Novel writing on the N800

May 22, 2007

So I’ve mentioned a little bit on one show or another about how I’ve been using the Nokia N800 to write my podcast novel “Badlands”. With a very tight weekly deadline and a street date for the print version of Oct 31 of this year, it’s really been important to keep on schedule. Normally, turning out about 2500 words a week per chapter would be easy except for all the other work I’m doing on my other shows, but with my schedule writing Badlands often requires making time that I otherwise don’t have.

So, what I discovered almost by accident a few months ago was that I enjoyed writing in bed each night before going to sleep. I started with a hardback journal and pencil that I used to make some random notes concerning my Number One with a Bullet rewrites but then as I would start writing I’d end up with what would sometimes become pages of new story. The amazing thing was that I realized this burst of creativity was doubly beneficial because not only was I getting work done but I was also sleeping much better.

The only problem was that I’d wake up the next morning and have to spend (sometimes an hour or more) transcribing what I’d written in my journal to the computer. And if you’ve ever seen my handwriting, even when I’m not writing quickly while laying on my back, you’d understand what a pain in the ass this was. I decided I needed a way to write in bed electronically to make more efficient use of my time. Sure I could use my MacBook but I didn’t want to have to sit up to write since I was certain being very comfortable was helping the creativity flow, and I knew the klackity-klack of a keyboard would keep my wife awake.

I had heard Adam talk a lot about the N800 and at first I thought it was kind of a useless toy that I didn’t need (and I’m a gadget-head). But as I looked at it again with this specific task in mind I started to think it could really fit the bill. All I needed it for was to write on. After some more research, I went and bought it.

The day it arrived I realized I’d made absolutely the right choice. At first I was planning on using the stylus and the so-called improved handwriting recognition to pen my thoughts but quickly realized that wasn’t going to work. Luckily the N800 has a built in touch screen keyboard that’s really easy to use and as I switched to that I knew I’d found my solution. Honestly, it barely took any time to get used to using it with my thumbs and even though I can’t type on it as fast as I can touch type on a standard computer keyboard, I found that I can get my ideas down about as fast as I could hand write them before. What I realized was that this slightly reduced speed of input was forcing me to think more about my word and story choices and as a result allowing me to write stronger first drafts, and with Badlands being on this tight schedule, the stronger the first drafts the better.

Then as I’m done each writing session (I use the N800’s built in “Notes” program which works like a stripped down word processor). I use the program’s menu option of sending my note as an e-mail. So with a few taps I can send my night drafts to myself and then turn over and go to sleep. In the morning I open the e-mail (the contents of the Note show up in Gmail as formatted text) then copy and paste it into my Badlands master draft. Some nights I write a page, some nights 4 pages if I’m on fire (however on nights when this happens, I find that I’ve stayed up way past my bedtime). I’m sure I’ll find other things to do with my N800 but as long as I can continue to use it as a creative tool to steal time for writing, I’ll happily tell you this is one of the best things I’ve bought this year.

Posted in Blog, Nokia