How many people actually use a phone to write?

[MrPixel]

Can't imagine typing on a phone. ...

Neither can I. I can barely make it through a single line text message without spending most of the time backspacing and fighting a pitched battle with autocorrect. I tried writing on my wife's iPad and the end result was desperately wanting to test its performance as a Frisbee. I bought a MacBook Air for our away-from-home time instead.

 

[Underrick]

ME !,

 

[Areala-chan]

Oddly enough, Lit doesn't seem to have a category for that.

Erotic Couplings (sexy bits + hand(s) + whatever else).

 

[Fatdog25]

Phone 85%, laptop 15%.

It's harder writing on the phone, I go much slower, but I tend to drop words when I can type faster. I've conditioned myself to proofread as I type on the phone.

Editing is done on the laptop. I haven't figured out text-to-speech for Google Docs.

 

[AG31]

I can't imagine writing on a phone. I struggle enough to get out a one line text.

I wish we'd all given our ages, or at least our decades. I'm early 80's.

 

[FrancesScott]

I wish we'd all given our ages, or at least our decades. I'm early 80's.

It’s probably not ideal to do that from a privacy point of view. I reluctantly admitted to being a Millennial recently here, that’s about as close to divulging my age that I’m going to get.

 

[AG31]

It’s probably not ideal to do that from a privacy point of view. I reluctantly admitted to being a Millennial recently here, that’s about as close to divulging my age that I’m going to get.

Can you give me an example of how I might come to harm (or discomfort, or...) by someone knowing I'm in my early 80s?

 

[Erozetta]

As I write this very post on the phone, I can't help but marvel at people who seem to have similar writing speed on the small touchscreen as they have on an actual keyboard.

Im curious: are you just relying on autocorrect and thus write about your characters ducking each other silly; or do you use any special software like that Swype keyboard that was all the rage like a decade ago?

Also, what's the average spread between the amount of text you type in daily on a phone or on a PC? Is it predominantly the phone?

In asking because I'm wondering whether it might be worth the time to 'invest' into learning to type on a phone to give myself more opportunity to write. Due to my work I can write very quickly on a normal keyboard, but all I use the phone one for is text messages, and short ones at that.

Typically, I'm much faster on my laptop, but as I learned with the chain stories, I kinda need a new keyboard, so that has cut my typing speed down considerably. (I sometimes have to hit a key multiple times before it actually registers.)

So, currently, I'm actually faster on my phone.

No special software. Since my keyboard decided to half crap out on me I probably write between 500-2000 words a day on my phone and maybe 500-1000 words a week on my laptop. If I fix my keyboard and stop being lazy about setting up my laptop, though, I can easily type about 5-8k words in a day on my laptop.

Short of a backup, I wouldn't say it's worth it, but having it as a backup is convenient as I now don't have to shell out an extra grand to get a new laptop or a couple hundred bucks for a new laptop keyboard. (And Oh how I loathe portable keyboards.)

 

[TheLobster]

backup

Ah, so this is another interesting question. How do you guys reconcile what you’ve written on the phone with what I presume is the authoritative copy on your larger devices?

Do you all just use Google Docs? Or do you do simply write “phone-exclusive” snippets and then copy them over to the larger document? Or perhaps something else?

I’m assuming here that your work does touch a PC at some point, if only for editing and submission; but this is probably the most relevant question to those who alternate between shorter bursts on the phone and longer sessions with a physical keyboard.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Ah, so this is another interesting question. How do you guys reconcile what you’ve written on the phone with what I presume is the authoritative copy on your larger devices?

Do you all just use Google Docs? Or do you do simply write “phone-exclusive” snippets and then copy them over to the larger document? Or perhaps something else?

I’m assuming here that your work does touch a PC at some point, if only for editing and submission; but this is probably the most relevant question to those who alternate between shorter bursts on the phone and longer sessions with a physical keyboard.

I write snippets on the phone, then email them to myself and paste them into the word document I'm using. That's the definitive document. I usually erase my note after I've done that.

 

[Erozetta]

Ah, so this is another interesting question. How do you guys reconcile what you’ve written on the phone with what I presume is the authoritative copy on your larger devices?

Do you all just use Google Docs? Or do you do simply write “phone-exclusive” snippets and then copy them over to the larger document? Or perhaps something else?

I’m assuming here that your work does touch a PC at some point, if only for editing and submission; but this is probably the most relevant question to those who alternate between shorter bursts on the phone and longer sessions with a physical keyboard.

I basically have 2+ copies going at all times. Google docs and LibreOffice, copy and paste from one to the other as I edit/write on different devices. Once I've submitted the work, it gets copied into a Scrivener project with all of my other complete/submitted works.

 

[SugarStorm]

I use an iPhone and write full scenes into Notes, and when I'm happy with the text I move it into a Google Docs document. I live a life where sitting down with a laptop to type feels borderline impossible. The absolute majority of my stories (30k words), including a major portion of the editing, is done on my phone.

It's not very effective, and the editing part can get somewhat frustrating, but hey, stupid is as stupid does.

