Atomic Essays: Writing Visually in Heptabase

A potato chip label—“kettle cooked” and “made the old-fashioned way”—sparks a full writing workflow that ends with an “atomic essay” about creativity. The core move is turning a fleeting personal reaction into a structured chain: capture the initial curiosity, pull in research, extract the most relevant facts, connect them to existing ideas, and then draft a finished piece using a repeatable narrative framework.

The process starts with a simple moment of attention. After eating kettle cooked chips for weeks, the maker’s claim on the bag becomes the question: what does “old-fashioned” actually mean? That curiosity gets recorded immediately in a daily-note style entry inside Heptabase (described as the equivalent of daily notes in other PKM apps). The entry is intentionally small—just a few reminders like “new favorite chips” and “how are they made”—so the idea can be revisited later.

When it’s time to deepen the topic, the workflow shifts from note-taking to research synthesis. A “whiteboard” inside Heptabase becomes the workspace where the idea is developed. The creator asks ChatGPT for “10 interesting facts” about kettle cooked chips, then selects the facts that stand out and pastes them onto the board. Key details are highlighted—lower temperatures, batch frying, and the resulting crunchier texture and flavor/seasoning behavior—turning raw research into usable building blocks.

Those facts don’t remain technical. They’re filtered through a personal lens: creativity and making. Instead of treating chip production as trivia, the notes are reframed as creative principles—uniqueness over mass production, patience over speed, and the value of manual process. As the creator writes, new connections appear by searching across the PKM system: a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow quote (“Give what you have to someone…”) and a separate poetry-related note about the “joy of a Creator” when work finds its way into another’s heart. The chip research becomes a trigger for cross-referencing existing themes, not a standalone topic.

To turn scattered notes into an essay, the workflow adds structure. The “tell me more method” is presented as a three-part pattern: (1) anticipation—offer one big, intriguing idea; (2) explanation—answer the “tell me more” reaction with a story or sticky analogy (here, kettle cooked chips); and (3) application—end with a practical takeaway or prompt. The creator even runs the method through ChatGPT: first to make the draft more engaging, then to rewrite it explicitly using the tell me more structure.

The final product ties chip mechanics to creative behavior: kettle cooked chips are made in small batches in an open kettle at lower temperatures; conveyor belt chips are continuous and mass-produced. That contrast becomes the essay’s creative lessons: dive into unique gifts, invest time, and embrace hand-stirred imperfections that make each batch distinct. The result is a polished “atomic essay” that begins with a snack and ends as a transferable writing and thinking system—one that can be repeated for other topics by following the same capture-to-draft pipeline.