Good news everyone! On Tuesday I finally completed NaNoWriMo, hitting the 50k word mark making 2010 another NaNo success for me! I know I was away from the blog for the whole month of November, but I actually found this NaNoWriMo a little more difficult than last years. The novel I wrote this year required so much more research than my prior year’s novel and it ended up taking up much of my time just figuring out all the specifics I needed to get my story rolling in certain parts.
This NaNoWriMo, however, was not a complete success for me 🙁 I actually ended up giving up on attempting to write the novel on my iPad a few days into the project. It really wasn’t the iPad’s fault fully. I was having no trouble with the data input, but the issue I had was that I love Scrivener and I wanted to continuously update my novel to a Scrivener file I had created for it and the going back and forth teased me with all the great functions Scrivener has to offer and I ended up forgoing the iPad so that I could write my novel with the Scrivener app. I actually fully attribute my two NaNoWriMo wins to Scrivener because it makes it so easy to write and keep track of your text and your research that it seems silly not to use the program. I really wish that Scrivener would develop an app for the iPad, but I believe Literature & Latte has already come out saying they have no plans to create such an app. Pity, because I have been looking for an Scrivener like substitute to write on my iPad on the go, but nothing seems to be as functional as the true Scrivener application so I have been disappointed each time.
In defense of the iPad as a writing tool, I did find it very useful when I was writing and during my off time when I was researching because it was like having a second computer screen that I could pull up information in. I would frequently find myself sitting with my iPad and my moleskine notebook writing down details for the book that I found online. I also started using the application DropBox for syncing of documents between my iPad and Macbook Pro. My DropBox account served as a backup system for my Scrivener file for the book which was great because I could pull up the document on the iPad and review sections when I wasn’t writing or at my Macbook.
Overall, although this NaNoWriMo was more of a challenge for me, I ended up learning alot and finding some great little tricks for my iPad. I still believe the iPad is a great aid for writers on both short and long form projects, but until the right applications are created that cater to it’s strong points I will have to stick to Scrivener on my Macbook, but I’m okay with that 🙂