Whether for NaNoWriMo or for work, write the way your brain thinks

Kent Sisco - November 2, 2017

The limitations of today's popular writing methods and tools

While each of the following applications have their place as writing tools, none of them adequately satisfies the need for the brain to dump and organize thoughts in a tactile, visual and kinesthetic way. None of the following allow you to really write the way your brain thinks.

• Word processors
• Boutique writing tools
• Text messaging apps
• Social media apps

These applications are all limited by design. They are based on an interface of how the end product will look. A streaming flow of text with nothing but newlines to separate paragraphs that are all stacked up on each other. The order in which you lay out your thoughts is the order in which they will be read. From the moment you write down the first thought, it begs to be read as though it is the final draft. Nothing about that first or subsequent thought looks anything at all like a thought that can and should be manipulated.

Constraints of the big blank page

The ominous presence of the big blank page with its simplistic layout overly favors the end presentation rather than acting as a space for any of the processes of writing to take place. It's like using a cookie jar to mix and bake cookies in rather than a bowl to mix the ingredients and a cookie sheet to spread them out on for baking. The big blank page is the cookie jar and not a mixing bowl and cookie sheet.

To be fair, word processors and boutique tools do allow for the reorganization of thought before publication, but it requires a lot of forethought, effort, and discipline to utilize their interfaces in this way. For example, one of the reasons there is such a thing as writer's block is because the big blank page sends a signal to the brain telling it to organize the thought in logical order before writing the thoughts down. Why is that?

Popular word processors are no match for the way our brains think

The brain instinctively knows that the interface it's dealing with does not allow for easy manipulation of thoughts and ideas in ways that the brain itself can manipulate. So these tasks are retained by the brain, to organize everything, before a single word is written to the page. Naturally, when there is a large volume of thoughts that you begin wrestling with, the brain becomes quickly overloaded and the writer begins to lose track of their precious ideas.

Over time, the brain is conditioned to this cue which forces the writer into a state of "writer's block" as the brain tries to tackle the organization of your thoughts before you write them down. The writer generally writes this maddening effort off as part and parcel of the activity we call writing.

Writers everywhere commiserate with themselves with this thought, "We're going to lose great ideas from time-to-time, get used to it."

It's when writers feel that they are truly blocked that they search for suggestions from writing mentors and stumble into statements like, "Don't think, just write." As if one can literally write without thinking. Writing is thinking.

Unlocking a method that works the way the brain thinks

Thoughts can be words, phrases, sentences, and whole paragraphs. They can come in any order, at any time, any day of the week. We need a mechanism that we can use to capture these thoughts as they come and organize them both logically within a document or categorically across other documents as soon as we know where they should go.

Text messaging is a writing method that is as close to capturing a single thought at a time in an encapsulated bubble rather than as an open-ended stream of text. But there are significant limitations to texting which restrict its capabilities to function in a way the brain would be willing to entrust the writing process to.

So we asked the question, "What if you could combine the text messaging input method with powerful features generally found in word processors?"

We came up with Speare.

Speare is a 21st Century writing tool

Speare levels the playing field. For the most part, Speare can keep up with the way the brain thinks. Speare gets everyone writing because it removes the inhibitor, the big blank page, and replaces it with the ubiquitous elastic text box familiar to everyone, the world over. When you enter your thoughts, ideas, media into Speare, they are encapsulated into Speare blocks that you can edit, organize, split, merge and more — way more.

Speare Blocks

Speare has several unique features, but its core feature is Speare Blocks. The concept of Speare Blocks is that thoughts, ideas or media encapsulated in individual blocks become accessible in tangible ways to the author or curator in remarkable ways. For example, while Speare Blocks are editable and movable, one of the most surprising features of Speare Blocks is "Splitting." When you split a Speare Block that has several sentences, a paragraph, each sentence is placed in its own individual sub-block.

Splitting

This feature allows you to move these sentences around so that you can test the way they read. Sometimes all it takes to make your idea come to life is just to reorder the sentences. A great benefit in splitting large blocks is the focus you get when you can dive into one thought to consider it fully without distraction of the others. If need be, sometimes the thought is a great idea, but it may not belong in this paragraph. That's where Speare's side-by-side document interface allows you to move the thought into another open document and not lose the thought.

Perhaps the most interesting attribute of splitting though is the inside view you see of each sentence in the paragraph as they are separated into sub-blocks. You can quickly adjust the length of each sentence and if one happens to be exceptionally long it's visually apparent and can be dealt with immediately.

Side-by-side Documents

Speare blocks operate within an open arrangeable side-by-side document interface. The freedom to write down your thoughts, no matter how scattered they come to you, is greatly expanded when you can easily organize them both logically and categorically.

Logical organization

When you sit down to write, the greatest inhibitor is your brain wrestling the big blank page. Unless you have tremendous discipline, the big blank page requires you to write down your thoughts in logical order from the get-go.

Speare's workplace with access to many documents is a place to capture all your thoughts and to organize however and whenever you wish. Another document open within the same workspace allows you to logically order the thoughts that are most likely coming to you in random order. When a thought doesn't belong within the present document, you can drop it into another document for categorical organization.

Categorical organization

Categorical organization is the process of breaking up thoughts into separate categories of thought. For example, if you're working on chapter 3 of your book, but you come up with thoughts that are better suited to a later chapter, you can write them down in chapter 3 where you are at and then move them to another document knowing you can do so momentarily. Another way to work categorically is to open a couple documents in side-by-side mode (brainstorming doc, notes, outlines, drafts, etc) which gives you the ability to enter thoughts on any document without hardly skipping a beat.

Accentuating the processes of writing

We are all taught that the process of writing is made up of smaller individual processes — brainstorming, organizing, outlining, writing, editing, revising and more. But the popular word processors of today, do not lend themselves well to distinguishing when and where these processes can and should take place.

This is where Speare really shines.

The core feature of Speare, Speare Blocks, not only visually makes these processes abundantly accessible, it functions in a way that makes these processes happen almost by osmosis. The person who dislikes outlining automatically gets to outlining when they organize their ideas and nest them. The person who doesn't usually brainstorm gets to write down their ideas in side-by-side documents not losing a single one. The person who dislikes revising can readily see how much better a paragraph reads when they split it to reveal its cadence. And on and on.

The ways to use Speare feel endless

Speare allows the user to write the way they think. It encourages differentiated writing because of the many ways to think and write and explore.

If you're attempting to write your 50,000 word novel this November, you should consider using Speare (https://speare.com) to help you get your thoughts written down in encapsulated Speare blocks and organize and expound on them in a flash.