Commuting reeks. Yet amid conditions where I personally find it difficult to do much of anything other than sob into my neighbor's armpit, sufficiently determined people are able to create. Such a person is Kensington author Peter V. Brett, a man so hellbent on killing time between Church Avenue and Times Square every morning that he managed to churn out a 400 page fantasy novel. On a Smartphone.
From AM New York:It was slow going at first as Brett became accustomed to writing on the portable device. The process started out as Brett jotting down notes and ideas so he wouldn’t forget them. Eventually, he was able to type faster and faster.
“It reached a point where I had gotten so used to it that I’d get on the subway and just put my headphones on and just get in the zone,” he says. “Epic fantasy books are so long that ... you have to break it up into tiny little chunks or else you’ll never finish. I just trained myself to have those chunks be at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. every day.” (read more)
Now, from time to time we all find ourselves in situations where we have to type something more substantial than "Be there in 5" or "the cat is on fire" into our phones. It's an arduous process and fraught with errors. I'm sure many of you agree that it's not something you'd want to do on a regular basis. At 250 words per page over 400 pages, Peter V. Brett has typed over 100,000 words into his phone. The sheer enormity alone is impressive enough, but to string these 100,000 words into a novel that has garnered a 4.5 star rating on Amazon is another story altogether.
Luckily for me, Peter's publisher has done the smart thing and released this book on the Kindle. We'll see if reading it on the train is as hard as writing it was.
Luckily for me, Peter's publisher has done the smart thing and released this book on the Kindle. We'll see if reading it on the train is as hard as writing it was.
