Form follows content
Words, film, music, photos, theatre, I have never been shy about trying out new forms to see if they suit the content of my thoughts and ideas. It has been a great joy to me to engage with any and all of these forms of expression and I daresay that in some of these I have even shown to possess a modicum of talent. I still feel a powerful drive to pursue all of these forms of expression (except for theatre, I have drifted away from that).
As I wrote in my blog about trying to get unstuck and unblock the free flow of ideas, thoughts and expression, technology has and (I suspect) always will play a significant role in how I express myself. How this relates to the new tools I have been researching? Bear with me for a second.
In the next couple of blogs, I will look at my different areas of interest, writing, film making, producing music and photography. I’ll talk about how technology helps me to get my ideas out into the world and I’ll reflect upon my ambitions and goals.
In this blog I will look at writing.
Stories
On my website, I have sections for all of these forms of expression, but for the purposes of this argument I would like to focus on writing. As there is a blog on my site and a section for the written word, now primarily filled with poetry, scripts and a blog I wrote for a couple of years in the early 00’s.
From around the mid 90’s until the end of the first decade of the 21st century, I wrote. I wrote a lot. Read my words here.
I want to write again. This urge has fought its way to the forefront of my mental battlefield and has become a driving force for me to enact change. I would love to finally, one day, write a book, as I used to love writing stories when I was younger. Granted these were sophomoric, looking back, and all too earnest, still they exude a certain charm to me.
So a book, or a story. I have been looking into note-taking and writing software, even though I have always felt a bit nervous about letting technology play a part in that process. Fear is a big part of my life, if you aren’t clear about that yet. But, trying to be bold and hopeful, I’ll just focus on the fact that I am writing this in Obsidian and finding the experience quite satisfying and enjoyable.
Obsidian seems to offer customization and can be expanded upon with useful plugins and I can really see myself using this software and being very productive.
Blogs
Another form of writing I would like to get into more is writing blogs, one-issue focused writings, or stream of consciousness pieces, where I would give myself more freedom, be less bound by specific structure, just write and enjoy it. I’m sure Obsidian would be useful for this as well.
Both of these forms of writing I could publish on my website, but a couple of months (maybe a year?) ago, I toyed with Elevenlabs AI voice generation and I was really very, very pleasantly surprised by how entertaining and enjoyable it was to hear a snippet of an -admittedly- very old unfinished story being read aloud, as if by a professional voice actor. Here’s that snippet:
Yes, the ego was stroked, but also, it almost felt like an interpretation and appreciation of my work by someone else, which allowed me to listen to the story, the writing, the rhythm and the structure more objectively. This helped me realize that I still really love the way I write. Does that sound awful? I don’t care (I hope… I’m committed to trying to not care)!
Scripts and lyrics are of course also writing, but I am going to file those under Film and Music respectively.
So let’s make this concrete.
Technology
- Obsidian
- Elevenlabs
- Clickup (for planning? Although if planning works in Obsidian, I’ll gladly abandon Clickup)
Update: Since writing this blog, I dowloaded Brisqi which is an offline Kanban app. I enjoy working in Kanban and this free version gives me 2 boards, which is enough for now.
Publishing
- My website
- Book
- Audiobook
Goals
- A couple of new blogs (1 / 2 per month)
- Start work on a book or story before 2025
I think I will manage the blog goal (I’m already well on my way this month), but as for the book / story goal, that I’m not so sure about. Looking back at the other forms of expression and the goals I formulated for each, I think I might be piling on a bit much for the last couple of months of this year. It’s ok, I don’t plan to stress over this and it’s fine if things happen later than planned, it’s just nice to formulate some goals to keep focus.
In the next blog I’ll talk about film.