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What my AI fiction writing experiment taught me about my creative process
🌸 P.S. Follow the guide on my experiment writing fiction with AI—it includes a list of all the posts about it.
In my last post, I wrote about my experiment using AI to write fiction.
The whole exercise was born out of curiosity and frustration. The story, Forever, at last, was just one of many that I could not finish, but it refused to leave me, literally haunting me when I try to sleep.
What I discovered
This experiment has made me realise a few things about my creative writing process:
Reading a story generated by AI, even it I had written the story beats and dialogue, was unsatisfying to read.
I enjoy writing a large part of my fiction, like 90%. Taking that away from me would make writing fiction a truly passion-less and boring exercise.
I am far too territorial with my writing to use AI copy wholesale.
I have a Hemmingway-ish style of writing, thin on description, minimalist and economical. And there’s nothing wrong with that. (I ended up cutting away a lot of the content AI generated.)
Most of the enjoyment I have when writing fiction comes from writing the dialogue. In fact, I think I am more of a scriptwriter by nature than a prose writer.
Understanding my process
I have come to the conclusion based on my experiment with fiction is that I need to write the dialogue (which I enjoy), detailed storybeats with a light description of the scene (which I don’t enjoy) before even using AI.
I will then dialogue with AI to find ways to improve my description which I am weak at.
I seem to love chatting with the AI on how I can improve the existing descriptions or the descriptions it generated. The act of learning is very enjoyable to me.
I do not judge anyone who wants to generate first drafts and rewrite them – some people are satisfied with just rewriting, but I realize I want a lot more ownership, and that I need to vividly visualise the scene and create the dialogue. That is the only way I can use AI without sacrificing my enjoyment of writing fiction.
However, I don’t mind asking AI for help in improving my sparse descriptions of settings.
Understanding what parts of the writing process I like or don’t like
What I love:
- Imagining and visualising the scenes vividly in my head, and then writing the storybeats
- Writing dialogue (I’m especially territorial about this!)
- Creating character arcs (This is my second most territorial thing)
- Creating the entire plot
- Learning how to improve my fiction prose writing
What I don’t enjoy:
- Writing detailed outlines
- Writing descriptions of characters, settings and action scenes (only because I take too long thinking how to do them. I have a feeling once I master this, I’d enjoy it too.)
- Creating story bibles
- Proofreading
- General admin work related to creating the ebook and uploading it to websites
- Marketing the damn book
To me, writing fiction is all about the craft – writing sentences that convey emotion, story flow, character arcs …
I have very little interest in marketing the book or even distributing it for others to read. I have a very interesting approach to my creations. Once I create a novel or piece a fiction, I tend to forget about them and move on to the next. I don’t check up on them, read the reviews, or see how they perform. To me, the piece of art is done, and it’s time to create another.
So, it’s no wonder that I find the latter half of the process incredibly tedious and unfun.
Outsourcing what you don’t enjoy
Here’s what I tell authors: Identify your pain points — the parts of the process that are most annoying and aggravating. Then let AI handle the majority of the work in those areas. – SJ Pajonas, “The Joy Factor: How to Use AI Without Losing What You Love About Writing”
“AI-positive” indie writer SJ Pajonas wrote in her Substack recently that we need to find the parts of our writing process that we loved, and the parts where we didn’t. The parts that we don’t, we can outsource to AI.
It was an intriguing idea. So, I’ll be exploring this idea in the next post.
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What if using AI to write fiction isn’t an evil act?
🌸 P.S. Follow the guide on my experiment writing fiction with AI—it includes a list of all the posts about it.
When AI first came out, like all other writers, I was pissed off that our work was used to train an LLM model that would replace what made us valuable and special.
Despite all the arguments that LLMs won’t replace actual writers, you bet your socks that some companies and individuals would try.
However, I am a realist, and also a tech nerd, so I began pushing buttons to see what the fuss was all about.
What I found for myself was that AI (LLMs, anyway) gave me relief.
A lot of it.
