Re: The praise of BrainStorm

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 4301

Posted by sub
2005-10-11 13:14:48

> This is not really a question, but just a comment, expressing my frustration, reading all the great times you all had with BS. I envy you!

My first reaction is to say that there are some really beautiful women out there that not all men would appreciate. Likewise, creative work is a very personal issue and I am sure no approach will please everyone.

So I think the issue is not really whether you appreciate Brainstorm but whether you have found a tool that “is made for you”, i.e. supports your own way of working.

My second reaction is to clip a few paragraphs from a recent exchange at the Brainstorm Beta list; interestingly, since noon today I have been using exactly this approach and working like mad on a text I was assigned just yesterday, for delivery on Thursday; honestly, as I am already very busy, if I didn’t have a tool like Brainstorm to work with, I would have refused the job.

[DT stands for David Tebbutt and AD for Alexander Deliyannis; it gets rather technical, but I think you’ll get the point.]

DT> I used to hurl everything in at the same level. Made easier with Magic Paste, of course. Just rummaged around, grabbing what I wanted.

DT> Then scanned the material looking for themes. If I were writing an article, I might have Intro, Good quotes, a heading for each major theme and Conclusion. I’d list these at the very top of the model above the gathered material.

DT> I’d mark the first entry under one of these topics and throw (now, I sometimes use throw copy) all the relevant entries. Throw copy shows all the thrown items in the main list as namesakes.

DT> The advantage of throw is that the main list shrinks, the advantage of copy is that you might want a topic under more than one heading. Maybe just use copy if you suspect something might be needed elsewhere - eg in the intro and one of the topics.

AD> I personally always throw copies; then I add a heading called “Material” or “Reference” or whatever and throw all the original notes in there. This way, while I’m editing, I can just slide back to the original notes to check the context. Also, when editing a specific entry, I will usually turn Namesakes Off, so that I maintain my original notes intact.

AD> After the main editing work, I may also check whether there’s some material that I ended up not using at all (it won’t have namesakes).

DT> The nice thing about the above approach is that you don’t have to ctrl select and rely on shift drag, you can just rattle down a list, throwing whatever takes your fancy.

AD> Yes, I love this process! That’s probably the main reason I turn to Brainstorm all the time. If I’m feeling creative I work on the structure and content; if I’m not, I just start looking for the reference material to magic paste. Either way, the work advances.

alx

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