Day: May 9, 2013

A New Writing Process

I wrote a blog post last summer about discovering a process for writing that worked for me. It was lengthy and a little bit rambling but the essence of it is reproduced here.

Fargo changes the game. Instead of writing from the outline, I expand the outline until it becomes the piece. This is a much more transparent way to proceed from ideas to end product. In fact, I can’t imagine writing any other way now.

Like Fargo itself, the new process is simpler and more effective. The self similarity is in itself pleasing to me. I think I’ll stop now while this post is still simple and to the point.

Experiences with Fargo on a First Generation iPad

I tried to use Fargo on my first generation iPad today. I had mixed success. There were some extenuating circumstances but I intend to try again using my wife’s third generation iPad.

The first thing I noticed was that I could read existing outlines fairly easily. The iPad was a little bit finicky recognizing double taps to open a node but other than that, I have no complaints.

When I tried to write something was when I had some problems. There is no tab key on the on screen keyboard. I finally figured out that I could edit the depth of a node by dragging it but as I mentioned before, the iPad was not recognizing the taps and the drags as well as I’d like. I also remembered the Outliner menu and had some luck getting the desired effect using those commands.

I tried to use my Bluetooth keyboard but that wasn’t pairing with my iPad so that didn’t work out. That’s either a problem with the keyboard or perhaps Apple silently “upgraded” my Bluetooth driver so that it no longer pairs with my keyboard.

I love Fargo on my Mac but either I need to upgrade to a new iPad and/or buy a new Bluetooth keyboard to use with it or just use the iPad to read outlines instead of creating them. That last option would make me very sad.