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While researching an article about iPhones, I was contacted by Cheryl Kaye Tardif, best-selling author of numerous novels such as Whale Song. Tardif has embarked on a new project: writing a complete novel on her iPhone – the first major mainstream author to do so.

I kind of stumbled onto this by accident. One night while watching TV I was inspired by an idea for a new novel; I’m a bestselling suspense author with 3 published novels.

This new novel idea hit hard and fast and I didn’t want to lose one thought, so I reached for my iPhone 3G, which at the time I’d had for a week or so. Opening the Notes application for the first time, I started typing in my ideas. This led to opening a new file in Notes and actually writing the first paragraph or two of the novel.

Then I discovered I could email my Notes to myself. I did this and later that evening after the TV show I was watching was over, I rushed upstairs and opened the email on my PC. Copy and paste brought it into an MS Word doc, and ta-da! I’d officially started a new novel.

The novel, Finding Bliss, is still in the “fermenting” stage, says Tardif – she’s wrapping up another novel to send to the publisher, and editing another that’s due to come out soon. But she’s excited about doing this.

My first question, of course, was “why”?” I mean, I’m a big techie (of course) and I’ve written quite a bit on similar devices like my trusty old Palm IIIe, but the thought of tapping out 80,000 words or so on the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard fills me with dread!

Tardif gives several reasons for undertaking such a big project on such a small device. First, there’s the convenience. “This is huge for me,” she says, “since I am struck with ideas virtually anywhere, any time.”

Second, she finds the immediacy of the iPhone fits the topic of the novel quite well. “Finding Bliss is told in first person, from the perspective of Bliss Morgan, a damaged teenage girl who must fight to survive in a world of abuse, lies and loss. It will read almost as a diary, and writing my thoughts down when I get them is key.”

But most importantly, she says, writing a novel on an iPhone is great publicity. “To be honest, writing Finding Bliss in this way makes this novel unique, intriguing, and very pitchable to a publisher and sponsors.” Before you dismiss that as shallow, opportunistic, or overly commercial, remember that we live in an attention economy, and writers are not just expected but required to bring with their manuscripts a willingness to market their work and the savvy-ness to do it well. There is a special term for authors who aren’t willing to go the extra mile to capture the public’s attention: “unpublished”.

Tardif has found a great way to distinguish herself from the pack, and the public (and publishers) are paying attention. She’s been featured in several newspapers, and been contacted by retailers and websites looking to arrange exclusive releases of her finished book – and she’s only two chapters in!

Tardif offers this advice for authors looking to use their iPhones to write on:

Writing a novel on a small device like the iPhone 3G requires a fair amount of patience. There’s also a learning curve with the phone, so writers attempting this have to be willing to take their time. This probably won’t be a novel that’s written in 4 months.

I think that anyone attempting this should understand why they want to write this way. Are there advantages? Do the advantages outweigh the restrictions? Keep in mind, there is little room to edit, and certainly major editing would be done once converted into the Word doc.

More importantly, she sets a great example for writers looking for creative ways to promote themselves and their work. It hasn’t all been done before, but you’ve got to be willing to do whatever it takes to get yourself noticed. “Let’s face it,” she told me, “every author needs to get noticed if they want to succeed, especially fiction authors. And I plan to succeed! ”

Good advice!

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It’s November, and that means National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short and harder to type), that wonderful time of year when writers and would-be writers throw off the bounds of sanity and commit themselves to writing a full-fledged novel in a month. And it’s not even one of the long, 31-day months!

I don’t write novels (not yet, anyway…) and I have other commitments for this month anyway, so I won’t be doing the crazy “March to 50,000 Words” that NaNoWriMo participants are engaged in. But I didn’t want to stay out of the game entirely, so I’ve decided to celebrate and support NaNoWriMo this year, even though I’m not technically taking the challenge.

Over the next month, you’ll find interviews with a good number of folks who have participated in NaNoWRiMo in the past, with their advice for hanging in and making your time count. (Special thanks to everyone who agreed to be interviewed!) You’ll also find tips and motivation from me on getting and staying productive — my hope is that naNoWriMo writers will pop by every couple days or so for a few minutes of advice before diving back into their works-in-progress.

Of course, Aaron Peters is continuing his series on Linux and open source tools for writers, which has been great so far. And we may have some other guest posts, from familiar guests like Stephanie Siavetti and maybe a new guest or two. And later this week I’ll announce the winner of the iMindMap giveaway!

So stay tuned all month — this is gonna be FUN!

To say that LSB is a novel-writing program hardly scratches the surface of what the program does. To be frank, the program does so much that I’m not even entirely sure what it does! Let’s start with the metaphor of a binder. In a pen-and-paper world, a writer might put together a binder with all the information they’d need about their book-in-progress: character sketches, plot outlines, setting notes, drawings, random thoughts, todo lists, and so on.

Once you get the ideas behind it, LSB essentially offers a digital version of the paper binder, integrated with a workspace where you actually write your novel.

Or your not-novel. While LSB is clearly designed with fiction writers in mind, it is easily adaptable to any sort of prose, from short essays to non-fiction monographs. Character forms can be used to store information about sources or historical figures, setting forms can be used for place descriptions, and so on. In fact, for the essayist or short story writer who may want to compile their work into a book down the line, LSB is ideal — each chapter (or essay or story) is stored as a separate file (in Rich Text Format, which can be opened by virtually any word processor on any system) so it can be manipulated on its own, but when it comes time to collating everything together, LSB automates the process completely.

LSB also includes some other nice features, like the ability to create playlists to use while writing (consider this: a “heroic music” playlist for action scenes, a “romantic idylls” playlist for romance scenes, and a playlist composed entirely of Prince songs for sex scenes — you can soundtrack your own book while you write!) and reference works like a dictionary and thesaurus.

LSB comes with an example “Book” (its jargon for everything related to a single project) that includes examples of every function and tutorials on how to get started (which are complemented by some nice tutorials on their site). I had originally planned to do a walkthrough of the book creation process, but Tom Colvin of Becoming a Writer Seriously has already written a good introduction to Liquid Story Binder that covers most of the ground I would have.

Though it has a pretty steep learning curve, which the tutorials go a long way but not all the way towards alleviating, LSB is a worthwhile investment for any writer. I’d suggest getting it at the start of a project, so you don’t have to deal with cutting-and-pasting existing material into LSB and can focus instead on working with the program’s workflow. At $45.95 US, LSB isn’t cheap, but it’s nowhere near as expensive as much of the lesser software out there that promises to make writing easy. LSB makes no such promise; it only aims to make writing more organized.

Liquid Story Binder XE ($45.95 US)