Method and Mayhem (series)

In a post on Fountain Pen Weekly, Navin Sigamany wrote in reaction to a recent SBRE Brown video:

Very often, in many many pen groups I am part of, I see fellow fountain pen enthusiasts engaging enthusiastically in serial acquisition of the latest shiny thing…. the focus always seems to be on acquisition. A preciously small amount of the interactions are on the actual use of our writing instruments, and a miniscule little is on the sharing of the output from them.

I am very interested in process. In fact, I am as interested in process as I am in the object itself, but I cannot say that I’m strictly a process person. I love mnmlscholar’s blog exactly because JP focuses so much on process, and he’s one of the very few people in the fountain pen sphere who consistently talks about process. I love how thoughtful and organized his process is. I love that he changes both inks and pens frequently, and yet keeps his rotation at 6-7 pens and a logically thought out ink palette. I appreciate his thoughts on annotating, indexing, and other process-oriented posts.

I want to share mine too, but… listen, there’s mayhem in my method. And I am unapologetic.

I am driven by desire and will to produce works that reflect my inner journeys, and I also have a determination to do so using beautiful tools. So far, so good. But how exactly this is accomplished is a bit of a structured mess. I am not a rigid organizer. Rigidity of any kind is an enemy of my brain. When I try to force myself to follow a very precise plan, I will rebel against it. But if I have a solid scaffolding of structure, then the variety and spontaneity happen through the details. That works really well for me.

Beginning of coffeeshop journaling - it’s the first of September :) Stickers via stickii sticker club, courtesy of my spouse who got me into stickers. This oatmilk latte with a foam feather was very good.

My method is hybridized. I produce generative writing on a laptop. I use garden variety Word for processing, and Evernote for bibliography notes and sometimes first extremely messy piles of writing (especially for research). In terms of analog tools, I have a journal which I always keep by my side. I started with A5, found it very difficult to manage alongside the laptop, and scaled down to a B6 and now to an A6. I run through an A6 notebook very fast, usually in a month or two, but it’s worth it for me to be able to easily position it next to my laptop. I take handwritten notes as I type, about things like what I am going to write next, ideas that I need to keep track of but which are not in the immediate writing path, beginnings and ends of writing sessions and what I intend to write next (this helps restart).

I also use my journal to write down things as they happen in my brain. It helps me not to endlessly churn them - when I write them down, I let them go (for now).

My original special interest: words, and where they came from. This one is about the Proto-Indo-European word for millstone and its shape in various descendant languages. These days, the English word “quern” is quite rare. We no longer mill grain using a pair of stones. (Ink: Sailor’s Sailor)

My journal also contains other things, such as pen notes, quick notes about my day, reminders, quotes and the like. If I need to quickly jot down a to-do list item, I later migrate it to my Plotter to-do list.

I like to duplicate some things. For example, I write citations down in multiple ways. I manage the bulk of my citations and quotes in Evernote, but I will write something down in my notebook to highlight it for myself. Sometimes I outline stories and chapters in my notebook, then migrate them elsewhere.

End of coffeeshop journaling - etymologies on the left, notes on Judge Gary Strankman’s chapter on names on the right. The quote about naming as dominance is something I want to immediately cite in the essay I’m working on, but I also want to remember it later. This quote and the full citation were recorded in Evernote.

I manage my wordcount/daily productivity separately, usually in the Plotter. I take handwritten notes and make to-do lists in my Plotter, and I manage notes and to-do lists for specific projects in Plotter “collections”.

I hate being too constrained in my approach, and I also hate not having organization. My approach is free flowing enough to make me happy, and structured enough to be methodical and get things done.

In the future, I want to dive deeper into how I manage complex and varied projects as a neurodivergent person who does many things.

I hope you are enjoying the blog so far!