Macbook Air and Writing (Part 1)

I've started a dual review process. we'll see just how well the 11.6" Macbook Air works as a writing machine with some simple Web work and some image process. At the same time, I'll learning and review from scratch three top novel writing apps for the OS X.

The goal is to see how one of Apple's most affordable Macbook handles the daily needs of a wannabe writer/blogger.

And tonight, I took it out for a test run at Starbucks. And I took some notes. Of particular interest is how well the battery life works through the night. Apple rated the battery life to be 5 hours. Well, given the needs of most writers, not necessarily bloggers, I assume that we just type most of the time without the need for Internet connectivity.

All in all, I think the battery life held up pretty well. The night started at 7 PM and it's now 10:40 PM and I've still got 1:54 hours left.

Here are tonight's notes:

This is just a blog to document the use of Macbook Air and my experience writing a few novels for only consumptions. The goal tonight is to set up the files for writing these novels.

It’s 7:22PM PST. I started working around 7PM. The battery life at the time on the Macbook Air is 5:02 hours. I had logged onto the free Starbucks Wi-Fi but I now turned it off because I really don’t have a need to work online for the duration of the night as my all the notes for my research are offline.

7:34 There is a bit of a learning curve. However, I think once I get the hang of the three apps, I should be able to move along quite nicely.

7:45 Just finished reading the information on the novel template of Scrivener. Battery life is at 4:38. Wi-Fi not turned on.

8:35 Finished with adding characters to Scrivener and started reading up on Storymill. Battery life at 4:18. Wi-FI not turned on. So far, the scenes for Storymill is very much the same as how scenes work in Scrivener. Scenes are parts of a chapter. And they can be moved around and rearranged as needed.

9:32 Explored Storymill and will further work on Scrivener to get some diversion. The battery life is now 2:09 hours after turning on the WiFi. After a bit, it jumped back up to 2:48. And

10:00 Too a little break. WiFi is still on. 2:14 left on the battery life. Will work on Storyist for a bit before moving on.

10:02 After going through Storyist just now. I am beginning to form an opinion about the three main apps for writing novels. And I want to put my thoughts down a bit here just so that I can see if my conclusions are the same at the end of the month of writing. (1:50 hours left). I had the mail app on so that I can mailed myself the PDF files for these writing apps.

10:08 After cleaning up and getting ready to go. The battery is now back up to 2:30 hours left with the WiFi turned off. It’s back to writing and reading.

Now, some notes about the three writing apps:

I've barely scratched the surface and I am in a hurry to understand the ins-and-outs of these apps. In a previous post, I hope to use next month's Script Frenzy as an inspiration to write three novels - not necessarily complete them within a month.

I especially like the cordboard idea. As a matter of fact, I've started doing that with note cards. Real note cards. I am not the most organized person and Scrivener and Storyist has given me hope.

Scrivener does a lot. But Storymill does one thing. It's for writing novels. And it's a simple and easy to get started. You can really get lost in Scrivener's more well rounded set of tools. With Storymill, from the moment you create a new file to writing your first word, there isn't much else for you to do but to continue writing.

Storymill has a timeline that I suppose one can use as a cork board like device. I'll have to spend more time with it before I can see how useful it is.

And I'll come back to Storyist tomorrow with more observations.