So I put up the first chapter of Elgin, the Novel I’m writing for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), you can click-through Elgin in the writing menu to the left, read to the bottom and click on the Chapter 1 link. OR:

• Elgin Introduction
• Elgin Chapter 1

So I spent the day shuttling between various medical labs and had some time to write, so I did some on the iPad.  My method for this is clumsy but workable.  I use Dropbox to store my current writing which gives me access on the ThinkPad T42 laptop where I do most of my writing and the iPad which is my constant travel companion. I use Pages for writing, which started out pretty easy to use and is getting easier to use.  On the iPad Dropbox knows I can open a word document in Pages, so it gives me that option, but of course Apple does not link to Dropbox so I have to e-mail the file to myself and drop it back into Dropbox, which is annoying but workable.

Without my Verbatim bluetooth keyboard using the iPad on-screen keyboard is a two hand two finger exercise instead of ten finger touch typing but it’s still pretty fast.  Pages was the only real choice for a real word processor that I could see when I bought the iPad.  And as times goes along I am getting to like the slimmed down features of pages, though I dislike the modern smart phone based assumption that it knows better than I what I meant to spell (it’s a pain when inventing words/’terms for scifi or fantasy.)

Anyway read the intro and first chapter, let me know what you think.