And it may have also solved a decades-old problem that I’ve had with writing fiction.
The struggle
I have a habit of writing stories just to entertain myself. I have zero interest to sell or even distribute these stories for others to read.
I do this because I am tired of searching or waiting for people to write stories I want to read. So, I thought the most efficient way was to write the story myself.
But I’ve always had this one big problem when it comes to writing fiction.
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I support deleting your second brain
If the circumstances are right, of course.
I don’t think I want a map of everything I’ve ever read. I want a mind free to read what it needs. I want memory that forgets gracefully. I want ideas that resurface not because I indexed them, but because they mattered.
What does it feel like to start again?
Like swimming without clothes. Light. Naked. A little vulnerable. But cleaner than I’ve felt in years. – Joan Westenberg, “I deleted my second brain”
I stumbled on this fascinating article by Joan Westenberg, because she did what’s best for her, against “commonly held wisdom”.
Just because it’s “common wisdom” doesn’t mean it’s wisdom for her. Having a second brain is such a personal thing.
I chuckled a little when the mods at the usually placid Obsidian forums on Reddit stickied a note that they’re carefully monitoring the post about her article.
At HackerNews, the discussion was equally heated.
Most people seem to be saying, “Well, she didn’t do the second brain thing right!”. Others say, “Well, I would never!”
I resonate with what Joan said later in the post:
My new system is, simply, no system at all. I write what I think. I delete what I don’t need. I don’t capture everything. I don’t try to.
This made me chuckle as well, because this is what I do.
Unlike some people, I am not romantic about my notes.
Once upon a time, I kept one of those filofax thingies; the one with those inserts you could buy separately?
One day, I was looking through notes from the previous quarter. Then, with a smile, I took it out of the filofax and ripped it in half.
My colleague, who sat next to me, exclaimed in horror: “What are you doing??”
I turned to her, shocked that she was shocked. “Tearing my notes up and throwing it away?”
“Nooo! You should keep it! Don’t throw it away!”
I blinked. That thought has never occurred to me before. (Meanwhile, she couldn’t believe there existed someone who would destroy her worklog the way I did.)
See, I had a visceral pleasure just tearing the damn thing up. To me, the notes about my tasks, thoughts about work, laments, whatever, was in the past. I will never revisit it again. It’s pain and discomfort I no longer want to revisit. Tearing it up meant that I can look forward to the future. Keep it? What in the world for?
Once, I even burnt my notes, grinning as the jottings of the last quarter turned to ash.
Maybe I’m weird, but that’s how I am. I don’t enjoy journaling like some people. I find it a chore. Rereading my old journal entries felt like torture, revisiting an old me I want to leave behind.
I stopped turning my Obsidian vault into a task management app because I don’t understand why I’d visit my old todo lists. (And also, it’s just better at being a note taking app, not a task management app.)
The lists are reminders of reluctant days hunched over the computer making myself do things when I’d rather be outside just staring at the sea.
However
I won’t delete my current second brain.
Maybe I’d delete my old second brain, however, as it was filled with task lists after task lists.
But my current second brain incarnation is just right.
You see, my second brain is not just information storage; it’s an idea vault. Imagine being able to skim through your notes, copy relevant bits and cobble the bits together into an essay. (The video below will show you my process.)
That’s how I write using my second brain.
The vault holds my notes and ideas, which will eventually be turned to essays to share with the world.
So, deleting it would be cray cray.
But like Joan’s recent revelation, I don’t capture everything. I don’t even try to.
I follow an Obsidian Youtube influencer, and he says that he has thousands of notes and finds that he takes too much notes on things.
(But fortunately, he’s also like me, he turns most of these notes into essays to share with the world.)
Me? Well, I’ll never have that problem. For one, I like to keep my notes short and sweet. I also tend to think better with mind maps, so a lot of times I tend to save mind maps and use the notes as ‘expanders of the mindmaps’.
Basically, I’m a very intentional note taker. If I take notes, I’ll ask myself: “What will this note be eventually used for?”
Most of the time the answer would be: It’ll be an essay one day.
