Playing with Code

I am NOT a programmer and I don't know a lot of HTML. Yet I am playing around with pieces of code to try to customize the TiddlyWiki I am using for my novel. Today, I've achieved one tweak. I've added a plugin that allows the reader to adjust the font size. I didn't create it, of course. I'm a codes scavenger.

I spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how to automatically indent the first line of every paragraph. I still can't figure it out.

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Wiki Novel

I'm not sure it's possible to write a novel in the form of a wiki but I am using a wiki to write the first draft of the novel. In the process of doing that, I was a little stuck recently and the wiki saved me.

I must clarify here that I am not talking about a collaborative wiki. I am talking about a simple wiki tool (TiddlyWiki), designed primarily for a single user.

The main character in this novel is supposed to come up with the draft of a Knowledge Management strategy for the organization she works for. I was wondering if I was going to be able to write the KM strategy for a fictional organization. Up to now, I have been able to write the story without getting too specific about the organization itself. I was also wondering if anyone was actually going to want to read through a ten-page KM strategy in the middle of a novel. My current answer is that I'm only going to provide an annotated outline of the KM strategy, and it's going to include a lot of questions that my main character has about the strategy. She's going to post it in a wiki and she's developing a strategy for getting feedback on the wiki as well as to keep the strategy as a living/growing document on the wiki.

Of course, this allows me to use my wiki tool to make the whole section much more interactive. There's an annotated outline that can be read in a linear fashion, but within this outline, there are hyperlinks to all kinds of definitions, resources, etc...

Until today, I was using TiddlyWiki essentially as a drafting and editing tool. I'm now seeing that it could also be a publishing tool for the novel.

Having drafted this post earlier today, I started to wonder if someone had already used a wiki to write a novel. The answer is "yes". There have been attempts at writing novels with a collaborative wiki and there's even an article on using TiddlyWiki to write a novel. Here is the article: "Organize your novel with a Wiki" by writer LJ Cohen.

Here's also more on an adaptation of TiddlyWiki to publish hypertext stories: Tweebox.

Hooked

Trying to find the right mix of pens, notebooks, and electronic tools to keep track of projects, to-do lists, planning, random thoughts and reflections is not easy. I've never seen the world as either/or. I don't want to switch to an all digital file system but I do want the convenience of being better able to quickly find a note I jotted down six months ago without having to flip through pages and pages of a notebook.

I was focusing on personal knowledge management this week, not only as something I'd like to have a very good handle on for my own personal purposes but also as the starting point for more productive collaborative efforts and organizational KM. Somehow I ended up jumping into a discussion on the KM4Dev (Knowledge Management for Development) List, asking a question about tools that might help me address some of my personal knowledge management challenges, and ended up testing out TiddlyWiki.

TiddlyWiki is not a software per se but an html page full of code in the background that allows you to have a personal wiki on your desktop or on a USB key. All you need is a browser. It took me a good 30 minutes to figure out the key "this-is-how-it-works" principle, probably because I was looking for something more complicated. In the end, it's extremely easy to start with the basic version.

A couple of things hit me while I was playing around, figuring out how it worked and how I was going to use it for my own purposes:

1. The more languages you know, the easier it is to learn a new one. I don't know a lot of HTML but having a minimal understanding of what HTML does helps to grasp how other languages work -- without ever wanting to become a programmer or to master any of these languages. I have now experienced three different types of wikis. They each work slightly differently but once you get the basic principle, it's relatively easy.

2. Tagging is similar in some ways to coding in qualitative research. Until this week, when I used my newly created TiddlyWikis extensively for personal knowledge management purposes and for a research project activity, I had not fully understood the purpose and value of tagging. The more I experiment with new technology tools the more I am convinced that experiencing the tools, hands-on practice, is essential for people to realize and fully understand what these tools can help you with. Once I made the connection between tagging and coding in qualitative research, I was better able to integrate it into my own thinking/tagging practice.

I am now hooked on TiddlyWiki.