Info collection/use; authoring ideas, organization, composition - my personal approach

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Posted by Cassius
Oct 20, 2007 at 10:23 PM

Back in GV days, before MS Word became ascendant, I used GV for everything, even equations (for which I added printer codes). GV had more text formatting capabilities than Zoot has, apparently even now. And, I believe that GV’s Category-Assignment capabilities were a fair analog of Zoot’s. (If I’m wrong, please disabuse me.) I own Zoot, but its lack of basic test formatting has kept me from using it.

1. Info storage/use:
When I worked on projects that had background information available, I would save relevant documents as separate files in a program-specific folder. Sometimes there would be hundreds, mostly with redundant information. I had neither the time nor energy to read/sift through these for relevant info. Besides which, as a project progressed, what was relevant often changed. I occasionally would use a search program to sift for relevant info, but not too often. It was much better, when possible, to speak directly with people with “hands-on” info. (Management seldom had a clue as to reality.)

In sum, for the work I did, most document/info collection proved to be a waste of time. For research-oriented work, I had an extensive library of technical books and access to a research library. When appropriate, I would put relevant reference info (title, page, author, etc.) into GV or another PIM, but these instances usually were relatively few because of the subjects of my work/projects

For truly personal info such as medical, business address, hobbies, etc. info, I used GV, but now either Jot+ or MyBase. (I’m thinking about Ultra Recall.) For contacts and appointments I use Ecco, and I carry a shirt-pocket, paper planner..

2. Authoring:

My ideas or inspirations have either been self-generated or have come from something I’ve read or heard that generated a…“That’s it!!”

For organization, I used GV until it became moribund, then Inspiration (which is “clunky” to use), and currently NoteMap (even if it will never be updated). These single-pane outliners make it very easy to move topics around and build a document into virtually finished form. I also use these to save ideas, references, etc. Finally, I “rtf” export to Word, where I do a final cleanup/format.

For creating diagrams for my potential readers, I use Inspiration.

3. A question:

Has anyone actually had a new idea or inspiration solely as a result of a link among entries that was generated by software such as Connected Text?

-c

Posted by Derek Cornish
Oct 21, 2007 at 01:09 AM

Cassius -

Like you, I used GV extensively for all my work - still do, actually, although I have flirted with NoteMap, Inspiration (clunky somehow, as you say) and PocketThinker. Brainstorm, too, although I find it unaccountably constraining - claustrophobic almost during prolonged use. I think this is more a result of having used GV for so long, rather than anything intrinsically wrong with Brainstorm, although its aerial view does need to be made editable IMO.

As for GV’s category features, I never made much use of these, although I recall that Steve Cohen and Steve Zeoli did. While a great fan of GV, I don’t think it bears much comparison with Zoot’s capabilities in this regard. However, the two work very well together, in this way:

I use Zoot mainly for collecting information, as a receptacle for random brainstorming thoughts, and for organising and categorizing via its virtual folders, keywords, and delimited fields in items. GV (or it could be NoteMap, etc) I use for developing arguments. There is a lot of interchange between Zoot and GV at this point, as I may insert ideas from Zoot into GV and vice versa.

Once I have an outlined argument - and often a considerable amount of drafted text - I replicate the main points of the argument in Zoot itself - in the folder tree - and use Zoot’s incomparable powers of organising data to marshal its contents in order to enlarge, develop and support the argument I am making (or narrative I am constructing).

When I am happy with what I’ve got - or usually when I am just plain tired of working in an outliner or in Zoot - I move to a separate drafting program. Most recently I’ve been using a plain-text editor, NoteTab Pro, which has a primitive outlining feature: essentially, it acts as a rudimentary two-pane outliner. I use the outlining “tree” as a simple table-of-contents based on my argument, and start proper drafting. The main benefit of a two-pane outliner at this stage is that it enables me to use the TOC as a simple means of navigating around the document. (Of course, I could use MS-Word at this point, but I refer something simpler.)

None of this is altogether satisfactory, and there is a lot of overlap - without much corresponding integration amongst programs. But I think this reflects the fact that although it is useful to see the whole creative process as a series of stages, one is always going back to earlier stages - improving the outline, searching and collecting more information, organising and re-organising, even as one is drafting something. It is these feedback loops that make the whole process messier but more dynamic than a simple workflow diagram might suggest.

Just my take on it.

Derek

Posted by Cassius
Oct 21, 2007 at 03:05 AM

Derek,

You said, “... and use Zoot’s incomparable powers of organising data to marshal its contents in order to enlarge, develop and support the argument I am making (or narrative I am constructing).”

What powers of organizing data? As I never got very deeply into Zoot, I may have missed something important. Can you provide specific examples of these powers?

Thanks!

I seem to recall that Steve C gave the following example of GV’s Category/Assignment capability: He had a lot of meetings with other divisions in his organization. He put notes about each into GV’s outline view. In GV’s category view, he created a category called something like “Division” and in this category he had as “assignments” the names of the divisions. He also had rules that linked certain words or phrases to each assignment=division name.

Then, when he was asked about the meetings he had with a particular division or about a particular topic (for which he had a rule) he could immediately generate a list using the GV Category/Assignment view.

-c

Posted by Derek Cornish
Oct 21, 2007 at 06:52 AM

> What powers of organizing data? As I never got very deeply into Zoot, I may have missed something important. Can you provide specific examples of these powers?

The best place to start is by loading Jim Fallows’s ArticleOrganizer.zot, which is to be found at: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ZootForum/files/Sample%20Databases/ . This gives one example of how Zoot can be used. There are also a number of other databases in the same “Files” folder. You have to join the group to get access to these files, but that’s no problem.

If you haven’t looked at Zoot for some time, another welcome improvement is the much more detailed help file that now comes with the installation. As well as the techniques I mentioned - organising and categorizing by using Zoot’s virtual folders, keywords, and delimited fields in items - you can set up Zoot to automatically send incoming information to predetermined folders, too. I’ve been using Zoot for some years now, but still feel I have barely scratched the surface. I even appreciate its devotion to plain text the more I use it, but I think I am in a definite minority on that issue.

Derek

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