Calliope

I think I like writing? I do a lot of it, but up until leaving my last job it was either in the form of documentation or just talking with coworkers (often about technical things). I've been Posting a lot and flirting with the idea of more purposeful writing, but it absolutely drains me and makes me feel bad to do so in a way that I'm pretty sure isn't "you don't actually like writing" but more "something about how you write is stressing you out".

Do y'all have anything you do or a method of approaching writing that helps make it take less energy out of you?

Like one thing I know that I wanna get better at is not stopping myself in the middle of writing and coming up with / thinking through counterarguments—this usually makes me feel stuck between an urgency to get back to spitting out my thoughts and refining them before writing them down, and I'd be way less stressed if I wrote things out first and then refined them afterwards.

If you find yourself thinking of things elsewhere in your writing, such as two scenes later or something you could add to the argument two pages back, just leave notes for later.

I do this: [edit: this is too vague]

You can then easily search for [edit and find all the notes you've left without diverting yourself from what you had been doing.

While I'm here, when you stop for the day, leave your current sentence unfinished. It's much easier to ft going again if you know how that sentence goes because you left it half written out.

I took a class once where the prof, who studied and wrote comics among other things, said he'd sat down over the years and averaged the number of words per bubble in comics, and that it was 3-7. This was before Twitter existed fwiw.

And for homework we had to go do that to a couple of issues of something. I chose Ai Yori Aoshi because I was convinced it would be above the average. And it was not lol.

For every bubble in which someone's going on about something, there were like 3 or 4 with single words.

It is also worth noting that, for centuries, (some) teachers of English have been attempting to impose a Latinate grammar structure on English.

For example, this Oxford University Press blogpost says:

Despite Webster, the Latinate model survived into the twentieth century in the English classroom. H. W. Fowler, whose Modern English Usage (1926) was the most influential guide of the 20th century, read Classics at Oxford and spent some time as a Classics teacher before turning to lexicography. His linguistic prescriptions are soaked through with edicts derived from Latin grammar. The Latin use of the nominative case following the verb to be prompts Fowler to condemn English constructions such as it is me; according to Fowler, this ‘false grammar’ should properly be it is I. Fowler’s prescription continues to find loyal adherents today (if you are one – try saying it out loud); ironically, it is probably to blame for the widespread overcompensation (or ‘hypercorrection’) which leads to the preference for incorrect I in phrases such as ‘between you and me’.

I had a surprising amount of difficulty finding more sources on this (my general-purpose Google skills have atrophied), but I hope this is an interesting place to start for y'all.

Perhaps one of the most insane Latin grammar rules imposed on English by 17th and 18th century writers is the idea that you should not split an infinitive.

So to boldly go where no one has gone before is, according to them, incorrect, because the infinitive "to go" has been split by an intensifier.

The reason you shouldn't split an infinitive in Latin is because you can't. It's a single word.

every so often I think a lot about how the class I remember nothing from in university is the one the professor banned laptops in because "science shows writing things down on paper makes you more likely to remember it"

I’ve always wondered how this is affected by zoomers growing up using keyboards. Ive probably used keyboards for writing a lot more than I have used a pen and paper, and it’d be interesting to see how that effects it

so while in my case physically writing something does force it through my brain, this always applied to both typing and handwriting, and if i had the choice typing was faster anyway. it's just that laptops weren't common or very affordable during my public school education & my first crack at college.

oh no i think im the old that follows the "rule." typing does help me with memory but physically writing helps so much more. nevermind the ability to doodle and draw diagrams on the fly that i can't easily do in text.

but also like. brains be different so. whatever.

So, the thing about note taking is that if all you do is record the information that the person is speaking, or that the book has in text, then you're not doing it effectively. What you're supposed to do is to make notes in such a way that you're actually creating connections between information in your mind, hopefully between information you already have and information that you don't already have. Those connections are the way the memories get made, so to speak. It's poetic, but also somewhat neurological, that when we remember we re member, we piece together.

When it comes to physical writing versus laptops, the issue isn't the technology, but how easy it is on paper to do weird shit that will help you forge new bonds of ideas: doodling illustrations in the margins, juxtaposing blocks of information in white space by simply going back to a section you've already written in, drawing arrows between sections. Literally the act of deciding those things make sense reinforces the memories.

There's a line that's often used by the Hobonichi company when talking about their day planners: "I'm not writing it down to remember it later. I'm writing it down to remember it now." And that's really and truly how note-taking actually works.

If you can forge those connections with digital equipment, then there's basically no difference -- and if you're more adept on digital equipment, then hey, you'll be better.

The study that OP's professor was likely thinking of had grade school and middle school students read texts and then take simple factual quizzes after the fact -- reading and note-taking were either analog or digital. The thing is, quietly, tacitly, but concretely, we're taught by school and by culture how to take notes in analog: marginal notes, scribbling on sheets of paper, so on. We're not actually taught how to take effective digital notes. A second study replicated the methods of the first but taught the students how to take digital notes and the comprehension scores were within variation. It's all about how to remember information, not how you do it.

Now, with that said, I absolutely recommend everyone get good at a physical, analog note-taking medium, simply because it's easier from the point of view of the tech. Anytime you have paper and a pencil, you can do it, whatever strategy you use.

But I also recommend everyone use at least one digital platform. I do a lot of writing in Joplin, originally because I wanted something that would sync between desktop and phone that also allowed for Markdown. But what I do now is to create separate pages in a notebook and take notes by acting as though I'm going to write an essay or something in there. Because that way, the organization choices I make for which part goes where is the note-taking, not the simple act of recording.

Under no circumstances should you be trying to record every single thing your teacher says. You can record the lecture if you need that (yes some professors forbid that, and yes, there are some good reasons to do so, though never in the face of disability needs).