That, or, “It’ll help me remember something important.”
As a person whose memory isn’t the strongest, Obsidian has been an invaluable tool in creating my second brain which helps me organise my ideas, write faster and push it out to the world.
I used to store everything in my brain and try to write at everything at one go. Now that I have a second brain, I cannot imagine how I handled writing the previous way. Man, no wonder I felt drained after each writing session! The brain isn’t designed to keep so much information internally. Externalising your thoughts into notes in an Obsidian vault is the way to go, and less stressful too!
It is also a place where I keep things I have trouble remembering – like, a link to my tenant’s tenancy contract, or a phone number to my plumber.
Yes, I could use an online service for this, but it comforts me that I have this information locally, in my drive, accessed by a tool that saves things locally, in a format that won’t turn obsolete.
So, no, I won’t delete my Second Brain because I know what I’m using it for, and because I don’t capture everything and like to delete and trim down my vault.
My second brain needs more organising though. It’s a tad messy, but I will take my time.
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La Cocina’s Spandian touch
For years, La Cocina, at Taipain, USJ 10, Subang Jaya, was the place to be to if you wanted to enjoy great Spanish food with a great view from its upper terrace.
However, the restaurant recently moved a few blocks away from its original corner lot and now has an even better view of Taipan and the sunset.
My friend Matt Chung, who runs the Subang Jaya community website and Subang Jaya and USJ Food Discovery Facebook group, and I had the pleasure of watching the evening sun while we spoke to Jeganathan Letchumanan, the restaurant owner and Head Chef, and his wife, Zarmila Muniandy.
How the ‘Spandian’ restaurant came to be
Jeganathan’s passion for Spanish cuisine developed during his time working on luxury cruise lines in the 1980s. During his seafaring days, he travelled extensively around Europe, particularly Spain.
It was in Spain where he got to taste the country’s many culinary delights, especially paella. Jeganathan, who received his culinary training in Switzerland and was a chef in Toronto, Canada, fell in love with Spain’s many culinary delights.
“As an Asian, I’ve always been a rice lover, so discovering that Spain also celebrates rice as a staple was intriguing. Unlike the rest of Europe, where bread dominates, Spain stands out with paella as its national dish,” said Jeganathan.
He also found it interesting was Spain’s dining culture. Spaniards, like many Asians, eat late, with life buzzing well past 10 p.m.
“These connections made Spain feel uniquely special to me,” he said.
He believed that that Malaysians, being rice eaters, would really appreciate Spanish food, especially the paella.
“I told myself that if I quit working on the ship one day, and return to Malaysia, I’ll open a Spanish restaurant.”
So, in 2001, La Cocina (“The Kitchen” in Spanish) was born. It survived many, many ups and downs, especially during the pandemic when many restaurants took a hit.
A ‘Spandian’ touch
The restaurant has evolved from purely Spanish to a fusion of Spanish and Indian cuisines (with a touch of Italian thrown in), referred playfully by Jeganathan as “Spandian”.
Jeganathan felt that he couldn’t focus solely on Spanish cuisine for years.
Tastes were changing, and he’d like to attract a younger crowd. People were also asking for pizza, a bit of Italian, and some Indian food.
“In fact, at every event I catered, guests would specifically request Indian dishes, raving about how amazing the food was. They’d say, ‘You should really add Indian food to your menu!’”
At first, he was hesitant to do so, but he eventually decided to blend the two.
“And that’s how we became Spandian’,” he said, chuckling.
Emphasis on quality ingredients
Jeganathan and Matthew at La Cocina’s wine room. Jeganathan is also a sommelier and wine connoisseur. Another distinct quality of the restaurant is its emphasis on making many ingredients from scratch.
For example, the Indian spices are ground fresh from “Ground Zero,” not using pre-packaged powders.
The paneer is made in-house from good quality milk.
Pizza dough and sauce are also made in-house.
You get the idea.
