#88: writing the way you think

diagrams, gardens, libraries, and blank spaces—what kind of writer are you?

Good morning,

It’s almost July! This month’s craft note is about figuring out how to write the way your mind works.

A few weeks ago, I participated in a brilliant residency for writers working on fact-based stories (memoir, historical fiction, nonfiction). As I tried to immerse myself in my project, which required developing scene and emotion in short fragments—something new to me—I found my brain resisting. Stray ideas kept sparking in the background, with nowhere to land.

It left me thinking about what it means to write in a way that actually matches how your mind works—not how you wish it worked but how it really moves through a day. I read a lot about writing, but I can’t always see myself in the ways writers teach. I’m not good at shutting off my curiosity and focusing on the page when I need to. The world tugs at me, and I follow threads, even when I know I should be stitching something closed.

So, naturally, I started thinking about my tools.

My own education in writing has been half intuitive—shaped by a lifetime of private journals—and half journalistic, shaped by training. Through this blend of “journaling” and “journalism,” I have always been drawn to subjects that feel deeply personal, specific, and somewhat mundane. And in them, I’ve inevitably realized: when it comes to the stuff of life, we all have the same secrets.

But as I try to figure out my voice as a writer afresh, from the remnants of these legacies, I realize that perhaps I have multiple, separate processes going on that get a bit too tangled together. And perhaps they each need a little bit of space.

Your Mind Has a Shape

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that everyone’s mind has a kind of native shape. I can hear it when someone talks.

Some of us think in outlines, some in webs. Some of us need to lean into stream of consciousness to even figure out what it is we are saying. Some of us need silence, solitude and blank pages to summon the courage to let something private out. Some of us need an audience, or the words just won’t come. And some of us think best mid-sentence (🙋🏻‍♀️).

Still, we try to force ourselves to write in a way that works for someone else’s mind. We borrow habits that look productive from the outside, even if they don’t feel natural inside. What if, instead, your system—your notebooks, your structure, your rhythms—could evolve with your mind, instead of against it?

Diagrammatic Thinking

For example, in the last year, my writing system has had to grow up with me—not just to meet a life of interruption and short bursts of time, but to match the way my brain actually works—like a giant, never-offline, extremely organized filing system.

I can’t help but encounter new information—be it an interesting person, a book, a piece of art, a bit of news, or an idea that emerged on a walk and wanting to immediately file it alongside everything else that is relevant to that constellation in my mind.

Some people collect photos, some scrapbook, some collect gems, some curate art. I curate information. It’s just how I work.

For a long time, I thought I might be procrastinating “real work,” because of this compulsion. But eventually, I realized: this is writing.

Honoring the shape of my attention, honors the way I learn, which honors the way I write.

For a few years, I worked at a design studio housed in a library, and the things we played with in those spaces were fascinating to me. Curation + Technology = my happy place.

But at home, I needed a system that could work.

Countless people have recommended tools and frameworks that allow me to map things the way I think—Obsidian, the Para Method, Zettelkasten—which all have resonated at different times but also felt a bit too structured for the organic (moody?) way I work.

I like things to feel hand-made, even when using tech to build them.

In other words, the process of writing for me is not pulling files but continually designing a map. In fact, I like writing, the actual act of putting words to thoughts less than I like research and idea development in a curatorial way.

Other Shapes Your Mind Might Take

Not everyone thinks in constellations or builds systems like filing cabinets. You might be someone who:

• Writes best in blank spaces—one page at a time, one thought per day

• Relies on rhythm over logic—sound, cadence, and repetition are your entry points

• Needs linearity and structure—outlines soothe your nervous system

• Draws first, then writes—sketches, mind maps, or visual moodboards

• Thinks by talking—your best sentences come through conversation

None of these are better or worse. But each one needs a different kind of support. You might even need a few. And they will certainly change over time.

If you’ve been here for a while, you’ve seen this unfold in real time. Back in Issue #14, I wrote about clusters, constellations, and what it feels like to be inside a nonlinear mind. Then, in Issue #80, I introduced the Library as a public way to trace those thoughts over time. Now, seventy-some issues later, I’m refining the system again—because I’m still learning how my mind work.

Systems are living things. They should grow as your thinking grows.

The Library and The Garden

Recently, I’ve come to understand that I need two distinct kinds of space to support my writing life.

One is open and alive with possibility—where ideas arrive half-formed, overlap, make odd connections. It borrows from the reporting process, but lives in a public notebook organized by this season’s work. This is the library.

This is how it looks this month. It’s likely to keep evolving, but for now, it works—because it allows me to build references, organize them quickly by active projects, and stay somewhat disciplined about formatting since it is public. (In private, my notebooks are absolute chaos.)

The other space is more inward. It’s a private space, connected (by Notion) to The Library, where I can begin to shape chapters or essays by tending to pieces out of order. It feels a bit like gardening.

The version I’m sharing now isn’t a final form—it’s simply what fits this season: a rhythm that matches my current life, attention, and creative metabolism. I share it not as a prescription, but as a mirror, in case you’re in the process of redesigning your own.

Inside are:

• Half-written essay fragments I’m still deciding on,

• Little pieces that might one day become chapters

• A running list of what I touched that week

It allows me to see all threads at once, but focus on one at a time.

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For You: Some Prompts to Try

So, if you want to try mapping the shape of your own writing process, here are a few places to begin. You don’t have to answer everything. Just let one question lead you into the next. (Hat tip to my CM for help developing this list.)

1. What is your origin story as a writer?

Did you begin by journaling? Blogging? Reporting? Doodling in the margins? Was your writing life born in solitude or collaboration? In freedom or in form?

2. What kind of training have you received?

Formal or informal, academic or emotional. Who taught you how to write? What parts of that training still live inside you—and which ones are fading?

3. When you have a new idea, how does it arrive?

Do you hear it as a phrase? Feel it as a hunch? See it as a diagram? What do you need to catch it before it floats away?

4. When it’s time to actually write, what helps you begin?

What conditions help you enter language? A timer? A prompt? A walk? What slows you down—or speeds you up?

5. How often do you iterate your system?

Do you expect your structure to stay the same, or shift with your life? Are you designing a system for the writer you were, the writer you wish you were, or the writer you actually are?

6. What do you want to keep private? What are you ready to share?

Not everything needs to be published. But not everything needs to be hidden either. What part of your process might be ready to be seen?

These are the questions I’m holding right now as I try to understand who I am as a writer—not just in the past, but in this season, as a busy parent who thinks in constellations, and needs both a public studio and a private garden to feel whole.

However your mind works—whether it sketches, collects, repeats, or maps—if you can see it more clearly, I hope you’ll find a system that feels like you.

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Happy Monday,

Jihii