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Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

What I learned from this year’s Nano

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Woot, I won:

NaNoWriMo Winner 2010

Scarily enough, I realized the first time I did NaNoWriMo was in 2004. (Yes! I was ahead of the curve! I’m TRENDY!) And one big difference between this year and that one, I realized, was not that I finished on the last day (you tell me to do 50,000 words in 30 days, apparently I get it into my head that finishing on day 30 is A-OK). No, the big difference is that I much more of a novelist now.

In 2004, on the last day, I was trying desperately to finish the novel. It was a murder mystery, and I had no damn idea whodunnit, so that last day was spent furiously trying to come up with a villain and write out the conclusion, etc, etc. I rewrote that book completely (it’s the book that got me an agent and went out to publishing houses), and while broad story strokes survived from that first draft, not much of the actual writing did. However, on Nov. 30, 2004, I had a complete book. It was fifty thousand words, and I was exhausted. I couldn’t believe I’d written so much on one story before (let alone in thirty days).

On Nov. 30, 2010, after fifty thousand words, I was within seven thousand to ten thousand words of getting to the end of Act I. I wasn’t quite there yet, but I knew the path I was going to take to get there.

That’s quite a difference in writing style.

Admittedly, at least fifteen thousand of the words of this year’s book were spent on scenes that could be politely described as “figuring out my character.” One day I started at the beginning and read all the way through. I ended up completely depressed (because it was clear so much of it was simply figuring my story and my characters out and would have to be thrown out wholesale)…which is why you’re not supposed to read your draft in progress. If I decide to rewrite this story, I know the setup much better now and I would probably try to get to the end of Act I by 40,000 words instead of the 60,000 word point.

I was surprised that the idea of taking 40,000 words just to set everything in motion feels much more comfortable now.

I’m doing NaNo AGAIN this year

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In case anyone else is too.

And wants to be buddies.

My handle (as it has been for some number of years running) is “dianeofnka”.

Happy writing!

The Kindle device vs. the iPad

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Yes! I’m trolling for hits! It’s guaranteed linking!

Now that I’ve had my Kindle 3 for a month, I’ve had friends ask me which do I prefer: reading on the iPad or on the Kindle? And it’s really no contest: I much much much prefer reading on the iPad.

Yes, LCD display and all.

I am quite impressed with how the screen on the Kindle looks. E-ink is really good technology and it does look like a printed page. But I read all day on a computer screen anyhow, so reading a little bit more on one at night is not a big hassle. It doesn’t make my eyes any more tired than they already are. (Now, if I’m going to give up screens altogether, that would be one thing. But we’re not talking about doing that.)

The Kindle is also much lighter than the iPad (8.5 ounces vs. 1.5 or 1.6 pounds, depending on model). However, I tend to lie in bed with the iPad propped on my rib cage, so the weight really doesn’t bother me.

What the Kindle is better for (as far as I’m concerned):

  • Taking outside the house. Losing the Kindle would definitely suck, no question. But $139 vs. the cost of an iPad (which has WAY more data on it than the Kindle does)…yeah, no contest there. To be honest, though, the real cost of the Kindle is closer to $189, because I had to buy a cover with built-in light for it—that screen ain’t durable, and the Kindle screen is useless in anything less than bright light.
  • Small. It fits in my bag of holding purse. That’s convenient.

What the iPad is better for:

  • Everything else.

The UI on the Kindle sucks. Let me not hold back: it’s terrible. I understand that it’s gotten much better since the original Kindle, so my hat is off to you, Original Kindle owner, for plowing through. The page forward/page back buttons are annoying, but I’ve gotten used to them. Accidentally scrolling ahead 15 pages when I meant to scroll back? Yeah, that sucked the first time, and the second time made me scream (quietly). Scrolling through the list of books I have in there to find the book I want to read when I can’t remember the title or author? That’s nearly unforgivable.

But the teeny-tiny keys for entering text are annoying enough to get me to not use them. True story: Every time I’ve decided to buy a book for my Kindle, I

  1. put the Kindle down,
  2. pick the iPad up,
  3. go to Amazon,
  4. buy the book,
  5. put the iPad down,
  6. pick the Kindle back up.

