Samuel Johnson famously wrote that “the greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”
My Personal Resource Index
Serious writers, in short, keep files—filled with tidbits, excerpts, and ideas that can be drawn upon later. I’ve been putting Johnson’s counsel into practice for a long time; so much so, that I’ve amassed at least 3,000 resources, organized into 33 primary categories with their annotated summaries. Here is a quick sample, from my TECH category, in embedded format for your convenience:
Pangram – An AI and plagiarism detector.
She Geeks – An accessible personal blog making tech know-how easy to digest.
Fast Company – Current tech news and industry insights delivered directly to subscribers.
The Verge – In-depth commentary and news on emerging consumer tech and AI platforms.
To manage this collection, I depend on Ulysses, an app designed specifically to streamline the writing process. With features like clean category icons, built-in proofreading tools, direct publishing options, easy formatting, and seamless text organization, I’ve found it indispensable. Retrieval is instantaneous: I simply search for the information I need to buttress a thesis or spark a fresh idea. Sometimes the discovery is serendipitous—like netting a butterfly in flight.
More specifically, I began by creating an index of category folders, each with its own identifying icon, into which I paste downloaded articles, excerpts, and other items of interest. These folders are further divided into subcategories, and the collection has grown considerably over the years. I’m especially proud of my ESSAY folder, which houses a collection of some of the world’s finest essays. It’s my literary Hall of Fame.
I also maintain a special folder called FAVORITES, where I keep actual web links, briefly annotated to remind me of their contents, guiding me to sources of interest that I can draw upon later. Drawing on both the Index and FAVORITES, I’ve fashioned, as it were, my own encyclopedia.
In all of this, what I’m after is not simply a collection of links, but a well-stocked intellectual pantry—a storehouse of ideas and resources to nourish further inquiry and creativity. When we write, we enter into a conversation with “the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits,” as Matthew Arnold phrased it in his Culture and Anarchy (1869).
Recently I used The Times Literary Supplement link in my BOOKS category to read Jenny Uglow’s review of Philip Hoare’s William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love (app.the-tls.co.uk). Having read the book myself, I wrote my own review, touching on what Uglow’s review misses: Hoare’s digressive and emotional bent, and his many examples of writers Blake supposedly influenced but did not.
Gathering and Sorting the Inflow
To supplement this digital library, I rely heavily on Apple News—which offers access to numerous magazines—and my own subscriptions to The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Times Literary Supplement. When I encounter an article worth keeping, Ulysses allows me to quickly save relevant excerpts to any of my 33 categories.
Finally, for incoming email and newsletters, I rely on labels in Gmail. Setting up targeted category labels, it sorts my favorite newsletters alphabetically as long as I specify their title sources, keeping my inbox tidy and my research material easily accessible:
Newsletter/Modern Age
Newsletter/Orion Magazine
Why Not the Library?
Why not just use the databases at your library? A fair question, except that time is money. My local library is limited in its database offerings and mandates my physical presence to use its databases, which may be their way of restricting use to local taxpayers.
Since I’m no longer an academic, I cannot access my alma mater’s online databases, which are restricted to students, faculty, and administrators.
My annual birthday wish is that my alumni association would include database access among its membership benefits. They persist in asking me for donations. I don’t mind a bit—so long as it’s quid pro quo.
True, I could resort to the University of Kentucky library in Lexington with its labyrinthine resources spread across multiple floors, but it’s a forty-mile round trip. When I get there, circling a concrete lot for 15 minutes to find a parking space can make me mutter sacred language to myself that would make parishioners blush.
Even if I were inclined to make the trek to Lexington, I must confess I’m a germaphobe. I can’t think of anything more germ-colonized than a keyboard used by hundreds of people, who may have colds or been exposed to the flu, or good grief, what only the mind can imagine.
If my seeming paranoia strikes you as an overreaction, consider a 2009 Swinburne University study published in the American Journal of Infection Control. Researchers examined 35 keyboards and found significantly greater microbial contamination on shared keyboards than on those used by individuals (Keyboard Contamination).
Nearly half of the shared keyboards harbored Staphylococcus aureus, while one keyboard also harbored E. coli. A small study, to be sure, but it lends some credence to my suspicion: the more hands, the greater the opportunity for contamination. I’d rather not share a keyboard with hundreds of strangers, any more than I’d care to use someone else’s toothbrush.
Convenience wins
Let’s face it: I like convenience—the comfort of working from home in my sweats, at whatever hour I choose, munching on a protein bar, saving money on gasoline, and avoiding the ever-present risk of some self-absorbed driver texting away on his phone and crashing into my grill.
I like having my favorite sites at my fingertips whenever and wherever I choose: no more writer’s block, my harvested, home-brewed resources always at the ready.
There’s something reassuring about knowing that thousands of ideas, observations, and discoveries are waiting patiently for me whenever I sit down to write. The blank page isn’t nearly so intimidating when you have a library of your own.
—rj
Discover more from Brimmings: up from the well
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