 

[djrip]

I write in Gmail drafts, available at any computer I log into. Or I guess phone, too, but I can't flow that way. That's the problem with word or a text editor, the doc is only on one machine. Google docs would be available wherever I log in, but they don't do this nice thing Gmail drafts do, where if I ctrl-f a word it highlights it everywhere it appears. In docs I have to jump from instance to instance, which is not as nice as just scrolling and seeing it everywhere.

 

[MrPixel]

I write in Gmail drafts, available at any computer I log into. ...

Which has one huge drawback: Google. When (not if) they decide that they can no longer support adult content given the current trends, your docs will vanish with little or no notice. Hope you're backed-up on hardware you own. Photobucket taught us that lesson years ago.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Oddly enough, Lit doesn't seem to have a category for that.

Toys and Masturbation maybe.

I kinda need a new keyboard, so that has cut my typing speed down considerably. (I sometimes have to hit a key multiple times before it actually registers.)

Have you tried prying off the stubborn keys and cleaning under them?

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Which has one huge drawback: Google. When (not if) they decide that they ...

... want to do whatever they want to do, delete, block access, charge fees, use for their own purposes ...

 

[Nynah]

Lyx is the way, the truth and the light. Set up a document template and it stops trying to do ANYTHING to what I write, except slavishly record each and every keypress while removing redundant whitespace - which is the only use case that a text editor should fulfill.

I'm always on the lookout for new text editors so I looked up Lyx and tried to get it set up, but then it told me to download a LaTeX distribution first so I went and tried that... only to be locked into downloading thousands of files for the next six hours. I may try to fiddle with it again later but it seemed like a lot of work up front.

(also something something LaTeX, something something BDSM, something something)

 

[onehitwanda]

I'm always on the lookout for new text editors so I looked up Lyx and tried to get it set up, but then it told me to download a LaTeX distribution first so I went and tried that... only to be locked into downloading thousands of files for the next six hours. I may try to fiddle with it again later but it seemed like a lot of work up front.

(also something something LaTeX, something something BDSM, something something)

once you learn a bit of LaTeX you will never go back to vanilla...

(In all seriousness, most scientific papers are published with it or a variant of it. It takes a bit of tweaking, but I've been using Lyx since... 1998, I think, and it has not yet let me down. I even published my book with it.)

 

[Erozetta]

Have you tried prying off the stubborn keys and cleaning under them?

Unfortunately, yes. It seems to be beyond cleaning.

This was taken recently (after a previous cleaning, but before the most recent cleaning). I'm pretty sure my keyboard is just begging to be put out of it's electronic misery at this point

 

[djrip]

Which has one huge drawback: Google. When (not if) they decide that they can no longer support adult content given the current trends, your docs will vanish with little or no notice. Hope you're backed-up on hardware you own. Photobucket taught us that lesson years ago.

Good point, anything is possible, though I'd be quite surprised if they did anything to people's personal docs/ emails. That is a very different thing from publicly hosted content that they might want to have rules around. My stuff is backed up on lit, once it's finished

 

[NuclearFairy]

Unfortunately, yes. It seems to be beyond cleaning.

This was taken recently (after a previous cleaning, but before the most recent cleaning). I'm pretty sure my keyboard is just begging to be put out of it's electronic misery at this point

On the other hand, that picture is the perfect example for why learning how to type without looking is so important.

 

[Actingup]

I touch-type and where possible use a mechanical keyboard connected to my laptop or PC. I use MS Word for writing, and copy over to Google docs for sharing with editors/co-authors. In my day job I use shared MS Word docs to collaborate, but not for smut . Then I run formatting macros back in MS Word and use that as the archive copy for my horrified descendants to read later (I guess that’s another thread…).

 

[NuclearFairy]

I touch typed when I used my phone. Honestly though those first several chapters I did on the phone even after my SO edited them were so full of tense switches and typos that I'm sometimes tempted to actually submit an edit.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

I can't imagine writing on a phone. I struggle enough to get out a one line text.

I wish we'd all given our ages, or at least our decades. I'm early 80's.

I'm on my early 30s and I've done it all, and I like it all.

The only thing I haven't tried is using a quill, and that's because I don't have a big enough feather to give it a shot... but I found a few tutorials on how to turn a chicken or a turkey feather into a quill! The biggest feather I have is a vulture feather though.

I could go using a typewriter, but I don't have a typewriter. I did use one when I didn't have a computer for homework back in elementary school. I think I also wrote a tale there when I was a kid too.

 

[Erozetta]

On the other hand, that picture is the perfect example for why learning how to type without looking is so important.

It really really is.

I'm a gamer, too, sooo... My keyboard takes some abuse from that in addition to typing for writing and shit.

If I couldn't touch type, I'd definitely have taken some white paint and repainted my keys so I'd know what is what, lol.

I also I'm have a cat, so the last time I cleaned my keyboard, I ended up pulling about a cat's worth of fur out of my laptop and keyboard. That's always fun because she's immediately offended and lays down on it, then rolls around to get her fur under the keys again.