Emacs, a Sharper Axe, and the Evolving Writer

Emacs is a tool with great potential, and a steep learning curve. I imagine that when I have reached years of experience with it, my writing and general creative facilitation will have increased manyfold. So far it has been rather frustrating to get a configuration that respects my different needs, but I will make it happen. Not at all unlike the Lincon quote:

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

This axe will grow ever sharper with every swing. But there is the case of procrastination by configuration, and one has to get on with what they are doing.

That said, the writing experience with Emacs compared to any Office product is a world of difference unfathomable to the latter. It is difficult to explain metaphorically; dig a ditch using a shovel or take the time to learn how to drive an excavator (which in this case is free). Obsidian and its array of plugins was one step closer to my ideal experience, and I used it for Zettelkasten note-taking and to write my (first) book. Being able to access the markdown files from the Linux terminal allowed me to wield the power of scripts and commands, but using just the Obsidian’s native features proved too slow to search my great collection of notes and navigating the text using the mouse was also holding me back.

Enter vim (or rather Neovim) and the vim-keybindings: how fast and how effortless could you navigate a document? I have only used it for about two months, but it started saving time and effort. Most of these tools are made by and for technical people, but if you can comprehend how the syntax of a given software works, you too can gradually make the change. I enjoy writing prose more than I do writing code, and have been able to utilize this to enable my writing; making it faster and pleasanter. This seems to be the common theme; learning through effort makes your axe sharper.

With few exceptions like video editing, Emacs (and Linux) provides you with everything you can envision. When working with text, however, the advantage grows even further: vim keys provided by doomemacs, accelerates text navigation multifold; moving between files using fuzzyfind, buffers and workspaces saves mental effort; version control with git is smoother; and the greatest advantage is creating custom functions you can call upon seamlessly. Problems are to be expected, depending on how fast you dive in, but know that any issue you will face has been faced by someone else before. For me now, there is no going back

This blog entry has primarily been for the purpose of testing this website using the HUGO framework. We shall see how much time I will spend on this blog compared to the other things on the site, but I will probably get back to this topic when I am a wiser wizard. Until next time.