Despite my initial concerns that the iPad seemed geared for consuming rather than creating, I’m finding it can be a great tool for capturing, and even developing, some ideas. As I hoped in that same post, developers are coming along and making some great tools. (One note: everything I describe here can also work on an iPhone, and I’m using it that way too.)
While it looks like Scrivener isn’t going to be an iPad app anytime soon, the way the iPad fits in my workflow, I’m not sure I will need the full feature set of Scrivener on it anyway. What I need is a workflow that allows me to capture ideas, research, and some initial drafts that can be easily transported to Scrivener for further work.
This week, I’ve shaped the workflow, and I think it’s going to work out great. Here are the pieces:
- Words are captured in SimpleNote. (The iPad version of this was approved late Monday, and I experienced glee when I saw it.) When it is a note that I want to indicate as something current, I append 3-5 Q’s at the end of the title, depending on how current or important it is. Since there aren’t any words in English that have more than one Q in a row, this makes it easy to find these notes later, and the Q key is always easy to get to up there in the corner of even an iPhone keypad. (I learned this trick from Merlin Mann in this MacPowerUsers episode. Brilliant.) Note that in SimpleNote, the first line of text becomes the title.
- All my SimpleNote notes sync with Notational Velocity on my Mac. David Sparks had a great post on SimpleNote and Notational Velocity yesterday…read it.
- Notational Velocity saves all my notes as text files. This is critical and can be set in the preferences. It also means that all your notes can be searched via spotlight, so it’s a handy setting.
- I set up a smart folder to show my all my “qqq” and up notes. This is easy to do via the Finder menu. For now, I have a link to this folder residing in sidebar of my Finder, but I might drag it to the dock too.
- When I’m ready to work in Scrivener, I open the smart folder and drag the relevant files into the research or drafts folder. And my words have arrived through the ether with minimal thought or effort on my part. It is, dare I say, magical. The files are there and waiting for me when I need them.
There are two things that make me giddy about this workflow. First, sync happens. My thoughts move between devices, waiting right where I need them. I don’t have to plug in via USB and move docs around in a buried window in iTunes.
Second, SimpleNote functions as my primary notes reference and text capture app, which means less switching. The only thing it really lacks is a word count, but that’s not usually that important to me at the drafting stage anyway.
Enjoy, and if you figure out a way to make this workflow even better, let us all know in the comments.
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
Have you checked out the ‘my writing nook’ app? It has a word count feature. I am thinking of going ahead and picking it up. It isn’t free but sounds promising.
Greg,
Thanks for the comment. I saw it. I looked at just about all of the writings apps. But I prefer the simple look and feel of SimpleNote combined with the effortless sync — no emailing files, no cut and pasting, etc. I’ll gladly sacrifice word count for that!
what do you like about simple note more than evernote?
Mike,
But also because of data accessibility…being able to store notes as text files offers a lot of flexibility. As Evernote is, I can’t drag a note from Evernote into Scrivener. Which, I might add, is silly in my opinion.
Well…because it’s simple.
I’m all about the concept of Evernote, but I’ve never been enamored with the actual execution of the concept.
I started using SimpleNote as well for my iPad and have been wondering about how to manage it with Yojimbo (which I like more than Evernote, not to mention I bought it) … turns out there is a SimpleNote to Yojimbo script and you can drag notes from Yojimbo into Scrivener!
http://daisychase.net/blog/simplenote-yojimbo-sync/
So many cool options!
Tris,
Thanks for your comment. I briefly tried that sync a few months ago, but it wasn’t reliable enough. You can’t delete an item, and I had problems with items duplicating.
I’ll have to do a post on this, but I’m using Yojimbo and SimpleNote for different things now.
Thanks John … well then I think I might have to give Notational Velocity a shot then! Other friends of mine swear by it to keep things together. It’s great that we have so many ways of using the apps we have in new ways.
As much as Evernote is great, I just never really liked the UI.
John,
This is seems like a wonderful setup, but when I tried to duplicate it, something broke down between NV and the smart folder. The folder remains empty and I cannot use spotlight to find the text files with “qqq” in the title of the notes.
Timm,
Double check step 3. By default, NV stores your notes in a database. You have to change it to store them as text files.
John
John,
Do you mean the setup should be such as: http://core.ecu.edu/engl/hackettt/screen.png
The only thing I noticed, and it may not mean anything, is that your screen shot has the Notational Velocity folder with a lowercase n, whereas mine is uppercase. In addition, I cannot find a folder on my MacBook Pro with that title.
One thing I had to do was to move the nv folder out of the library and then into my documents folder. It worked right away then. For some reason when it was in the library folder it wouldn’t get recognized by spotlight
Thanks Mike,
I’m guess that is what will solve Timm’s issue. I put my Notational Velocity in my Dropbox for one more level of access and backup. That might be foolish because it’s now syncing in two directions, but I just have to be careful with it.
John and Mike,
Thanks for the assistance. Evidently, my problem is somewhere between steps #3 and #4. I found the folder and moved it out of the Library based upon Mike’s advice. The files are now Plain Text Documents, but still no success with Spotlight finding the files or a Smart Folder showing the files.
It works! Brilliant idea. Well done to both of you.