And if its bought, it is of high quality. For example, the squid ink used for their paella and pasta is imported from Japan, chosen for its quality, freshness and lack of “fishiness”, despite being expensive.
For one, Jeganathan is especially proud of the Josper grill that sits at the restaurant’s outdoor balcony.
The Josper oven is a high-end Spanish grill famously used by Michelin-star chefs.
Yes, it’s expensive—Jeganathan hints that he spent five figures to import it, but “it’s worth every sen.”.
“As a Spanish restaurant, I wanted something authentic and exceptional. This oven is the ‘Rolls-Royce of charcoal grills,’ and for good reason. Its advanced combustion technology locks in heat, sealing meat juices while cooking faster. The result? Unbelievably tender, flavorful dishes,” he said.
Fun fact: Firing up the grill requires 10-15 kg of charcoal.
(The restaurant only fires up the Josper grill on select days. Whe we spoke to Jeganathan, it was Thursday to Sunday, but do check with the restaurant to be sure.)
The grill serves up Spanish specialties like octopus, lamb, chicken chop, squid, and premium beef.
Jeganathan also made an effort to tailor the menu according to customer preferences. For example, Spanish cuisine die-hards would notice that with the paella, the rice isn’t cooked al dante like traditional Spanish paella, but are fully cooked.
Initially, the paella was cooked the traditional Spanish way, but his customers complained that the rice was not “fully cooked”.
“So I made sure that the rice is fully cooked. Sometimes we have to listen to what, what the customer wants,” he said.
Softer varieties of bread were also chosen over traditional hard baguettes based on the restaurant’s customer preference.
Some notable menu items
- Spanish tapas: there are traditional tapas and also some with a slight fusion twist.
- Tacos (fish and chicken), inspired by the chef’s travels to Mexico.
- North Indian style tandoori dishes (chicken pahadi, chicken tandoori) are available, and is made in a tandoor oven.
- Lots of vegetarian dishes are available, “much larger than in many other restaurants”, says Jeganathan.
- Italian dishes like pizza and pasta are offered, catering to family groups and wider preferences.
- Unique pasta dishes include saffron linguine and squid ink pasta.
- Desserts include Spanish churros and crema catalana, as well as non-Spanish options like chocolate brownie and house-made ice creams.
- Tea time specials (Saturday and Sunday, 2-6 PM) focus on specific Indian delicacies like kat vada and momos.
You can have a look at their menu here at their website.
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The cognitive debt of using AI to write essays
I am currently reading MIT’s research paper on the “cognitive debt” you can incur when when using ChatGPT: Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation
of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task.You can find the link to the paper on MIT’s site.
The paragraph below caught my attention:
“This suggests that rewriting an essay using AI tools (after prior AI-free writing) engaged more extensive brain network interactions. In contrast, the LLM-to-Brain group, being exposed to LLM use prior, demonstrated less coordinated neural effort in most bands, as well as bias in LLM specific vocabulary.”
As a professional writer who loves to research random topics, write about them and whose idea of a relaxing time is to tinker with my notes in my Obsidian vault and read the latest nerdy theories about personal knowledge management, I’m very protective of my cognitive abilities.
The fact that using tech like AI assistants (aka ChatGPT) can have an impact on our physical brains alarms me quite a bit, especially in the age when “iPad kids” are a thing. We’re only starting to understand the impact of these devices on young brains, let alone (Large Language Models) LLMs.
The paper seem to suggest that using ChatGPT or any other LLMs to generate the essay first, then improve on it, is bad for your brain.
So, I’m glad I’m not using ChatGPT first before writing my essays.
I’ve always resisted this.
For one, I feel that the output “influences” my writing, so I refuse to ask AI to generate any copy first lest I be influenced to write like AI! (I’m the type of writer who can read someone else’s writing and unconsciously adopt their style.)
Instead, I’ve used this technique learned from my journalism days and when I was writing novels actively: Write a very rough, shitty first draft as fast as I can (I even have a 30-minute timer for this). Then, beautify the prose. Both are human activities.
