Slip box or shoebox?

Most people who write to think keep notes in a shoebox: many apps, many notebooks, and a blank page for every new piece. A slip box is one folder of short linked notes, where a new piece starts as a path through what you already have.

Eight questions place you on the ladder and say what the next rung is. Answer for how you actually work, not how you would like to. Nothing is recorded until you choose to send it.

1. Q1Where do your notes live right now?

   Across several apps, notebooks, emails to myself and the margins of PDFs.Mostly in one app, in its own format.In plain-text files, spread over a few project folders.In plain text, in one folder, whatever the project.
2. Q2What does one note usually hold?

   Whatever I wrote that day, about whatever I was reading.Everything on one source, or one meeting.One topic, which grows as I add to it.One idea, in my own words.
3. Q3How do you decide where a new note goes?

   Wherever I am when I write it.Into the folder for the project it belongs to.Into a folder by topic, with tags.It barely matters where. What matters is which notes it links to.
4. Q4You half-remember an idea from two years ago. How do you find it?

   I remember roughly where I wrote it, and hunt.I search each app and notebook in turn.One search across all my notes.One search, then I follow its links to what sat near it.
5. Q5You cut a paragraph last month. Now you want it back.

   It is gone, unless I happened to keep a copy.I look through dated copies: draft_v4, draft_v5.The app's version history, if it goes back that far.It is in the history. Every change is a snapshot.
6. Q6How does a new piece start?

   With a blank page and my memory of what I have read.With a blank page and a search through old folders.With an outline built from notes I gather first.With a path through my notes: where it starts, what it must touch.
7. Q7Could an agent read your notes tomorrow, without you tidying them first?

   No. Half of them are on paper or in my head.Some, once I had exported them from their app.Yes, but it would find files, not connections.Yes, and it could follow the links from any note.
8. Q8When an agent helps you draft, what does it work from?

   Nothing. I don't use one for writing.Whatever I paste into the chat.A few notes or documents I hand it.A path I chose through the slip box. It shows which notes it used.

The button opens an email to us, copied to Rabbie, our robot, who keeps the diary. Your result travels in it so we can prepare. You can change or delete it before you send, and nothing leaves your browser until you do. The ladder is the core of Writing like Lightning, and the sign-up is where the introduction starts.

Back to Writing like Lightning →