Over a period of three years, fantasy author Peter Brett wrote 100,000 words on his HP iPaq during his long subway commute. And here I get all excited when I manage to post a new word I learned to my blog, while sitting at a bar. Given the length of most epic fantasy novels (or cycles) I would have thought it an impossible task to thumb out more than, say, 5-10% on something like a smartphone. But this guy seems to actually thrive doing it.
He talks about his experience, and why he went with an HP iPaq of all things, in this interview. He’s pretty bullish about the Kindle, much more so than I am, but it’s true that it is a breakout device; authors and publishers need to start working with e-books early or risk ending up like the recording industry. My question is, if he knew he was going to be doing so much typing, why not get something with a really sweet keypad like a Sidekick or Blackberry?
Update:
If you’re curious, the book has been uploaded to Scribd, so you can get an idea of just what one can write from a moving subway train, on a device I’d be afraid to compose an email on. Check it out below.
Or an iPhone. :) It’s not that hard to type on an iPhone/iPod Touch. Seriously.
Only after iPhone launches landscape keyboard in 3.0
I actually own both of these devices: and iPhone (personal) and an HP iPaq 900 (for work).
I can type much, much faster on the iPhone. Surely, I can’t be the only one who finds typing on a glass surface to be much less tedious than trying to push down tiny little buttons with my thumbs.
After doing a lot of email on a device with physical buttons, my thumbs actually feel sore. I don’t get that soreness with the iPhone. And, I’ve gotten so used to the spacing on the iPhone keyboard that I can really fly with typing speeds that I could never achieve on the HP (or on my previous Treo and BlackBerry). I’ll probably never use the new landscape mode because I’m so used to the portrait mode keyboard spacing.
I must be unique though because of the endless complaints I hear from people about the iPhone keyboard. I wonder if people actually gave themselves a chance to get used to typing on it so that it becomes second nature.
Sometimes, a little difficulty spurts creativity. Some people do better when there is something opposing them.
Hmmm… No better way to get RSI
Agreed, This guy is lucky if he doesn’t have tendinitis or at least blackberry thumb
I often think I would be better writing all my emails on a phone to reduce the amount that I write and get to the point more quickly. The few times I have forced myself to create a document or write an important communication on my iPhone, that document has been far more concise than had I written it on my PC.
This guy wrote his whole novel on his Sharp Zaurus.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8075970474.html
Cool guy. He should be extremely mobile-savvy to do this. I cannot do it with a Smart Phone and would always want a laptop. But again, TechCrunch, is this that great a news? I read somewhere that a school girl wrote her essay on her mom’s mobile and emailed it to her teacher. This fellow has done something bigger than that. Nothing more. Is it that newsy?
This is nothing new, Japan has been doing this for a while – they even have a name for the genre: The Cell Phone Novel – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_phone_novel
There was a decent article on them in NYT earlier this year: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/world/asia/20japan.html?_r=1
Michael, you beat me to the punch.
NPR featured a story about Japanese men and women becoming cult-like celebrities for publishing entire books of collected text messages.
One young man wrote his entire novel while he rode the train to and from work, texting all along the way.
Japan is obviously way ahead of the US on this. Take a look: http://www.michaelmyers.biz/CRUCES/the-mobile-japan
Take a look at textonphone on Android. There is already more than 100 books being written on Android phone by users.
I wonder, have you ever read Brett’s novels? Did you like them?
As evident in Japan, this happens more often than we realize. Portions of my forthcoming book (”Stick It To The Man”) was written on my iPhone. The early copy I have of it looks great!
The New Yorker had a good story on the Japanese cell phone novel a while back: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/22/081222fa_fact_goodyear
This is cool
Saying the Japanese are ahead of us in cell phone trends is like saying Pluto’s a little further out from the sun. It’s a whole other world out there in Japan; when it comes to mobile stuff, they must consider us a third-world country.
As I recall, 5/10 of Japan’s best selling novels from 2008 (or maybe 2007) were keitai novels picked up after or during sms publishing to an aggregating website.
Cool stuff.
Here goes the cycle:
1- New service is a hit in Japan
2- It is dismissed on the base of “Japanese have small fingers, ride the train and use mobiles while Americans have big hands, drive cars and use PCs.” or simply because “they are different” (wow!)
3- Same service is reinvented and booms in the US
4- Start over from 1- with another service
Want to know what’s next? Check out Japan’s mobile scene and Korea/China’s web scenes (”virtual goods? why would anyone buy that?” – already a 5 billion USD market in Asia. Social commerce? Paying web services? Paying for coupons? Mobile TV? NFC ecosystems?).
And if he’d written it on a laptop he would have written two novels in the same time – what a pointless story – although the comments are better than the story, so I guess its worthwhile for Techcrunch to put out pointless stories,