I only use AI when I hit a “wall” or a “writer’s block”. I usually ask it for suggestions to improve sentence construction. Usually titles, which I admittedly need a lot of help for SEO reasons. I rarely, if ever, use the suggested copy wholesale, but rewrite it.
That said, besides the environmental impacts, we now need to consider the physical impacts on us before we use AI to write essays. And maybe, even from brainstorming, because apparently, if we use AI for advice, explanations or ideas, it can foster dependency?
Alas, I have to admit I love using AI for this use case. It’s like having conversations with another nerd about silly subjects and I can go down rabbit holes that way.
I have to admit, I like using AI to clarify my thoughts about decisions I’ve made, and that is a tad too soothing for me!
To clarify, however, AI isn’t the first person I turn to when I want advice, but I need to remember to reach out to humans first before AI, and not replace human advice with AI! I can see how, once I get too comfortable, I forget to do just this, and I can get dependent.
Recently, I shared a post on Mastodon about a brainstorming technique I stumbled on in Youtube, and was surprised by the pushback I received.
I, too, use AI to “stay in the subject” when exploring ideas. I personally think this is a healthy and productive way to use AI that won’t, well, damage your brain.
That said, I hope all of us remember that not only does using AI incur cognitive debt, it’s really damaging to the environment. We should be conscious that using AI to generate an image of a dog flying in space for larks impacts the environment:
Each time a model is used, perhaps by an individual asking ChatGPT to summarize an email, the computing hardware that performs those operations consumes energy. Researchers have estimated that a ChatGPT query consumes about five times more electricity than a simple web search. – Explained: Generative AI’s environmental impacts (MIT)
I hope, moving forward, that we writers can use AI in a way that is good for our brains and our environment.
That means not using AI for everything. A little challenging these days when the AI button option is everywhere, I have to admit. They are like little red buttons, enticing us to push them.
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Are you a loudcaster?
So, there’s a name for the phenomenon I hate so much: Loud casting.
“So how do we react when we experience others listening to their phones and other devices in public? About half of people maintain a British stiff upper lip and do nothing. The most common reaction for those who take action (cited by 44% of respondents) is to move away from the area. Only around one in 10 (9%) ask the person to stop. However, parents are more than twice as likely (14%) to ask someone to stop loudcasting, than non-parents (6%).”
I usually move away. But if I can’t, I’ll tell the person to stop – part of the 9%.
I hate doing this, but peace matters more for me, and although I know that person can be very angry and turn aggressive, desperation can drive you to do things.
I can be very terse and abrupt when I do that, I generally am quite nice but nothing irks me than putting up with noise after paying top dollar to enjoy reading my newsletters in a cafe. I’ve taken to wearing noise cancellers, but even that is not enough because THEIR SPEAKERS ARE SO LOUD.
This is can be a bad problem if there are loudcasters in your family, who may resist your attempt to make them stop.
For me, family vacations are an ordeal for me because both my parents are loudcasters. And they can loudcast at the same time, often while I’m trying to watch television.
My solution is, rather than share an apartment with them, I will get a separate room as I find the noise unbearable. Call me anti-social, but my peace and sanity is very important 😉
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iTOR: A cosy Western-Malaysian fusion cafe
Recently, my friends and I had a lovely lunch at a charming little cafe called Itor, which is the word “Roti” (Malay for bread) spelled backwards.
This Malaysian-Western fusion cafe, which opened in March, is located in Sunway Geo, which is located right opposite Sunway Medical Centre and within walking distance from the BRT station.
As soon as I stepped inside, the warm, inviting aroma of in-house baked bread hit me, instantly making my mouth water.
The cafe sells a variety of dishes such as sandwiches, pasta and roast chicken sets. However, what really stood out to me was how they infused a Malaysian twist to these mainstays.
My friends and I shared a variety of dishes so that we could have a taste of each.
The pineapple butter roti was a standout—a perfect blend of sweet and savory. The salted egg prawn roti was another favorite, rich and indulgent, while the signature honey roasted chicken was tender and flavorful.
