I find these days that my writing time isn’t very regular – instead, I end up snatching bits and pieces of time here and there to be able to wrap up things by certain deadlines. I’m currently racing against a two-week deadline for an anthology at the end of the month, and haven’t yet finished the story, let-alone started on the rewrites.
Frantic!
We also have company at the moment, which further compresses my time overall, including my writing time.
So what’s a guy to do?
I’m falling back on technology. I have my trusty little iPhone, complete with Pages and the cloud. Now it’s exceedingly difficult to use Pages for editing on the iPhone – the screen’s small to begin with, and when the keyboard takes up half the space, it’s tricky to work in the remaining tiny, squished space. But the iPhone, with Siri voice recognition, does make a pretty decent dictation engine. So it’s great for banging out first drafts of new scenes.
For actual editing, my iPad and Pages is awesome – it allows me to access all my current work anywhere I am (ok, as long as I have wifi – I didn’t wanna pay the extra $15/month for the cellular connection). And the external bluetooth keyboard means I have plenty of space on the screen to work.
So how do you use technology to help you squeeze the most writing time (or the most out of your writing time) from your daily schedule? Any apps you recommend, or tricks of the trade you’ve learned?