I have recently switched to reading articles on an iPad (in GoodReader, as Sente turned out to be too sluggish) and will probably store the highlighted sections in separate CPN files. I use DEVONthink to store material (files for work projects, an image database, one for sounds, one for vids, one for private project, one for sources (all articles), one for private sources, but use CPN to make notes about the topics that I deal with (e.g., topic notebooks like information on writing articles, advisory, etc., and article notebooks where I put in information for articles I want/need to write). Regarding my current workflow, it’s on page 327 (book page number, not Acrobats) in OC2. For writing the dissertation I broke it down into subparts (Introduction, Study 1, etc.), sorted it in another CPN file, and wrote it down. The outline was actually a bit sluggish, as it had a lot of cells (it was all on one page, the page number related to the amount of pages it would have been when printed as seen in the preview mode of print). I did write my dissertation before stumbling upon DEVONthink, so there is (was) no relation between DT and CPN for my dissertation outline. Circus Ponies Notebook for Academic Writing (e.g., Thesis Writing).Circus Ponies Notebook: The Best Tool for Structuring Creative Writing Projects (esp.Scrivener - A perfect program for dissertation writing.Taken (and used) together both lets you focus on writing, which is hard enough in itself. Scrivener’s main strength is that it lets you focus on writing (and re-writing) and also reduces tremendous amounts of cognitive load. Word was made for letters and such-a-like, not for longer, more complicated texts. Forget Word when it comes to writing larger texts.
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Scrivener on the other hand can be used to write the text in, as it has some of the best features for writing I have ever seen, including a “Backup To” function that automatically uses current date and time for the file name, a good outline for navigation, version control, and much, much more. This tremendously reduces the cognitive load you have to handle as you do not need to keep in mind all the information you do not actually need at the moment. This allows you to focus on individual details, small subsections, while never staying from the path of the article itself. Now combine them and you have a very powerful combination for creative writing.Ĭircus Ponies Notebook can be used to collect notes for a project and structure them in a way that make sense, that you can follow when you write down the text based on that information. And now imagine a cool, clear thinker, who is very focused on what he does best. Imagine a wild, colorful girl, who is interested in anything and everything, and holds an impossible width and depth of information that she can order in any way she needs.
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Here I just want to point out to those three blog entries and make a case for using them together for (longer) creative writing projects. I have also written an article about using Circus Ponies Notebook for academic writing. I could not have written my diploma thesis without Circus Ponies Notebook and I wouldn’t have been able to finish my PhD thesis without both Circus Ponies Notebook and Scrivener.īoth programs are presented in detail in the blog entries: Scrivener - A perfect program for dissertation writing, and Circus Ponies Notebook: The Best Tool for Structuring Creative Writing Projects (esp. Steve Jobs once said: “Computers are bicycles for the mind.”.Ĭircus Ponies Notebook and Scrivener exemplify this sentence for me.