We also tried the salted egg pasta, mee mamak Itor, and nasi lemak ayam berempah, all of which were delicious and satisfying.
Salted egg pasta. The salted egg pasta is also worth trying. The roast chicken was served with the creamiest, most buttery mashed potatoes practically melted in my mouth.
The owner was kind enough to explain their concept and dishes to us. Essentially, the foundation of their dishes revolves around their bread and the Malaysian twist.
There were several requests for the cafe to consider selling their freshly baked bread as a standalone item—it’s that good! (And no, the bread can’t be ordered separately, at least right now, because the demand for their sandwiches is high!)
The cafe is family-friendly, with a kids menu and an attached bathroom, making it a convenient spot for parents. For those who work or study nearby, the affordable lunches are a great option.
Nasi lemak ayam berempah at iTOR iTOR is located at A1-01-07, Sunway Geo Avenue, Bandar Sunway, 47500 Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.
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Pushback against digital gardens?
One of the most unexpected things I’ve seen is the pushback I’ve seen against digital gardens.
I wrote the blog post Digital gardens vs blogging: What’s the difference?. The intention was to demonstrate how these two ways of being on the Internet differ from each other.
My interpretation, by the way, is not something I came up with but is echoed by some digital garden practitioners such as Joel Hooks: Stop Giving af and Start Writing More.
I suspect part of the reason I resonated with his article (especially his resentment and irritation about what blogging has become), was because I was a blogger since the dawn of the Internet. I used to build my blog using raw HTML, back when blog wasn’t even called a blog.
Over the years, I’ve seen blogging morph from online diaries and eccentric websites sharing quirky things to well-polished, SEO-optimised articles promoting brands, businesses, a person’s skills and knowledge via templatised web structures.
Yes, granted that this is a generalisation of how people blog, but just search for the term “blog” or “blogging” and you’ll get recommendations on how to be a top blog on the search engines, SEO tactics, endless listicles and more.
Leaving aside those who refuse to comply to these demands*, blogging has been dominated by SEO and marketing forces for a long time.
(If you belong to this category, really, this article is not speaking about you (nor am I speaking about those who do), I’m not calling you inferior for writing content chronologically! I mean, see how dumb that sentence reads?)
Besides this article, I remember sharing Maggie Appleton’s digital garden illustration in The Dark Forest and Generative AI, and got a flurry of angry posts from it too.
People were fixated with her interpretation of the Dark Web. (I suppose describing it as a place of “decomposing morals” didn’t help. It’s nice to know that even the great Digital Gardner Maggie Appleton is not immune to pushback.)
I can’t help but chuckle about this as I feel what I’m seeing is the human instinct of being tribal and taking sides, happening here. We are all cave men in the end, driven by the instinct to protect our tribes.
I believe people can be very attached to their way of doing things, whether it be eating, living, commuting, blogging, you name it.
However, I’d like to emphasise that this post is not to attack the people giving me pushback about digital gardens. The ego may be somewhat dented (mostly because I’m annoyed that my writing wasn’t clear enough but caused misunderstanding), but this is valuable feedback. This is why I wrote the post!
The feedback made me wonder if there’s anyway to unruffle feathers and re-clarify the concept of digital gardens so that people may be less adversarial towards it.
It’s not an us vs them issue, truly
I was perhaps too quick to say that blogging is a promotional activity, though if you’ve worked in media for as long as I have (literally from the dawn of the Internet age), it sure seems like it, especially with the emphasis of using the medium to “build your brand”. Yes, I admit that I hate what blogging has become, saying:
Marketing has assimilated blogging and I hate it.
I didn’t think of adding a disclaimer to my article saying that “this is my opinion, and this doesn’t apply to all blogs” was kinda understood, but next time I’ll be sure to add it for clarity!
I concede that my article’s title, “Digital Gardens vs Blogging”, didn’t help matters, but seriously, I had zero intentions to pit blogging and digital gardening against each other.
For one, I am still blogging side by side with my digital garden! The category, Journal, is literally my blog, which I still blog about my life, chronologically. And occasionally, I commit the sin of building my personal brand with it!
