Bluetooth Blues

The other night I shut off the Bluetooth on my laptop, and connected my Apple Keyboard to my iPad. I wanted to write, I wanted to write on the iPad, and I was at a desk with a keyboard. I had played with the little mini Bluetooth keyboard I had gotten years ago, and discovered that my current Mini is too thin to be held by it, and the keyboard itself would dance around on the desk without the weight of the iPad to hold it down.

I’m very used to writing on this specific keyboard. I had it synced with my original iPad for the longest time, and used it to write everything. I wrote a novel with it. When I started working from home, and the laptop became more permanently stationed on the desk, hooked to a larger monitor, I hooked the keyboard up to it. But it was interesting that I wanted to write on the iPad, and I wanted to write on this keyboard, even though the laptop, and the large monitor were right there, waiting for me.

I pulled the keyboard off the desk into my lap. I’d forgotten that I could do this. It was nice, very relaxed. In Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writer’s Manual, Rita Mae Brown talked about doing this with a Mac, pulling the keyboard into your lap, closing your eyes, and letting your fingers just play over the keys. Something about breaking the tyranny of the screen. I think she was someone who was used to her words appearing on paper, and felt like the screen was a different enough medium that it would be hard to get used to it. I don’t think I ever read her writing, just her book on writing. I wanted someone to tell me how to do it, how to be a writer, there had to be a process, a pattern, and if I found it, if I practiced it, I’d get there, I’d be there.

I'm very comfortable writing on the iPad itself now. It took me a while. It took getting an iPad that's small enough for me to comfortably thumb-type with while holding it in portrait, yet large enough for me to be able to touch type on it while it's in landscape. And then it took committing to it. For the longest time, I felt like I needed an external keyboard if I was really going to write on this thing, and to be honest, I write a lot faster, and I’m a lot more prolific on the external keyboard, but I can write pretty well with the onscreen keyboard.

The iPad is probably my favorite computer in the entire history of my owning computers, and I want to write on it. When I hold it, I want to create with it. In the near future, I am probably going to get an external keyboard for it. There are times where it would be nice to sit at the dining room table and just bang something out, my fingers flying across physical keys. But there are also times where it’s really nice to be able to just pull the iPad out of my pocket and start writing, tapping with two thumbs. Having that sort of flexibility is amazing, particularly when it’s all synced together, and whatever I write, wherever I write it, all ends up in the same place, ready for me to create something from it.