50,000 words in 30 days on my iPad. Can I do it?

Well, that’s the challenge I’m setting myself. Monday sees the start of this year’s Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month), during which thousands of crazy people in the US and around the world will be attempting to write a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days. This is the third time I have attempted the feat, and this time I’m determined to succeed.

And almost all of it is going to happen on my iPad.

For me, writing on the iPad is so much more personal and intimate than working on a laptop or desktop computer. As I said in my initial review, the overall experience is immersive; there is very little UI clutter to get in your way, no trackpad or physical keyboard between you and your words; and the screen is physically closer to you, too. Put simply , this makes it easier to focus on what I am writing, similar to writing in a paper notebook.

Moreover, for a non-touch typist like myself, there is less physical strain involved, no shifting of the head back and forth between the keyboard and the screen, and no straining of the neck and eyes to take in the full width of a laptop or desktop screen. And the keyboard is big, wide and comfortable, which, combined with autocorrect, does a magnificent job of turning my somewhat awkward six-fingered typing-style into perfectly readable prose.

I use Apple’s own iPad case for propping the device up at the correct angle for typing. It works pretty well when the I am sitting on the sofa with the iPad on my lap, but it is just superb when I sit down at a desk or table in order to crank out some serious wordage. I’ll be turning to Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard some of the time, though, particularly for scenes which are heavy on dialog. (Accessing double quotes on the iPad itself is a little awkward, unfortunately.)

I’ve jotted down some preliminary scenes and character notes in an app called Index Cards, which allows me to to drag my ideas around until I have a rough outline of the story I want to tell. I can also toggle between the card and an outline view for a different perspective on the story as it develops.

At some point, however, the bulk of the writing will be done in a rather elegant writing app called PlainText. The beauty of this app, apart from the gorgeous UI, is that it automatically syncs all changes to the cloud via Dropbox, and from there the files are immediately accessible on my iPhone and desktop computer. In fact, PlainText is a “universal” iOS app, so I can pick up on my iPhone exactly where I left off on my iPad. (Let’s face it, if I’m going to make that 50,000 word target, I’ll need to be able to add a few hundred words from my iPhone whenever I get the opportunity.)

The final link in the chain is a Mac OS app called Scrivener which will pull all of the files created on my iPad together into a complete manuscript. Fortunately, both Index Cards and PlainText sync directly to Scrivener, so tweaking and reorganizing my story should be a breeze. (Scrivener is itself a powerful writing tool, but, as I have already stated, I prefer writing on my iPad.)

Anyway, I thought it might be interesting for people to see how I’ll  be using my iPad over the next month, and to explain why you won’t hear much from me in the comments.

Wish me luck. I’m going to need it. Trevor.