Oh Murder, it's been a while

The current state of the Iris Drake novel

First of all, I want to thank everyone who posted such lovely comments about the sleep issue from my last message. We are turning a corner and I managed to wake up feeling rested today, so here I am!

My new stripped-down novel station. I’m in love.

Work on Iris Drake’s story continues. My current project is typing up the remainder of the handwritten pages I’ve completed so far. I’m about halfway through and expect to be finished with that project by the end of June.

Once I have those pages in Scrivener, I’m planning to export another reading copy to mark up and make notes for the next round of writing. This is feeling more like I’m an oyster building up layers of a pearl rather than a layer cake these days.

I suspect a cake would go a lot faster, with much larger chunks complete at each stage.

The solutions that involve throwing money at something always make me suspicious as we are not investment bankers. However, I would be remiss to leave out a new thing that is making my quite happy: my new iPad keyboard case.

When I was in the UK in late May, I tried an experiment: traveling without my laptop. I had dragged the thing to the US when we say family, and only actually wrote a few times so I wanted to see if I could do without it.

Unfortunately, I made it two days before I felt its absence. A cheapie keyboard case for the ipad didn’t cut it, so I sent that back and went to the mothership of the Mac store in London and got myself the keyboard case that holds the ipad up and has a built in mouse. I can now travel with that, leave the laptop at home, and do way less lugging.

Nothing like a good London wander.

An unexpected side benefit is that typing up pages into the iPad version of Scrivener is quite pleasant and this set-up means I can do so easily in a cafe or just another room in the house, as I did yesterday. The need to unplug my webcam and microphone etc from the laptop is often a barrier to writing, as is the fact that it’s sitting at the desk I work at all day long or my business.

I certainly don’t suggest getting an iPad or tablet with keyboard case for this purpose if you don’t have one already. However, if you do have one and have wondered how the Scrivener experience is for a task like this, I can tell you it’s a bit simplified, but perfect for this purpose.

Here is my new view while typing up pages:

However, there are some disclaimers I need to share if you go for this method. Please forgive me as I now shout at you via text formatting, but this is important.

Two very important tips: BIG TEXT = IMPORTANT

1. Make sure you have the iPad version synced so your work is backed up. I am not yet sure if the backup happens automatically on the iPad version, so I’ve gone in and manually synced it to Dropbox, where I save my drafts, manually.

2. Before working on the iPad version of Scrivener, make sure any other versions of your work on other devices are saved and Scrivener is closed on those devices. If I am typing pages up on the iPad, that’s the only place I have the novel and Scrivener open. You don’t want dueling drafts and versions — it’s a real nightmare.

Does anyone else use a tablet or iPad to type their novel? I’m curious to hear about your process in the comments.

More soon! I’ve read a metric ton of books, so a major recent reading post is in the works as well.