New NaNo Challenge: iPhoning it in

Hello there blogosphere,

After writing my first post about the prospect of writing a lot of my NaNo on my iPhone, I got to thinking….why not write the whole thing on my iPhone?

I conferred with our benevolent editor and we decided, yes, this is too exiting of an idea to pass up. I test drove the WriteRoom app, and after working out a few kinks with the new WordPress app (which I am using to make this post) everything seems to be in order.

The prospect of writing 50,000 words is a daunting enough task on its own, so we’ll how much more of a challenge it will be on a 9cm touch-screen.

I want to be clear that the point of this challenge is not to subject myself to another barrier or prove a point, but to see if an iPhone can be used on its own at this level of writing. If I learn that it can’t, I will find out how useful a tool is it to supplement conventional writing on a computer.

I have to always remember that the real goal is to reach 50000 words. That being said I’m going to lay down three simple rules for the NaNo iPhone challenge:

1. All my writing has to be done on my iPhone (that includes posts on this blog and notes). I can’t write something down on paper or a computer and copy it onto my iPhone later.

2. If I decide the iPhone is holding me back, I have to give up and use my computer.

3. Knowing how stubborn I can be, if my NaNo friends tell me it’s holding me back, I have to give up and use my computer.

Throughout November I’ll report back on the difficulties I encounter, the benefits of using the iPhone, and perhaps some techniques for saving my thumbs from the pain that is no doubt in store for them in the coming weeks. I’m particularly curious to see whether I end up using portrait or landscape to type. I will also try to review the apps that I use along the way. I’m dependent on the WordPress app for making posts (and have already found some flaws in it while writing this post which I’ll go over another time). For my day-to-day writing I’m starting with WriteRoom but there are many other options out there.

6 thoughts on “New NaNo Challenge: iPhoning it in”

  1. Exciting and even noble but you’re not alone — do you know about the Japanese publishing phenomenon of cell phone novels? This has produced a number of bestselling books in that country and intriguingly there appears to be some esthetic unifiers within the genre. The New Yorker ran a long essay on it about a year ago, if you’re interested.

  2. Good luck to you. I’ll be interested to see how you make out: I’m planning on upgrading to a blackberry fairly soon, so perhaps I’ll make the switch over to mobile authoring myself at some point during the month.

      1. You prefer non-fancy Asian prostitutes? Putting it out there, buddy: With currency conversion and cost of living factored in, there’s almost no difference in the price point between fancy ones and what you’re investing in for the sake of fiscal discipline–

        —I mean, wait, what?

  3. I am pretty sure one of the Toronto NaNoers did a good chunk of their writing on their iPhone last year too. I can’t remember the outcome of it though.

    When I had a blackberry, I attempted to do some of mine on their, but I found the biggest nuisance was that the keypad was so tiny.

    Then again, with the iPhone, the keyboard is a bit bigger, is it not?

    Best of luck with it! I know I couldn’t do that on an iPhone, but its mostly because I get nauseous when I stare at a phone screen for too long.

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