My website is actually a hybrid – a digital garden and a blog.
And that’s the best thing about digital gardening is that your website can look however you want.
It’s not about which one is better
At the end of the day the difference between bloggers and digital gardeners is not whether one is better than the other, but in the way they organise and write their content.
That’s it.
Let me repeat for clarity:
From what I understand from reading the many, many articles about digital gardens, the difference between blogging and digital gardening lies in the way content is:
- organised. Blogs = chronological, digital gardens = not chronological
- written. Blogs = usually polished and SEO optimised, so that it can be promoted via social media channels. Digital gardens = unfinished copy. The gardener may return to the post/page to update it with more information later.
- niched. Not necessarily true for all blogs, of course, but it is “common wisdom” that if you want to get more eyeballs, niching is the way to go for blogs. Digital gardeners usually do not write about one topic nor do they angst about niching. Usually.
- fleeting or evergreen. Blogs, due to their chronological structure is fleeting. Old posts are often buried. Digital gardens are structured in such a way that each post can be evergreen, resurfaced again and again. Often, digital gardens are organised by categories where people can “fall into rabbit holes” where one post can lead to links to many other posts.
I think part of the problem is that there’s a lot of mystery around the term “digital gardens”. At least for now. So, it’s being promoted as some revolutionary, new-fangled thing.
Honestly, it isn’t that mysterious or even new. One way to think about digital gardens is that it is simply an individual’s curated wiki on the Internet, a knowledge base.
Both digital gardens and blogging have the same objective, sharing knowledge.
So, in conclusion:
Digital gardening is just a different way to present your thoughts on the Internet.
You can blog and digital garden at the same time and in the same space like I do.
Digital gardens give you the freedom to break free of preconceived notions or “best practices” on how to write on the Internet.
Digital gardens can be freeing. For one, it was one of the main reasons why I am writing more on my website now. Because I realise I don’t have to dance to the algorithm anymore just to be read.
I write in my digital garden because I want to learn in public.
I write in my digital garden because I want to clarify my ideas and what I’ve learned. By writing and teaching others about my ideas and learnings, I get to solidify what I’ve learned in my brain.
The feedback I get, even negative ones, help me reshape my ideas.
In the end, I write in my digital garden because it makes me happy.
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Digital gardens vs blogging: What’s the difference?
If people want to know what’s the difference between digital gardening and blogging, I’ll just direct them to this quote from the blog post, Stop giving af and start writing more by Joel Hooks:
The idea of a “blog” needs to get over itself. Everybody is treating writing as a “content marketing strategy” and using it to “build a personal brand” which leads to the fundamental flawed idea that everything you post has to be polished to perfection and ready to be consumed.
I started blogging in the early 2000s, back when “weblogs” are not about marketing thyself but about recording your life, your quirky thoughts and weird hobbies.
Now, marketing has invaded blogging, that’s all you see, and I hated what blogging has become.
Last year or so, I discovered digital gardening, and it’s like having a light bulb go off in a path shrouded by mists. I’ve had this idea to write on the web this way, but I just didn’t know what to call it. Once I got a solidified concept, I grew extremely excited!
I wrote being an imperfect digital gardener, about daring to put out grammar-addled, spelling-imperfect, half formed thoughts into the void of the Internet. I wrote about the joy of putting the idea “branding myself” to rest, and finally writing without dancing to the algorithm, not caring about SEO-fying my posts, just sharing my wild garden of thoughts and ideas to the world.
So, my thoughts about how digital gardens differ from blogs:
Blogs are chronological, often are “niched’ to align to a polished image you want to present to the world, and is about marketing the personality behind the writer. Blogs are tools to show you in the best light; a personal branding tool. Blog posts the most polished and complete version of your thoughts you want to show to the world. The posts that give people the best impression of you. Yet, they are ephemeral and rush past you like leaves on a fast-flowing river. Older posts are often buried and ignored.
