I sometimes get asked what my process is for researching and writing Substack posts. I always enjoy reading other people’s discussions of their writing process, so I thought it would be worthwhile to explain mine. First, some background. In school I was a competent but unspectacular writer (my verbal SAT score was a full 100 points lower than my math score). Like most millennials, I’ve spent the majority of my life in a sea of text (reading online, writing emails, instant messages, gaming chats, and so on), but “serious” writing has never been particularly compelling to me, and major writing projects always took a lot of willpower to do. Prior to
Thank you Brian for sharing this. I was struggling with the idea of why writing was taking so much of my time. After reading this post, it turns out it should.
I use Mendeley (reference manager) and everything related to my scientific research is in there. But now you've inspired me to try Zotero for my Substack topics (not related to my scientific research).
Thanks! Btw, you can use zotfile to get around the weird pdf handling of Zotero. It helps you name and save pdf:s the way you want. See this video series for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b15oACE5wH4
I've recently downloaded Obsidian and started populating it with material and backlinks. I'd definitely be interested in learning more about how you use it since I can see a lot of potential as a tool but could definitely learn more about it.
I use the OneTab extension for Chrome, etc. somewhat similar to how you use the vertical tabs in Edge, love it. May be worth a try. Really enjoyed reading this!
First off, great article on your process. I've enjoyed a handful of your articles, and wondered how you seemingly became an expert on everything.
Try Google Bard (now Gemini) instead of ChatGPT for technical matters. I used Bard, ChatGPT, and Microsoft's Copilot and asked them all the same question about how much heat would be required to keep my shop at a comfortable temperature. Bard gave by far the most thorough and correct answer. Other small tests I've done showed Bard to be superior to the others in technical matters.
Research sounds similar to me. ChatGPT has been a real force multipler for me because I've more than doubled the amount of books I can "read" (skim) per year by having it summarize books chapter by chapter and then either having it expand the summarization or I dive right into reading the book.
Thanks Brian! That was very interesting. As a retired engineer I appreciate your focus on building a strong structure to propel subsequent work.
Thank you Brian for sharing this. I was struggling with the idea of why writing was taking so much of my time. After reading this post, it turns out it should.
I use Mendeley (reference manager) and everything related to my scientific research is in there. But now you've inspired me to try Zotero for my Substack topics (not related to my scientific research).
Thanks, Brian, fascinating and useful.
"I’m not like Scott Alexander or Freddie deBoer, writers who can crank out huge amounts of high-quality text like it's a bodily function"
Someone has to produce all the training data necessary to make the machine god.
Thanks! Btw, you can use zotfile to get around the weird pdf handling of Zotero. It helps you name and save pdf:s the way you want. See this video series for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b15oACE5wH4
Many parallels to my own writing process here!
I've recently downloaded Obsidian and started populating it with material and backlinks. I'd definitely be interested in learning more about how you use it since I can see a lot of potential as a tool but could definitely learn more about it.
I use the OneTab extension for Chrome, etc. somewhat similar to how you use the vertical tabs in Edge, love it. May be worth a try. Really enjoyed reading this!
Safari has tab groups now. Not sure if that’s what you’re looking for but it helps me.
I think you have the makings of a book already posted here.
Thank you. i love your writing process and how you explain it.
My God, this really resonates with me and how I approach my writing
First off, great article on your process. I've enjoyed a handful of your articles, and wondered how you seemingly became an expert on everything.
Try Google Bard (now Gemini) instead of ChatGPT for technical matters. I used Bard, ChatGPT, and Microsoft's Copilot and asked them all the same question about how much heat would be required to keep my shop at a comfortable temperature. Bard gave by far the most thorough and correct answer. Other small tests I've done showed Bard to be superior to the others in technical matters.
Thank you for sharing. Was particularly intrigued to see how you organise and sort sources/references.
Thanks for the fantastic writeup Brian! Rally great to get an insight into how the fantastic pieces on this substack get put together.
Research sounds similar to me. ChatGPT has been a real force multipler for me because I've more than doubled the amount of books I can "read" (skim) per year by having it summarize books chapter by chapter and then either having it expand the summarization or I dive right into reading the book.