Steven Johnson, who I started reading because of his book Everything Bad is Good For You (a well thought out defense of digital games) has a post on boingboing documenting his novel writing process (he has a new book out). Although he says he has used various writing tools for his different books, his “one constant?” DevonThink. His account of the writing process is short, but still worth a read as I always enjoy learning about the tools and processes other writers use (something we tend to treat as a “magic black box” rather than as an important step in the process).
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Yes, a great piece and he’s such a great writer! Having said that, a propos your title, not sure if this method would work for novels. A different kind of a creative process seems to be at work there. Unless, of course, you mean “novel” as “a new kind”.
Really interesting. I’m fascinated by the writing process – and the tools/technologies different writers make use of, and how they shape their ‘scene of writing’. I’m really interested in how modern media technologies are reshaping this – not least because I love to make use of those kind of tools to help my own writing. I’ve just started using a tool called Evernote, which I’ve got synced between my Mac and my iPhone, and I can see how it has the potential to totally change my relationship to my own personal archive of information and thoughts.
Very thought provoking post/link.
Followed the link to the article and to DevonThink itself. I have been interested in ways that parsing meaning from unstructured text can be accomplished, fiction being one of the most challenging text that comes to my mind.
Unfortunately, I have a Windows laptop, so I won’t be downloading the product to give it a try.