By and large I think it’s fair to say that I like prose and that I’m a fairly prose kind of guy. That is to say, whenever I have an idea, I write about it in nice, formal, clear-cut sentences, more often than not posting it on here. Once or twice recently however, I’ve found myself craving for the ability to create flowcharts, ie putting single words or phrases onto a page and drawing lines between them, connecting the ideas. When I was studying psychology over twenty years ago, I remember our tutor Pat using them on the whiteboard: it seemed to allow him to link concepts far more freely, quickly and easily.

I can’t write with a pen, so I never took to them. Obviously, to make a flowchart you need to be physically able to jot down words onto a sheet of paper and draw lines between them. That isn’t easy for me, which is probably why I usually prefer to write things out in prose. Recently however, usually when I’ve been out in my powerchair, I’ve had interesting ideas which I wanted to note down as flowcharts or notes rather than pieces of writing. They were connections between concepts rather than fully formed, articulable pieces of information. Of course, they could then be developed into something I could write about, but first I wanted to jot down the interesting connections between the ideas. This afternoon, for instance, I started to play with the connections between cinemas as physical spaces and ideas concerning ‘the urban’, and the metropolis. That way I could unify my interest in cinephilia, my fascination with metropolitan life, as well as my work with the local Free Film Festival. It’s only a rough idea at the moment, but I certainly think it’s worth exploring more.

I’m very pleased to report quite a bit of success. When I got back here, I had a quick Google for a piece of software I could use to make flowcharts, and found Flowchart Designer. It’s fairly simple, but it was free and easy to start using – certainly far easier and less fiddly than trying to make them long-hand using a bog-standard word processor or drawing program. I have already made the flowchart I had been thinking about, and I suspect it could be the start of an interesting new project. Now that I have found a way to make flowcharts, I also suspect my ideas will flow far more fluidly.