Writing with a wiki: an update 
A few months back, I wrote in this space about an experiment with writing with a wiki that I was going to undertake. Well, I actually started the experiment and stuck with it. And it’s going pretty well. Here’s an update.
Getting going
I chose DokuWiki for my experiment. Why? It’s simple, easy to install, and has a bunch of add-ons that I knew I’d find useful. On top of that, I don’t have to worry about maintaining a database. Yeah, I’m pretty lazy …
The process to install DokuWiki was easy enough — just transfer the files over to my Web site and then open a particular file to set up user accounts and whatnot in a Web browser. I was ready to go in about 10 minutes.
Setting up your wiki
When writing with a wiki, you shouldn’t just create a new page and start typing. You can, but you’ll quickly have a messy set of pages. Think structure. On the main page of the wiki, I created links to the following subpages:
- Active Projects
- Planned Projects
- TechTips
- Outlines
From each subpage, I created links to the associated project pages. For example, under Planned Projects I have the following:
- Using Wikis to Streamline Your Writing
- Writing on the Road with Writeboard
- Keeping Organized on the Road
- Keeping Fit While on Travelling
- General Ideas
It’s not a lot of work to do that, and it saves headaches that will definitely come in the future.
Writing and formatting
I’ve been using the wiki partly as a word processor for drafts, and mainly as a tool to pull together outlines and as a repository for my ideas. I didn’t intend to use my wiki as my main writing environment, and I’ve pretty much stuck to that plan. But as a low-overhead way of giving me access to outlines, ideas, and early drafts it’s been very useful.
Writing with a wiki is like writing with a text editor. You have a space where you start typing. From there, you can add formatting — like bold and italics, section headings, and lists — either manually using something called WikiText or using the simple formatting tool bar. You can also install plugins that give you a word processor-like editing environment, but I find that they’re more trouble than their worth. I tend to stick to WikiText, if only because I’m familiar with it.
As I mentioned in the last paragraph, writing with a wiki is quite easy. You just type. You don’t have to worry about margins, page breaks, or even formatting. At least, not at first. It’s very liberating to just let thoughts flow from brain to fingers to keyboard. And to be able to do it from anywhere that you have an Internet connection.
Getting your content out
I still use word processors — in my case, OpenOffice.org Writer and Google Docs. They don’t support WikiText. Luckily, DokuWiki has a plugin that lets me save wiki pages in the native format of Writer. I can download that file to a computer and either open it in Writer or upload it to Google Docs. From there, I can apply templates or do whatever else I need to do with the document before sending it off.
Wrapping up
While I probably won’t make a wiki my main writing environment (at least, not yet), using one definitely makes outlining and drafting articles and other writing projects more convenient. I have access to my work wherever I am, and regardless of whose computer I’m using. And, unlike an application like Google Docs, the content is under my control.
So, what’s next? Collaborating on a project using a wiki and managing a project (whether solo or with one or more other writers) using the wiki. Keep watching this space for updates.
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