The Joy of Writing with Rok Sanda (made better through Obsidian)

Creative breakthroughs, in this account, come from treating writing as a non-linear discovery process—and using Obsidian’s linking and graph tools to turn scattered ideas into a single, evolving creative system. Instead of relying on linear drafting tools that help produce an end result but don’t necessarily improve the act of writing, Rok Sanda describes how visualizing connections between notes pushed him to stop merely “putting down” prose and start actively finding meaning across his fiction. The graph became a catalyst: it grew as he connected existing work with what he hadn’t written yet, creating a cohesive library where new relationships could surface.

That shift matters because his biggest creative bottleneck wasn’t getting words onto a page—it was choosing and committing. His trilogy of historical plays began with a clear linear plan (Part 1 in 2015, Part 2 in 2017), but Part 3 multiplied into “at least 10 different options,” including three completely different plays. External pressure followed: audiences kept asking which version would become the real ending. Internally, he wrestled with another rule he treats as non-negotiable: fiction should be “truthful,” meaning it should uncover a deeper emotional or psychological truth even while inventing events.

To break the deadlock, he used a cohort-based strategy: build a beta project first. He revisited an unfinished project inspired by a poem by Dr. Frank Oakberg, a psychiatrist and trauma pioneer. The poem centers on trauma victims denied justice due to insufficient evidence—an emotional premise that Sanda says he felt “to the bones.” When a straightforward attempt to draft the film in a screenwriting app stalled for months, he switched to Obsidian and began with a structured but exploratory workflow: a brain dump of themes and images, then short “light sprints” that generated random words and notes. Those fragments later snapped into place through deliberate linking.

The poem’s imagery became the film’s symbolic engine. “Memory” and “silence” turned into notes about disorganized attachment and fear of closeness rooted in child and marital abuse. A “hug” note—initially playful, then reinterpreted as self-soothing—connected to a central visual: a victim standing in snow, hugging herself from behind, washing away black streaks that resemble bruises, scars, or lash marks. Snow then took on layered meaning: innocence, cold, and renewal—like a blank slate. From there, he drafted scenes that visualized trauma and recovery, including a moment where wings form in the snow as the buried truth is pulled up and confronted.

Sanda’s most concrete breakthrough came when he traced the film’s “shards” motif to multiple symbolic candidates—broken mirrors, pottery fragments, shards of ice, even shards of eyes—before landing on an ending built around kintsugi-like healing: cracked pottery, melting ice, and a green stalk pushing toward the sun. The result wasn’t just a script; it was a linked reasoning trail inside Obsidian that made the next step feel inevitable. In his framing, the joy of writing isn’t linear momentum—it’s the willingness to keep connecting until the story’s deeper truth emerges and can finally be committed to paper.