Imagined, an “agile” (granular, incremental, iterative, and above all time-boxed) writing flow:

  • links collected, culled or curated, tagged and annotated ⟶
  • reflected upon ⟶
  • snippets published as snippets, managed with a snippet manager ⟶
  • edited as drafts ⟶
  • published as sketches ⟶
  • assembled and edited again ⟶
  • published as pieces and pieces ⟶
  • compiled directly from a source text repository ⟶
  • vanishing into bit rot, as pulp paper crumbles to dust…

But there are other writings that do not begin with “the news.” For them, imagined:

There does need to be a “bin” holding ideas for things. I haven’t solved this yet.

Notes that are written as one follows one’s non-presentist, non-instrumental reading inclinations. Stored in something that makes them searchable, without any more metadata than the filename itself (proglang-tpc-multilingual, proglang-src-sammet_programming_1969). (Why hasn’t a wiki ever worked for me for this?)

An index to the notes is written along with the notes. When work is solicited, one looks at the index and where it’s dense, there’s something to write about.

  • Ian Bogost, “unit-operational academic practice”: “Intellectual projects would structure themselves more like software: units of encapsulated production with structured ties to multiple potential applications” (Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, 174)