Pass it on…

Here’s a double recommendation for the New Year. First, the BBC’s writing site, and then an interview on the BBC’s writing site with Neil Cross, author of Mr. In-between. Cross  turns out to be a fan of Scrivener, and discusses how the program was developed, why it works for him, and how he uses it. This recommendation will be a twofer, containing both the site and the interview together. Good reading. Love the Beeb!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/insight/neil_cross.shtml  

An idea is a nest, is a nest, is a nest… a nest

In 1983, the software program called “Framework” and its chief developer Robert Carr were already talking about integrated productivity software. That’s a quarter century ago, and the rest of the world is still catching up. Or playing the same game on a different field. While Microsoft uses identical commands across its office software, no one has captured the outlining genius of Framework and its Fred programming language.  (Applescript comes close, but it’s not as simple as FRED.) The essential and outstanding difference between Framework and all other outlining programs is the radical (and obvious) concept of “nests.” Framework’s outlines actually nested into each other. Yes, they were “sibs,” but they were more than brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles. They were actual containers, and what they contained was a free-flowing stream of thoughts. Hey, it was the age of “go with the flow.” Framework’s nests didn’t just sit side-by-side or one on top of the other. Each idea lived inside the other, preserving hierarchies while allowing penetration. Penetration? Yes, as in: penetrating ideas. By nesting the outline structure, a writer could dig down into his own best thoughts. Then, he or she could simply tap the “insert” key and open another new and “deeper” frame, allowing him to go further inside his original “frame” of thought It was like Tupperware for the mind. It didn’t take up space in the tool shed and it kept your thinking fresh. Framework wasn’t just an outliner; it was a thinking tool that lured the user out of the list, and out of the hierarchy and down into the “foul rag and bone shop” of creation. (Yeats, “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”) And, after such a revery, a single click snapped your notes back into a hierarchy, where — ah-ha! — a full-blown piece of rational, expository thinking emerged as if by magic. After that, the outline could be manipulated to more fully express the idea writer endeavored to evoke. Forgive this bit of nostalgia, please.

 

Incidentally, Framework lives on for PCs, but I can’t vouch for it, or for its price. http://www.framework.com/ Yes, it has the world’s ugliest, most loathsome and most utterly workable GUI left in computerdom; it’s an unkempt but highly serviceable artifact of the late, great breakthrough Intel 386 chip.  

 

News you can use: At DEVONthink the buzz is that there will be an early 2008 release of Version 2.0. The new release has been a long time coming, no doubt complicated by the emergence of (ho-hum) Leopard. DTP 2.0 will probably contain tags and visualizations, but as always the developers are playing it close to the vest. Also, the DEVONfolks are coming out with a new product, something they promise will be Big, really beeeeg. So far, they are not saying much, just teasing their new offering with an image of a maze, an English garden maze. My guess? The new DEVONthing will be a Getting Things Done productivity tool that points you through the daily maze of information collection and production.  Price point, guessing again, $79.95 if it really works, $59.95 if it will work within a year of release. Smile!

 

Oh, That was Yesterday

Okay, last post was a homage to “Orphan Annie” and today’s post is a homage to Paul McCartney (“Yesterday… yada-yada…”) Last visit, I was trying to think of software that would solve a problem(s) for me, a book’s start-up problems, nothing unexpected. There’s always difficulties at the beginning of anything, which is why I experiment with software. Here’s what I learned this time, starting with the situation. I had several programs open on the desktop. There was Word with the document I was working on, plus several open documents for reference; then, there was all 1.83 gigs of information in DEVONthink at the ready; and Scrivener, which I’m re-studying in my free time and finding increasingly interesting. Unfortunately I’ve allowed its system to fall into disarray. I had Tinderbox in waiting; Entourage in the background, just in case my ship came in; and, what else? Doesn’t matter. My focus was on Word and the chapter I had been working on, which had reached a decision point. Here comes the bad news. There was no obvious way that I could use my high-power software hanging in the background to help. My problem required a decision, not a decision-tree. Even if I white-boarded all the issues I faced all the way out to the edges, that wouldn’t be enough. I’d still have to make a leap of faith, and go beyond the frame. That’s not my style, however, and that raised a question. Was there a limit to what software can do for a writer? Or, for this writer? Logically, there are lots of things software can do. That’s the purpose of the blog. But software can’t make you write. It can’t create a best-seller, let alone a book that will sell. What it can do, I realized, is to alter thought processes, to re-train the mind, over time. As I labored forward on the chapter, making all those damn choices, I found that I employed a style of thinking that came from working with my software set. In other words, this cocktail of software on my desktop altered my logic; not its direction, but its application. The software had re-trained my mind. My logic had been atomized and ordered. So, while the software did not help me make choices, let alone directly effect the outcome of the chapter, it caused me to sift my choices down to their parts. Ironically, I turned to a pencil and paper to sort through the last bits of logic that I needed to get going. After that came the leap of faith. 

Writing Bent

The idea of cybernetic aides for prose writers– I don’t want to call it software, because it promises to be more —  has been parsed long enough to be understood by theorists and used consciously or unconsciously by working writers. Author James Fallows of The Atlantic magazine (Breaking the News, and Blind Into Iraq) and Steven Berlin Johnson, who wrote Everything Bad is Good for You, come to mind. They’re both advocates of CyberTools for writers. I associate Fallows and Johnson with DEVONthink, which is part of my tool kit. Other programs in the kit — to name a few — are Scrivener, Tinderbox, Inspiration (yes, Inspiration). The purpose of each is slightly different, but in general they help me to write lucidly and creatively — with insights that might have escaped me while I was working on my Remington portable.  (Incidentally, I am composing the blog on the fly, so to speak, for now. No software, not yet. But that will change. I am beginning to pluck out a blog tool on Tinderbox. Scrivener may also get some work, as well as Yojimbo.) Today, I “lensed” my way through a balky chapter in my book with Tinderbox. But I used it to work backwards. Instead of outlining and then writing; I wrote the chapter, first. Then I broke it down into a simple-simple Tinderbox outline (simple because Tinderbox can get complex). That helped me see the “movement,” if you will, of the chapter: the way it progressed from scene, to exposition, to supporting detail, etc. Strangely, in the end, the process flipped back to good old fashioned intuition. I saw that analyzing the chapter with Tinderbox, breaking it down, merely revealed its parts. I was surprised that it did not help me to separate the trees from the forest. And, more, it did not help me see the chapter through the eyes of my reader. That is, I was not able to use the software to identify the “order” in which my reader needed to learn about my character and her situation. Tinderbox helped to be sure, and it allowed me to see a progression but, in the end, experience trumped software. I fell back on my intuition. Or did I? More tomorrow….