Digital gardens are not chronological, the topics are often not confined to a topic but are a wild mix. The real star of the show is the knowledge being tended in the digital garden. Personal branding is more of an afterglow of the digital garden, a side effect rather than the sole purpose of a digital garden. Digital garden content are often incomplete, works-in-progress, not always polished or even well-written. However, they are like flowers in a garden, inviting you to linger and explore more through a series of posts, links and connections. Older content are resurfaced in newer essays and linked to newer ones. As a result, one can easily get lost in a rabbit hole of thoughts, exploring curiosities in unexpected ways.
Where to build your garden
Just recently, I decided to do the wild thing (at least by digital garden standards) to build my digital garden on wordpress.com. Many digital gardeners like to build theirs on static websites because they want to be free of the chronological format imposed by most blog content management systems, but I’m of the ilk who prefer not to spend endless hours building CMSes when there’s a perfectly good one I’m using.
But will there be a chance I move this website to a static website one day? I have no doubt, but the enterprise will be a humongous one.
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My new productivity workflow using email and Trello
When it comes to solving productivity problems, I think we go around it the wrong way. We tend to think that an app or a software can help us solve the problem.
What you need to do to solve your productivity conundrums is to really have clarity what’s stopping you from being productive (diagnosing the problem) and finding a tool that will solve it.
Recently, my workflows at work changed, and my productivity stumbled. This is the method I used to solve it:
Diagnosing the problem and the solution I need
Problem 1: Each time I use the browser-based Jira, I get cognitively drained.
- I seem to forget why I’m at a tab, especially when I switch tabs.
- I have too many tabs open and finding the right tab seem to drain me. With each wrong tab opened, I get more muddled.
Solution: While I can’t completely avoid using browser-based apps, I can reduce the amount of context switching I do. Part of my problem is that I have to transfer information from Jira apps to the Work Log document I created. There’s a lot of context switching in that regard. So, what I did was to reduce this manual work by using special add ons and building a system that avoids too much manual transfer of information.
Problem 2: When the week starts, I have a hard time picking off what’s happening with my projects. That’s because the information is scattered in many Jira tickets.
- Getting that information is cumbersome; I have to open a ticket individually to understand the context and last update. It’s rich with information.
- I created a “work log” document where I detail what’s happening with each project so I can quickly get caught up. It has been very helpful, but it has been getting difficult to update the page as it is now getting too bogged down and buggy due to the amount of information on it. I wish we could use a simple text file instead!
Solution: I created a Trello board (for myself). While the team continues to use the work log, and I continue to update it, having this Trello board just releases a lot of my stress as I can quickly grasp at a glance the status of each ticket. Somehow, reading a very long document with a lot of text was stressing me out, and I came to dread updating the page due to its bugginess. (I’d type something, and sometimes the page will zip back to the top and I have to restart all over again. Sometimes my cursor would disappear on the screen or the page will freeze. Such a pain!)
Problem 3: I get inputs from far too many sources: chat, email, meetings, casual conversations. Instead of having a dozen inboxes, I need a good way to funnel them into one inbox.
Solution: I have turned my work email into the single source inbox. I have also added the Gmail to Trello add-on so that I can turn emails into cards.
The good thing about Gmail is that it also contains my chat messages, so I really don’t need to context switch so much. I can also send chat items to chat to turn into Trello cards. Although it’s not perfect, it’s helping me a lot and has reduced the amount of context switching I do.
Methodology
Here’s how my productivity workflow looks like right now.
Daily
- Morning: Go to my email inbox. Create cards from emails that have tasks for me.
- In Trello, add labels to tasks and shift them to the correct column.
- 5. Use a notebook to jot down any random task that comes my way.
- At the end of each day, check if there are any tasks in notebook or email inbox. Turn them into Trello cards if any.
Weekly
- In Trello, write the tasks in the “what to do this week” column in the notebook at the start of each week.
- In the notebook, create a tentative weekly plan and assign the tasks to specific days.
- Adjust the plan as the week progresses.
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Elizabeth Tai 