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Man Writes 400-Page Novel on Cell Phone

by Evan Shamoon on April 23, 2009 at 09:14 AM


You know how you spend your commute alternating between sleeping, daydreaming, and refreshing your Facebook feed? Well, Peter Brett does something else: he writes novels... on his smartphone.

It's okay, we feel lazy too.

Brett wrote the majority of his first novel, "The Warded Man," on his phone during trips between his Brooklyn, NY home and his job in Times Square, across the East River in Manhattan. In total, he estimates writing over 100,000 words on the train over two years. The book finally hit shelves last month and is on best-seller lists in Poland and England (it has sold 2,500 copies in the US).

He began using the phone to take notes, and his thumbs eventually got quick enough to write large chunks of text -- soon he was averaging about 400 words each morning and evening. Brett listened to music on his iPod to block out distractions.

"I trained myself that at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. every day when I got on the train, that was my writing time," Brett told the Daily News. "I had about 45 minutes each way, and everyone who takes the F [subway train] knows that 45 minutes can turn into an hour and a half."

No mention of what phone he uses in the article, but a glance at Brett's Web site reveals that it was an HP iPaq smartphone. We figured, with all that typing, that it wasn't an iPhone. [From: Daily News]

Tags: books, cellphone, keyboard phones, KeyboardPhones, keyboards, literature, nyc, smartphone, smartphones, subway, top, weird, writing

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