Rule-based creative work lends itself to modular assembly
The workflow for my poems is inherently modular. For a while now I've been thinking about how a zettelkasten system could be beneficial to creative work, and not just dry, academic writing. I imagine that Modularity in creative work can support creative iteration.
How this could work
Practical applications would be highly individual. This depends on an individual's creative practice. These are some ideas for how I'd envision it working: - Academic: For more academic output, it's straightforward. Every idea and concept is a note (a node) and once nodes begin to form dense networks, an essay starts to write itself. - Creative writing (fiction, theatrical...): this would also be somewhat straightforward. every idea, character, piece of research or concept is a note and relates to a more generic node. Eventually a character might meet its story. Maybe your background research would become nodes, i.e. you could have a "profession" node and every time you found out some interesting or relevant information in this regard you could attach it to the profession node. - Poetry: a stanza or a line constitute notes. Maybe they will form a poem later on. - Art: how this relates to visual material is just a matter of interpretation. I imagine areas of research could form nodes. Maybe every sketch is a note. Maybe your zettelkasten system is actually physical in this case. Pieces of writing, of art, of ideas, that can be strung together if thats where the process takes you. Each note or block would be a work of art in and of itself, waiting to find context, to be contextualised.
This could work if you as an artist have a strong enough voice, a coherent enough tone or visual code. If you tend to fluctuate between styles it might start to feel like a ransom note. I don't necessarily think this is an issue though, as this tension could be resolved in several ways, for example by tagging or connecting based on mood or tone. Or even just leaving everything highly separate and as connections appear, modules can be joined and notes can be rewritten to match tone.
Practically
In my obsidian I've created a folder called "creative", each new note will automatically populate this folder. I'm not sure what the note titles would be, how does this "fragment bank" look? - I'm not sure how notes would connect themselves to each other - the note atomicity probably depends on the variety of creative output. If you only write haikus, do you have a single note for each new line? 1 note for every line of 5 syllables you've ever written? - How do you organise visual work? - Could you possibly tag based on mood?
Challenge
- write every day, indiscriminately
See: Zettelkasten for creative work - a proposal Also: Umberto Eco Sol LeWitt