Outline to first draft, a workflow idea, apropos to Mac and Linux

Posted by Amontillado
Nov 28, 2024 at 04:04 AM

The current version of OmniOutliner won’t run on my old Mac. OutlineEdit may not be a viable alternative for the long haul. Bike is wonderful, but I have a wandering eye.

So, I’ve been outlining with MindNode in outline view, usually with the notes inspector open.

This has one nice feature over single pane outliners. I can write multiple paragraphs in a topic’s notes without having to use option-enter.

Today I realized there is a stupid outliner trick that might be handy with any outliner that can export to Markdown.

Writing an outline with expansive notes is fine. Presumably you want the same topic structure in your MS, but you don’t want those rough notes.

So, export the outline to Markdown, let’s say to a file called MyOutline.md.

Pop up a shell prompt and fire off this command - hopefully emojis won’t torpedo this:

grep ^\# MyOutline.md | pandoc -f markdown -t docx -o MyOutline.docx

Now you have a docx file with just your topics in a nice indented hierarchy, sort of the skeleton from your outline.

Complete your novel by filling in the blanks, cash outrageous royalty checks, and live a life of idle decadence on the Riviera.

Or something like that.