From: elle@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Ellen Keyne Seebacher)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Managing notes (was Re: Notes for writing)
Date: 9 Oct 92 16:38:09 GMT
Reply-To: elle@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

Wilson MacGyver (macgyver@cis.ohio-state.edu) keeps:
>notes of ideas, plots, & characters that come to me...
>
>...do you keep notes? And if so, how do you organize your notes?

Oh, good -- an excuse to talk about my favorite toy!

I think that for me (and many of us under thirty :)) a computer is
_essential_.  There's just no way to cross-reference hundreds of
scraps of paper, if you, like me, tend to write on anything handy
(I've tried carrying one notebook rather than several, but that didn't
work either).  

I used the Macs in my office and my SO's Mac for years -- then bought
myself a Mac PowerBook 140 as soon as I could get one.  (Actually, I
prefer to write with emacs, but I'd just as soon not keep stories on a
shared Unix system, or worry about dialing in, or about the machine
being down.  No, I don't care for Mac implementations of emacs.)

Which left the question:  what software can cross-reference hundreds of
scraps of information?  I've heard writers talk about using HyperCard
for this, but HyperCard is just too slow and not database-like enough
for my taste.  On the other hand, even relational databases are lousy
at free-form cross-referencing.  So for a long time I handled all my
notes in Microsoft Word 4 and the outliner MORE 3, though neither was
what you'd call an information manager.

I knew if I waited long enough I could get a good deal on a package
I'd seen reviewed in the trade rags, "ThoughtPattern" -- which is
supposed to do _exactly_ what I wanted.  Let me quote the propaganda:
"One of the nice things about ThoughtPattern is that it doesn't
require you to think a lot about the structure of your information at
the start. You can add or change structure as you go, assigning
categories and building associations between items as the body of
information grows and changes. ..."

You enter scraps of any length as separate Items, then assign as many
"Tabs" (category headers) as you want to each Item.  You can also link
in files from any other programs, like partial stories from your word
processor.  And you can assign priorities (or even set alarms) on Items.
Searches can involve any or all of:  1) Tabs assigned, 2) dates of
creation or modification, 3) priorities assigned.

What's the hitch?  Well, it doesn't work reliably yet. :(  I bought
version 1.3, and I understand that most of the problems are being
fixed in version 2, but my ThoughtPattern notes have mysteriously
crashed twice -- once destroying every character note I had.  Needless
to say, I haven't rid myself of my old Word and MORE notes, so I'm
still disorganized.

If they can ever make the damned thing stable, though, I'd _highly_
recommend ThoughtPattern.  If you want more information, drop me a note.
(I've no relation to Bananafish Software, other than being a usually 
pleased and occasionally annoyed customer.)

--                    __
Ellen Keyne Seebacher \/             elle@midway.uchicago.edu
  "I write better, faster, and far more enjoyably with emacs than with
   the best fountain pen or Selectric I ever owned."  --STella