Mine as well. And the process is often lossy, so I'll keep old variants easily at hand. Eg, "this old variant had nice property X, or dealt with Y well, or suggests a direction worth exploring".
Brainstorming, well, "everything is a graph", but perhaps picture versions as columns, with each column showing all three levels, with transclusional editing between them. So you do a pass in whichever direction, create a new column, and easily grab material from previous variants, and repeat.
Very np, sorry... I was picturing a screen divided into columns. Each column is a stack of the various distillation levels, say most brief on top, then less brief, and so on.
Within a column, editing text in any level, updates that text in any other level it appears in. That's the transclusion. Since all levels are said to have a copy of the most-brief text, if you edit that text at any level, it's updated at all levels of that column.
When you start on your next column/version, you can easily grab text from previous version(s). And you might do that in different styles. If you copy the entire column, then the old column serves as a checkpoint, and the new for continued editing. Or copy just the most-distilled level, and then work downward, to "reconstitute in a more crystalline form". Or copy just the least-distilled level, and work upward, attempting a new distillation.[1] Or do these from a previous column instead of the most recent one. And the old columns/versions are easily accessible, to browse for inspiration, or to grab stuff from.
[1] Hmm... I guess copying just the least-distilled text "forgets" what the embedded more-distilled text regions of it were previously? So one can try playing with the "brain dump" text again, without the distraction of the previous distillation choices. Then when things settle down again, one can highlight "this region is now distillation level n".
For UI, perhaps highlight-drag-n-drop to more distilled levels? And if each level say had an "X" - delete and forget this level, then the different styles of column copying unify as "fully copy a column, and then X-away the levels/region-choices you want to discard"?
So... All levels simultaneously visible, and easily edited together. And multiple versions of them easily accessible, in support of doing multiple exploratory passes, with each pass able to easily draw from past attempts. And working in either direction: towards distillation, or building out from a more distilled seed.
That was the brainstormy vision anyway. I've no idea if it would work out. And for whom - I work in both directions (back and forth), and like a visual record as external memory (so I don't have to remember things or take notes), and like to just see it all (without view switching). Someone who doesn't want those, might find multiple columns to be distracting clutter.
Thanks. The bottom-up journaling style of use [1] looks tempting, even as someone who generally prefer graphs to trees.
PayWhatYouWant[2], but it seems a pity one can't easily play with it non-persistently, without giving them an email? I wonder if that's the right choice, funnel wise, for something with a "I can't imagine using it... oh, that's neat" dynamic.
Brainstorming, well, "everything is a graph", but perhaps picture versions as columns, with each column showing all three levels, with transclusional editing between them. So you do a pass in whichever direction, create a new column, and easily grab material from previous variants, and repeat.