Let me first say that I'm not typically an early adopter. I got my N64 after Gamecube was already out. I still use my scroll-wheel iPod and I have never had an iPhone. I usually wait for something to be cheaper or refurbished or 2nd generation before I jump on board. I'm not afraid of the early experience, I just don't mind waiting and enjoying what I have at the moment.

Ah, not so with iPad. And I'm not sure why. When it was first announced I thought it was a giant iPhone that couldn't make calls. But then I played around with one. And my kid played around with one. And I was hooked. I told myself I didn't need anything, just the dirt cheap 16GB Wi-fi only one. And maybe I could figure out how to make it work for me.

Well, it has. I love my iPad. I'm almost always at home or at a coffeeshop with Wi-fi, so I haven't needed the 3G service. I've barely filled 2GB of space. And it's done interesting things to my work patterns. I now do almost all of my email, web surfing, facebooking, tweeting, blog reading and gaming on my iPad. Which leaves my laptop for pure editing.

But then my iPad has started to sneak in. I'm annotating manuscripts with Noterize and iAnnotate. I'm reading manuscripts by saving them as PDF or ebooks and reading them with Stanza.

I'm not sure what to do on my laptop anymore.

But the one thing I've found I can't really do the same on an iPad: write.

It's primarily because of the keyboard. I'm a pretty fast touch typer and touch typing requires one very important thing—the physicality of the keyboard. It's extremely difficult to type anywhere near a normal speed on the iPad's touchscreen keyboard. You have to be constantly aware of where your fingers are. And there are a lot of new things to learn punctuation-wise. Your favorite punctuation is one or two extra taps away from where you normally find it. And worst offense of all in my mind: the em dash is nowhere to be found.

So is it bad news for writers?

Nope.

I'm writing this blog post on my iPad. Happily.

Instead of pulling my laptop out, I just grab my bluetooth keyboard, sync it up with my iPad and I'm writing. I can put the screen anywhere I like, put the keyboard anywhere I like. You don't have to deal with all the distractions of a typical OS or—I can't believe I'm going to say it, but—the bulkiness of a laptop. You tap the screen to move your cursor and highlight words and you're set.

It's just that the iPad isn't yet a writer's perfect toy. I'm not sure anything will be—save a notebook and pen—for a long time now.

The other thing the iPad can do is take away a lot of the distractions that keep us from writing. If you get an iPad, hide away your desktop or laptop twitter client and browser and email program and all that. Let it just be a tool for writing. And save all the distractions for later when you take a break from the real business of writing.

Part II: I'll review specific apps that are tailored to writers and editors, looking at the good and the bad. Coming soon.

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Other articles in this series:

iPad Advice for Writers, Part 2: Basho

Image: iPad a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike image from korosirego's photostream