Emacs Workflow for Authors

The process of writing can be chaotic as it involves many iterative cycles. But an orderly pattern emerges when we step back from our daily tasks. We read literature, develop new ideas, work on these ideas and publish the results. Even though reality is never as linear as this list suggests, it is a helpful guide to organise an Emacs configuration.

The Emacs Writing Studio configuration follows a five-step workflow:

1. Inspiration: Reading, listening and watching.
2. Ideation: Cultivating ideas (taking notes).
3. Production: Writing and editing.
4. Publication: Export Org mode to PDF, ePub or a website.
5. Administration: Manage your projects.
6. Communication: Tell others about your work and exchange ideas.

The basic principle of this workflow is that the author collects information from literature, the web, email and so on (inspiration), which they process in a note-taking system (ideation). These notes are the central repository of information and can be linked to a bibliography. These notes form the foundation of the writing process (production). When the work is finally completed, the author publishes it in its final format (publication). Elated with the final result, the author communicates her new work through email or social media (communication). At the end of a long work day, we must also do some Administration to keep our systems in good shape, which is the bonus step.

The image below summarises the packages that Emacs Writing Studio uses to convert ideas into reality.

Ideas don't pop into your mind out of thin air. Our thoughts, plans and inspirations depend on what we read, hear or watch.

Emacs has extensive facilities to read any plain text format imaginable. Emacs can also display PDF files, ebooks, and images out of the box. Listening to a podcast or watching a video is impossible within an Emacs frame. Still, the system does integrate with external multimedia applications.

You can also maintain a bibliography in Emacs with BibTeX files and link these to electronic files for reading inside Emacs or with another program. The Citar package by Bruce D'Arcus provides a fast and efficient interface to your bibliography.

The Emacs internet browser is called eww (Emacs Web Wowser). This is not a fully-featured browser but a tool that displays the website you like to read to a plain text file. While this approach creates readable websites without distracting crud, it cannot render more complex internet functionality.

Elfeed is an extensible web feed reader for Emacs, supporting both Atom and RSS feeds. You can use this package to follow your favourite websites. If you like to keep up to date on Emacs articles on this website, then use this feed.

Emacs can also interface with multimedia players and, as such, be configured to become a complete music and video platform.

The following articles on this website discuss how to configure Emacs to read literature or listen to music or podcasts:

• Reading eBooks and Websites with Emacs
• Manage your literature with Emacs BibTeX Mode
• Read RSS feeds with Emacs and Elfeed
• Configure EMMS — Emacs Multi-Media System on GNU/Linux

Ingesting so many new ideas is only worthwhile if you keep a record of your new-found inspirations. Hence, maintaining research notes is essential to facilitate the ideation process.

My personal ideation process starts with a physical notebook. This might be a strange thing to admit as somebody who professes admiration for the electronic virtues of Emacs. Physical notebooks have some advantages in the creative process. Firstly, you can use it everywhere. The only exception might be the shower, which is paradoxically where we get our best ideas. Using a notebook is also a slower process than using a keyboard. Writing with a pen forces you to think a bit more deeply about what you are writing. Apparently, writing on paper triggers different neural pathways than writing electronically.

Once ideas have germinated in my notebook, some of these will find a place in my electronic system inside Emacs. As part of my weekly action list, I review my physical notes and transfer the ideas that require archiving to my digital system.

Emacs is an ideal tool for storing notes in plain text. Several packages are available to manage your digital brain. The Emacs Writing Studio revolves around the Denote package by Protesilaos (Prot) Stavrou.

I don't follow any specific, such as Zettelklasten or Bullet Journal, to manage my notes. My collection of notes is a primordial soup of my ideas, categorised using tags and opportunistically linked. Besides extracts from my physical notebooks, Denote collects information I find online, extracts from my email inbox, social media or journal articles and books. Everything worth keeping goes to my Denote collection.

Most note-taking systems contain five types of notes:

1. Fleeting notes: Quickly take a note while doing something else.
2. Permanent notes: Contains new ideas, project files and anything else worth keeping.
3. Bibliographic notes: Notes about a book or article linked to the bibliography.
4. Journals: Daily or weekly reflections.
5. Attachments: Read-only files, such as images, PDFs, videos and anything else that supports the content of the written notes.

Once you have gathered your thoughts, it is time to start writing. Emacs developers have published a lot of utilities to assist with the writing process, such as auto-completion, checking spelling and grammar, dictionaries, thesaurus and other tools indispensable to a writer.

Emacs Org mode is ideal for writing articles and books or developing websites. Another popular plain text format for writing is Markdown, which does not have the same flexibility as Org mode. Fountain mode is another plain text format designed to write scripts for theatre, film or a YouTube video.

The Writing proce with Emacs article discusses how to write and edit text in Emacs. The Distraction-Free Writing article discusses how to mange writing projects with Org mode.

The glorious moment has arrived when you can publish the fruits of your labour. Emacs Org mode has powerful capabilities to export the text to various formats, most importantly PDF for physical books, ePub for ebooks and HTML for websites. The article on Publishing Articles and Books with Org Mode Export discusses creating ebooks in detail.

Emacs can also connect you to the world to communicate with other writers and your readers.

The software has built-in capabilities to read and write emails and several external packages, such as mu4e and notmuch are available to make sense of your email. Using Emacs for email is a very efficient way to grind through your daily dose of electronic mail. Other packages let you connect to IRC, Reddit, Mastodon and other communication protocols.

Emacs Writing Studio does not contain any configuration for communication packages.

Working through a writing project is a fantastic journey in creative expression, but there is also some overhead in managing your projects.

Emacs interfaces with other GNU software to help you manage your files using the powerful directory editor (dired). Managing your files is a breeze with this package. You can also use Emacs to manage your photograph collection with the built-in image-dired package.

Lastly, working on a big project means tracking many tasks. Org mode has a fully functional task management system to help you keep track of your projects. You can implement your personal workflow or use a Getting Things Done (GTD) approach.

If you like to support my work, then please purchase the Emacs Writing Studio book.

You can find the source files for the book and the latest configuration files on GitHub:

emacs-writing-studio

Emacs is a malleable system, so everybody will have their personal preferences. Any article on how to use Emacs is thus opinionated. If you have a different way of doing things, please complete the contact form to send me an email or contact me on social media.

The next article discusses how to use Emacs to read ebooks and other electronic documents.