Yeah. That’s going to convince me to use my Kindle for anything other than a convenience on the road.

Here’s what raised my blood pressure: organizing my book collection.

I buy all of my Kindle books from Amazon. I’m willing to bet folding money Amazon knows what genre these books are in. Maybe several genres, but I bet each book could be marked with just one genre when it gets downloaded.

Does Amazon do this? They do not.

But what does Amazon have? They have something called “Collections”, which are groupings of books I name and arrange (using those teeny-tiny keys on the teeny-tiny keyboard…yeesh). So, I spend a lot of time organizing my 200+ (that’s out of control) ebooks into these Collections on my Kindle device. And the Collections do not propagate to the other locations where I might read my Kindle books (ie, my iPhone and iPad).

In fact, there is no organizing AT ALL in the Kindle app. Nice. So if I carry my entire ebook collection around with me…it becomes a disaster to try to find anything.

(As for non-Amazon books…Apparently there is some way to upload non-Amazon books to the Kindle, but a)it’s not obvious and b)involves mailing something to the email address associated with my Kindle and c)costs me 10 cents per, or something. If I’m going to spend that much effort getting a book on to a reading device, I’ve got a better way. Yes, it’s drag-and-drop to iTunes for syncing with my iPad and iPhone for one-stop shopping.)

(And so you ask: Why do I buy the vast majority of my books from Amazon? Two reasons: a)they still have a bigger selection, although I’ve started searching the iBooks store first, and b)I have an Amazon points Visa card, meaning most of the books I’m buying at Amazon are therefore…free.)

Seriously, UI counts. Yes, it is Amazon’s problem if this annoys me, because iBooks doesn’t do that. My books get loaded into whatever device under whatever category I put them, so every single place I load that book, I can look for it by title, author, AND category. (Yes, I realize this is not technically a win for the iPad, just for iBooks, but this is a major way in which Kindle, whether on the Kindle or on my Kindle app for iPhone, just fails.)

Here’s another example: the way you move around the page on the Kindle is via a 4-sided rocker with a button in the center. It works pretty well if you have a nail long enough to center on one of the sides; not so well if you have a large clumsy finger that either hits the wrong side or the button in the center. You use the rocker to move down the list of options on the page. And you do have to move DOWN the entire page; you can’t go “around the horn” and go UP to go to the last entry on the page.

There might be reasons for that, but wow, would a simple UI change make it easier to navigate on a page with a long list of entries.

Here’s why the iPad is better:

  • My eyes don’t feel any more strained reading on that than on the Kindle. So stop telling me that they do, okay?
  • My hands don’t feel any more strained. Honest, I keep hearing about how heavy the iPad is, and I haven’t found it to be problem. I prop the iPad on my tummy. I turn pages. Then I’m done.
  • I don’t have to have a light on in the bedroom when I’m reading. This is nice for when Darin is asleep and I’m not.
  • Finding books on Amazon is easier via iPad than via the Kindle.
  • Paging forward and backward is easier (touchscreen kicks ass over teeny, terrible form-factor keyboard). My hands get tired whether using the touchscreen or the little buttons over the length of time I spend reading, so I haven’t noticed a winner there.
  • Moving within a book is easier.

I’ll get into the Kindle app vs the iBooks app another time. (Okay, okay, here’s one: you get a bigger chunk of the book when you get a sample from iBooks than you do from Amazon.) The divide between these two devices is rather stunning, however. I know devising a whole new device that allows you to read your books with e-ink must be tough but…suck it up and redo the software, boys. You haven’t nailed it yet.

Update: Just saw the Borders ebooks app for iPhone. Apparently they have something called “What I’m Reading” that propagates all the books you’re currently reading from device to device. Learn from this, Amazon.

Update 10/4/10: Adding Collections to my Kindle device has had an unexpected effect. I now only use the Kindle device, because otherwise I can’t find the book I’ve been reading. (Honestly, when all I can remember is “It’s a Regency involving a titled bloke written by a woman with a flowery sounding name” and 85 possible titles, I’m not going to download each one from the Archive to see if that’s it. My memory’s terrible these days, okay?)

This pretty much means I no longer read my Kindle books when I’m on the go and don’t have my Kindle device with me. FWIW.