Writing on the go, #NaNoWriMo 2021 day one

Off to a good start for NaNoWriMo 2021. I managed 1,900 words this morning on a new plot line in my growing fantasy series. This is going to be a multiyear project. This will be my 12th attempt at NaNoWriMo since 2005, having “won” five times. My last win was also part of the current series I’m working on.

In 2005, of course, I did not have an iPad, and I can’t remember exactly how I wrote that first novel. On a laptop, I suppose. Later, I embraced the minimalist mobile approach. I remember going to write-ins at cafés, setting up my Palm TX and my bluetooth keyboard, and drawing stares and questions from other writers. That bluetooth keyboard folded in half so was not much larger than the Palm. It was also flaky af and required several reconnects to the Palm every hour. But it was great for writing on airplanes, in cafés, and really anywhere I could set the keyboard on my lap and the palm where I could see it. I wrote three novels on that setup.

I can only hope that my writing quality has improved as much as technology has in the last 16 years.