” — Italian author, Roberto Calasso. (Source).
“Long detour” is an apt summary of a writing life, and fitting inspiration for my latest project.
