No. 119 New courses, marginalia, wild connections, and more
A System for Writing Master Course registration opening soon, appreciating marginalia, and questions about revising notes.
No. 119 • 10/20/2025
Dear readers,
Registration for the "A System for Writing Master Course" opens in November. Classes start January 2026
Registration for my yearly, 9-week master course is set to open Friday, November 28, 2025, with classes beginning in early January, 2026. Heavy deep dives into every aspect of the zettelkasten-to-writing pipeline will be covered. Two sessions a week. Lots of time for questions. Lots of demos. Lots of ah-ha shockers, "I never thought of it that way" insights, and "I can't believe a finally have a functioning zettelkasten that doesn't require me reinventing the wheel every six months" reveals.
To stay in the loop and get reminders on registration, click here.
Writing COMPOSITION every week is awesome
Last week's COMPOSITION (no. 008) featured insights on how writing in the margins of books (AKA marginalia) works in tandem with creating reference notes.
We looked at the positives of marginalia as a co-creative process:
"Writing in the margins connects me to the reading more so than writing in a reference note. It keeps me in the book—in the author's world, in their language, pushed and pulled by their literary choices. When I come back to a book I'm still working on, I don't want to engage with a numerated list on an index card. I want to re-immerse myself in the co-creative process, writer and reader manifesting meaning."
The limits of working in direct relation to another person's writing:
"Marginalia is for in-process reading. It's where I ask initial questions, draw initial connections, and find initial answers. But, all of it remains tethered to the book and the author. I'm still playing on the author's home turf."
Ands, how reference notes are a first step in bringing intelligence acquired from reading into your own knowledge base:
"Reference notes begin the process of extraction by bringing the ideation game to my home turf. Reference notes are how I start to make sense of what I've read in light of what I'm working on or thinking about, which is not always aligned with the topic of the book (i.e., reading a book on economics to better understand social media). Reference notes act as a necessary staging ground for ideas that will eventually turn into main notes, destined to become part of my network of connected thought."
If you want reading / note-taking / writing / publishing intel like this, along with a recap of the week's most important zettelkasten / knowledge work discourse, click here to learn more and sign up.
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What I’m up to writing / teaching / speaking….
This week, I'm writing about relevance and how a more nuanced appreciation of the term helps us know what's worth noting and what's better left for another time. This will be especially useful for anyone who has trouble with either "capture bloat" (taking too many notes) and/or "capture paralysis" (not knowing what to capture).
What my book, A System for Writing, is up to....
A COMPOSITION subscriber sent this message, which I loved:
"[A]fter reading ASFW, I reorganized my ZK and decided to focus on 'trains of thought,' regardless of whether the content was technical or conceptual. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, but I'm already finding interesting (to me, at least) intersections. E.g., there is a technical concept of 'reasonable compensation' (a corporation has to pay its officers enough salary so that they pay a reasonably sufficient amount of payroll tax), and there is also a conceptual discussion around the concept of 'sweat equity,' or the value of unpaid compensation to founders, which distorts financial reporting. Seeing/making this connection has pushed me to argue that advising business owners on 'reasonable compensation' should be thought of as more than mere tax compliance (relatively low value); rather, it's also business advisory (relatively high value). Anyway, I thought that might be interesting to you as well. Thanks!
This is the exact experience I hope people will have when putting zettelkasten practices to work. The ability to see how ideas interact in ways that trigger new insights is the whole point!
What we’re up to on the property….
This week was all about wiring up a winch to our UTV, so we can install our plow. All signs point toward a snowy winter, and while using the tractor bucket to back-scrape feet of snow off the thousand-foot long driveway is fun and all, it'd be really nice to push it off to the side like a pro. Also, learning how to use a plow. That sounds fun in and of itself.
FROM LAST WEEK'S COMPOSITION...
To revise or not revise a main note?
I only understand about a 1/3 of what Jon Sterling typically discusses on his Forester Blog. But, the third I do get, I love. Richard Griffiths caught wind of Sterling's May 2025 musing on friction with evergreen notes, specifically in regards to the effort it takes to keep said notes up-to-date. From the Griffiths' Reddit post:
"If I understand him correctly (a big if) he seems to be appreciating the idea that instead of keeping your notes 'up to date' (i.e. evergreen), it may be ok to recognise that each note represents a moment in time, which may be contradicted later."
Anyone who's read A System for Writing knows I'm bullish on not updating old notes with new information, but rather creating new notes that add the new information to the network (sections 3.6 and 3.7). I believe in this approach for at least two reasons:
- There is, as is suggested by Griffiths and Sterling, a "paper trail" of your thinking. You can see where you've come and how you got there. This can be wildly important if/when you go to write and want to speak to / understand where many of your readers may be stuck.
- It keeps links "true." If you're creating new notes in light of previously captured ones, linking ideas based on the content of the note, if you were to change the content of the note, the reason for the connection would now be misaligned. You'd now have connections based on faulty information. Not good.
To read the rest (there are four more takes on the week's zettelkasten and PKM discourse), sign up here.
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Pick up my latest book, A System for Writing, [here].
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