It wasn’t writer’s block. I needed a new format.

I’ve just spent the last half hour searching around for the right way to go about a book idea I have.

Was I wasting this time? Or was it a real investment, the way a comfortable office chair is an investment?

Tools for writing, and thinking carefully about my writing workflow, have been a game-changer for me.

I thought I “didn’t have time” to write after my son was born, but Obsidian made it feel like the writing I did on my phone was real, because it synced to my computer and I was able to work with it.

I thought I “didn’t have ideas” about what I read, but I needed a system to prompt me to capture and review them. Now I highlight books and make brief notes about books and articles I read. I store these in Obsidian and can flip through them.

I thought I “didn’t have a concept” but really I just didn’t feel like packaging and marketing my writing as some sort of cohesive newsletter or project.

I thought I “didn’t want to blog” but really I didn’t want to be bothered with digging up an image for each post and coming up with a blurb and subheader.

I thought I “didn’t feel like writing” but it turned out my writing program was set up inconveniently, and I didn’t feel a sense of progress with how the files were stored.

So now, I feel like I have a short book I want to write, but I “can’t organize my ideas.”

(Ironically, the book I want to write is about this very topic—getting in touch with the tools and systems that will work for you, rather than seeing the barriers that you encounter as personal failings or writer’s block.)

So, I have an idea, and it feels a little big, a “stretch idea” if you will. For these, sometimes it’s nice to get some new relationship energy with a new system, new program, or even just a new font or new aesthetic.

I have an ecosystem of ideas, and I’m not sure how they all go together.

There are tools for this!

I could mind-map, I could write notes and connect them with links and tags, I could use an outliner, I could write the sections and rearrange them to my heart’s content.

But I also don’t quite know how I want the book to look and feel, and this might require a different approach.

Do I want it to have occasional pauses in the text for a splashy, one-page quote?

Do I want it to contain various diagrams in the text?

Should it have callout boxes for exercises or additional points?

Will the chapters be short, or longer with several subheadings?

Maybe if I knew what the book would end up feeling like, I would know how I wanted to arrange it.

This suggests a whole different suite of tools.

What if I worked on the book in Atticus, so I could play around with how it looked on various readers as I designed it?

What if I created a new template for writing the text, so that it would have a unique feel from the start and I could have a better sense of how the writing choices cohered with that feel?

What if I outlined it using Advanced Slides in Obsidian, so I could see the flow of key ideas in a different format?

I can’t quite tell: Am I looking for some new relationship energy, some sort of aesthetic or workflow-related blank slate to add some energy to the start of this project? Or am I actually in need of a technical solution, like using a program that will let me sort and rearrange my ideas?

When I was looking for a place to start this blog, looking for an “old-school” blog that wouldn’t make me mess with templates and choosing a social image for each post, and all that, several reviews of this platform I’m using now, Pika, mentioned how pleasant the writing interface was. I thought I wouldn’t care, because I usually write somewhere else and paste it in, but the truth is, this writing interface is very pleasant, and I find myself leaving it open in my browser and using it because it’s just so simple and pleasant.

This makes it easier to just get started writing!

I could have tried various rituals to motivate myself and whatnot, or I could just prioritize finding a place to write that feels inviting according to my needs at the time.

(I feel like lots of people are all about the nice notebook and the nice pen, but having inviting digital tools is just as important!)

So, this book I want to write—

First, do I really want to write it? It is something I want to spend my time on, or is it something I’d rather fantasize about writing someday? (There’s no shame in that, none at all, but it’s better to just be clear with oneself.)

Second, what aspects of writing this book feel beyond my existing tools and workflows?

This question, I can pause and answer:

I want a writing tool that feels clean and simple, preferably Markdown-based.

I’d like to be able to customize the overall look of the text early on in the process, not after I’m done writing.

I want to be able to visually drag and reorganize small components of the book. Probably smaller than chapters, unless I choose to write very short chapters.

I want to be able to make mind-maps, although I might not need to make them in the same writing tool.

I want to include questions for the reader and diagrams, but I want to make sure the diagrams are viewable in e-books.

I’m not going to solve my software questions this post, but the above gives me some inklings of what I might be looking for.

It also puts parameters around my search, so that I have key questions to answer and can’t go too far down a circular rabbit hole to procrastinate. I can do some searching in a defined period of time to try to answer these questions.

I’m going to try this out now.

(to be continued)