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I "write" a lot on my phone using a simple voice recorder app. It's a great way to put together intros, conclusions, and other "explainers" (obviously not so good for technical parts with equations or code). I usually make a small point-form plan on a piece of paper, then go for a walk with the voice recorder. The act of walking seems to help a lot (see related [1] about that).

I've tried text-to-speech options, but what I find works best is to transcribe the audio myself (usually playback at 0.7x), since during the transcription process I can cleanup and improve the thoughts.

Honestly, without this trick I could have never been able to write books. The technical details and explanations are pretty standard (math books all have to cover the same topics), but the extra, intuition, context, intros, and "lead out" text in conclusion/discussion sections are super important to tie it all together, and these parts specifically come out much better when created using the spoken-then-transcribed since the tone comes out more conversational.

Try writing your next blog post through diction, you will see it's great!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25543656

I really dislike long form articles, I feel like the author never gets to the point, only jumping from one digression to another. Perhaps difficulty in writing could be an incentive to write shorter and more focused articles :)

You’re talking about consuming the writing-very different. There are many situations where length has nothing to do with content, and you’re ignoring art forms that are fundamentally long form—film screenplays, novels, (some) investigative journalism. Just because it’s not to your taste doesn’t mean it’s not important :)

Unless you meant the post you were replying to never got to the point, and should have been shorter and more focused...I can agree w that! :P

Essays historically originated---with Montaigne's Essais---as discursive, digressive, long-form prose. They are a prose artform that attempts to achieve more than a straightforward information dump.

You might not like the form, and there are certainly many bad examples, but a long essay is no more a failure to write a short blog article than a poem is a failure to write a news report.

Yes, this is exactly what I mean.

I feel your pain for writing. This morning, I accidentally deleted all my notes from yesterday and could not recover them from my phone because there is no undo (!!? How can phones still not have an undo?) in my note-taking app. I had to get up and recover the version from my desktop because I wasn't signed in to dropbox on my phone.

On iOS, try shaking your phone in frustration, you may discover undo.

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

There are also new interactions for that starting from iOS 13: https://www.macworld.com/article/3410596/ios-13-and-ipados-1...

I would recommend the 3 finger tap and hold one which brings up the edit menu, since I personally can’t remember all the other gestures.

The iPhone has an undo when you shake it. Works for text boxes and deleting emails and other things

In Apple's Notes, there is a top level folder called Recently Deleted - you can move things from that folder back where they belong.

On iOS, three finger double tap, three finger swipe left, and shaking the phone — all undo. With a connected keyboard, Cmd-Z also works.

> Writing this on an iPad keyboard just now sucked—light years less efficient than on my computer keyboard. And my phone is even worse! But I often want to journal in bed or write fiction away from my desk. Are there better ways to input lots of text quickly?

I hate to suggest you buy things to improve your experience, but I had the same issue earlier this year. The Magic Keyboard really is just that, delivers a 95% equivalent of a computer keyboard that allows me to enter long-form text comfortably on an iPad Pro. My n of 1 and all that but I've found it to be a suitable quick-boot alternative when I just want to write a couple paragraphs down instantly.

w.r.t. long-form writing, two suggestions -- depending on whether you prefer keyboard or handwriting:

- Keyboard: With a phone that supports USB host mode, you can plug your keyboard of choice into the USB port and use that for input. With a small mechanical keyboard like [0], you can have a great mobile typing experience.

- Handwriting: E-ink tablets like the reMarkable 2 [1] are quite cool if you want a paper-like writing experience.

[0]: https://www.duckychannel.com.tw/en/Ducky-One2-Mini-Pure-Whit... (Note -- this is just an example; I'm not familiar with this specific keyboard, but there are a lot like it out there.)

[1]: https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable-2

iPhone supports dictation as an input. It’s not very private but it’s a decent way to input lots of text.

Speech to text?