Timm,
What was your fix? Just in case anyone else has trouble…
This is probably the single best post for writers’ workflow having to with the iPad. Why? Because there’s actual efficiency at heart here. Bottom line, iWork blows for file management, and Dropbox could solve all of this if more apps could edit Dropbox apps. If there is one, please let me know. Thus far, I agree, Simplenote works pretty good. I work on novel-length manuscripts, and I was psyched about sitting down with an iPad and knocking out some copy. But managing the file keeps becoming a nightmare. Looks like I’ll be writing whole chapters in Simplenote, folks. Lame. I really do appreciate this post, though. Again, the best on the Web currently. Most other reviews are too shallow and don’t talk about the syncing issues that are out there.
I’ve been playing with ReaddleDocs as a document manager, etc. It can tap into DropBox and Gmail to get files. If you have Pages for iPad you can bounce to Page pages from ReaddleDocs to edit. One snag I hit was that ReaddleDocs will send .doc files to Pages, but not .txt. I haven’t tested .rtf files though.
Course if we had Scrivener for the iPad and it could use DropBox as a file source, it would be a done deal.
What a mess. Type into Evernote, paste into Scrivener. There is no step 3.
I’m using a similar workflow to ia. Type into Evernote, then copy n paste into Scrivener (or blog editor, or …).
Evernote lets me also record audio bits or insert images from the Photo Albums, which is nifty, and then of course this new note is synched to all other devices running Evernote as an app, or the website.
And, try as I may, I’ve only once or twice in a couple years come close to filling up my monthly data quota on my free account. I should probably upgrade to their paid service, just to support an excellent service, though I haven’t HAD to yet.
Glad Evernote works for you. The concept of Evernote is great, but I’ve never fully adopted it — don’t even have it installed at this point. I don’t particularly like the interface, and I don’t like that I can’t drag and drop data.
The power of SimpleNote/Notational Velocity comes in the ability to store all those notes as text files, where they are readily available to Finder/AppleScipt/Hazael, etc.
I can also write drafts in MultiMarkDown in SimpleNote and my laptop automatically converts them to HTML when it sees them. See this post:
http://www.practicallyefficient.com/2010/06/01/notational-velocity-multimarkdown-and-simplenote/
OK, well that post didn’t quite work out, and no EDIT function? I’d get a commenting system that allows me to edit or delete before!
YOU SAID: “and I don’t like that I can’t drag and drop data.”
?? But you CAN. Just select the text, click and hold and drag it over.
…or just use Writeroom and sync your ‘notes’ with SimpeText.ws and that is of course one of the options in Scrivener’s Import menu.
It seems very convoluted to have so many steps when there are so many apps with built in cloud sync.
Also, many apps do open Dropbox files. For instance, I write mostly features in Scrivener, so I just export a scene in .fdx format and save it in my Dropbox. Then I open it in Dropbox on the iPad and choose ‘Open with…’ and there I click Scripts Pro – voilá!
(And, of course, even if it’s already done, I can’t avoid adding: Or use Evernote. The interface of the iPad app is great. And it’s very easy to create a Scrivener like ‘binder’ by using the notebook structure. Plus it syncs…yes, automatically…:-)
Who knew that Evernote users had grown so passionate? If Evernote works for you…great. That’s what matters most, in my mind.
Evernote doesn’t meet my particular needs, because:
1) (I think this is the third time I’ve mentioned this in these comments, but…) I can’t drag and drop items from Evernote — Selecting text and dragging it is not what I mean. I often will have multiple notes that will end up in Scrivener projects — section drafts, research, brainstorms. I can’t drag a single note from Evernote into a folder in Scrivener, let alone multiple notes. I can drag 2, 3, or 15 text files in.
2) Data in Evernote isn’t visible outside of Evernote. I can’t grab a hold of it with Hazel and do something to it…like process multimarkdown into HTML.
And on the subject of WriteRoom … I’m a big fan. But…
1) It’s not available for the iPad yet. (Yes I tried the iPhone app, and it’s not appealing to look at. ) That’s what prompted me to hunt down this workflow in the first place. I’m not the only based on how many are finding this post by searching for “WriteRoom for iPad” or “Scrivener for iPad”.
2) The power of Scrivener is the Scrivenings. My project is broken into smaller bits of drafts or research notes. The SimpleText import, in my opinion, totally misses this, because a) you have to select items to import one at a time, and b) there is no way to sort what items are in there which gets messy if you have more than a dozen or so files. WriteRoom/SimpleText is great for capturing text, but not for managing it.
3) Now, of course, SimpleText does utilize the beauty of simple text files. I believe I could setup SimpleText to sync with my Notational Velocity folder, so I could capture words in WriteRoom and then have access to them in SimpleNote or Notational Velocity, but that would get convoluted.
4) On the subject, Jesse’s new app, PlainTxt holds some promise: http://blog.hogbaysoftware.com/post/714987484/plaintext-synced-text-files-for-ios-preview
SimpleNote *is* a cloud sync service. And because it’s only syncing text files, it’s fast fast fast over any connection. I open my app and it updates in a jiffy, even on 3g.
I completely agree with the sentiment here. The iPad can be a writer’s best friend, but not as a full blown composer. The iPad provides a platform for using Simplenote, Evernote, etc. almost anywhere you are. All good writing workflows must include an efficient “capture” step that imposes as little friction as possible on the inbound thoughts.
I’ve personally found that the iPad is great for thought capturing and even light editing–mostly using Simplenote. I even find that I can really improve my writing by doing some amount of editing on the iPad because it tends to keep my sentences shorter.
Thanks for sharing your great workflow.