No. 121 This Friday: Pre-launch discount for the new course
Get ready for a 25% pre-launch discount on my 'System for Writing Master Course', from Black Friday through Cyber Monday!
No. 121 • 11/24/2025
Dear readers,
This is a quick heads up to let you know pre-launch registration (which comes with a nice 25% discount) for my 9-week / 18-session course, "System for Writing Master Course", is dropping this Friday!
What's that look like?
From 11/28 (Black Friday) through 12/1 (Cyber Monday), I'll be offering a 25% "Pre-Launch" discount, adding up to nearly three weeks of free sessions. I love this course, and I want you to take it, so there you go. I should also say more than half of last year's students took advantage of this same offer. It's just that good.
What you need to do:
- Click this link. It will take you to my website, which will lead you to the course page.
- Click around the course pages to learn more about what's in store.
- Set a reminder on your phone (or in your "I only use paper cuz the internet is trying to eat my brain" paper-based task management system) to check the website between Friday, 11/28 and Monday, 12/1.
- Return to the site between Friday, 11/28 and Monday, 12/1 to purchase the course.
- Don't forget to do the above, cuz the pricing for the course goes back to "full" on Tuesday, 12/2.
- Go about the rest of your day knowing on January 6, 2026 you'll be part of a cohort led by someone who's been teaching for over twenty years, writing for thirty, and has zero boundaries when it comes to giving you all the intel he can on both.
Would love to see you there. Reply to this email with any questions.
What I’m up to writing / teaching / speaking….
Aside from getting this course reading, I've been working haaaaard on one particular chapter of my next book. I've scheduled the book to the day of release, which means I'm in crunch mode.
What we’re up to on the property….
We've been traveling for the last three weeks visiting family. By the time I get back to the property next week, I'll have been gone for a month. Longest time away since we got it.
What my book, A System for Writing, is up to....
Was really touched to see this blog post reference A System for Writing:
"Bob Doto writes, “A Luhmann-style Zettelkasten is held together by a network of connected ideas, established when one refers to another by citing a note’s ID or by creating a link to another file.” This quote surfaces a foundational truth: referencing isn’t just a technical gesture — it’s the connective tissue of the system."
FROM LAST WEEK'S COMPOSITION...
If you haven't signed up for COMPOSITION, this is some of what's been happening over the past few weeks:
We don't find connections, we make them
It's not uncommon for new zettelkasten users to wonder how to "find" connections. An understandable desire, considering connections are the whole jam. But, it's a bit misleading.
Truth is, we don’t find connections in a zettelkasten. We look for ideas likely to inform the note(s) we’re working on in order to establish a connection between them. Unless you've previously articulated a connection in your main notes, hub notes, and structure notes, connections aren’t preexistent. They aren’t hiding out in the corners of our zettelkasten trying to avoid discovery. Connections aren’t found, they’re made.
One way to understand how connections are made is through the lens of cognitive linguistics. In their work, Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue metaphors are not mere poetic flourishes, but cognitive mappings where one conceptual domain is understood through another. As they point out, when we say "Argument is war" or "Time is money," we're creating a connection between two knowledge bases. And when those domains connect, something new arises. Mapping "argument" to "war" informs our concept of "argument" with ideas of strategies, attacks, defenses, winners and losers. Mapping "time" to "money" introduces saving, spending, wasting, and budgeting.
This isn't just hyperbole. According to Lakoff and Johnson, new conceptualizations inform how we behave. Believing arguments to be war changes how we engage people in discourse and debate. When time is money, we hoard it by not making time for others (unless it's profitable). Something new arises through the connecting of two domains, which would not have otherwise come to light. Where once there was only "argument" and "war," there's now "argument as war."
As with metaphors, bringing ideas together in a zettelkasten allows note makers to imagine relational possibilities and scenarios not available had the ideas remained apart.
To read the rest (there are five other takes on the week's discourse, not including the introductory essay), sign up here.
Get my book
Pick up my latest book, A System for Writing, [here].
Got a question or something you'd like me to write about? Send me what you're thinking!