How to Write a Bestselling Novel on Your iPhone I arrive at the restaurant early. I have 30 minutes to kill. I can either waste that time on some social news site reading things I won’t remember an hour later, or do something slightly more productive. Usually I opt for the time waster. Sometimes though, I resist temptation and make better use of this time: I use my phone to write a book. Maybe not the whole novel or even half, but I still manage to thumb type chapters and sections at a time. Writing something long form using your thumbs sounds like a form of torture to most people. The truth is, once you get used to it, it’s not all that bad. Yesterday I wrote two chapters for an upcoming Jessica Blackwood novel using my iPhone while laying on my couch. I didn’t feel like sitting down at my computer. So instead, in the most lazy way possible I still managed to write. When it’s time to write the book itself, I like to be in a distraction-free environment – which can be on an airplane or in the middle of a shopping mall. The distractions I try to avoid the most are the ones I invite on myself. Sometimes, we can’t control those things. My friends often complain that they don’t have the time to write because life gets in the way. I call BS on that. Just about anybody can write 2,000 words in an hour. All it takes is 30 hours spread over weeks or months and you have a novel. The problem is that most people find themselves staring at the screen watching the time fly and the word count not move. Their mistake is that they waited until they had some free time to write to actually think about what to write. When people imagine themselves writing they conjure the image of the solitary figure hunched over a keyboard hammering away their epic. The truth of the matter, at least for me, probably only 50% of my time spent writing a book is sitting in front of a computer. My novels are outlined over and over on yellow legal pads. Chapters are written and shuffled on index cards. Web pages are saved to Pocket, Wikipedia articles are printed out. I’ve written as much as 20,000 words in a day. The trick of it was that I’d solved all the little problems that would have had me staring into space beforehand. That’s where planning comes in. That’s where your iPhone, Android, iPod or whatever is here to save you. A novel is a narrative that unifies a bunch of ideas. These ideas can form characters, plots and the details that make your story unique. A really good novel has a lot of ideas. You can come up with more ideas in 5 days than 5 hours. That’s what your phone is for. It’s probably near you 24-7. Any time inspiration strikes, not necessarily in the form of prose, but the actual molecules that make up a story, make a note. Ever stare into space thinking up character names? Should a conversation take place in a car or on a side of the road when a taxi got a flat tire? Where did your character go to school? What’s the scariest thing that ever happened to them? What kind of house does you antagonist live in? These are the kind of ideas you can come up with anytime. Just a half dozen pre-planned ideas per chapter will make it all the more interesting. The problem with a lot of amateur writing is that it feels like they’re trying to figure things out too late. Once they have an original thought, the perfect time has passed. Your phone is the perfect device to capture all the seeds that will flower into the garden that’s your book. As I’ve learned, I can even write my novel on my phone. If that still sounds painful, imagine writing an entire novel, longform using a quill pen. We don’t get a lot of unbroken, distraction-free time to write. We do have lots of fragmented moments to have singular ideas and thoughts. Use these times appropriately. You won’t need to steal away moments to write your novel on your phone if you plan wisely. But if you have to, with clear direction, the time will be much better spent. Who knows, you might even find you enjoy the time thumb typing away your story. Strangely enough, I do. So, here’s how to use your iPhone to write a novel: 1. Use your note app to write down ideas that will make your novel more interesting and deeper. 2. Make a lot of notes. Have a lot of ideas. 3. Get a mobile app like Daedalus Touch so you can write anytime you feel like it.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 20:14:51 +0000
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