One of my dafter dreams this year was that I’d streamline the revision process a step or so. At the moment it happens in three stages. I revise on screen. I print out a first copy. Then I print out a second copy. Then more if necessary, but to be honest two are usually enough.

With all the fuss going on about tablets like the iPad a year ago I was hoping I could cut out one of those printouts and save myself some time and trouble. Make no mistake: I don’t believe for a moment I will ever deliver a manuscript that’s never been revised on paper at some stage. But surely there’s a bit of an efficiency saving somewhere if only I could read an electronic manuscript at leisure on a tablet screen, mark up changes and comments, then read the results on my computer when I start the final edit?

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Well, no. I could lie to you and say this is because no one has yet invented the right technology. They haven’t but that’s not the point. The iPad in particular was a huge disappointment. Apple’s Pages app can’t handle comments or revision tracking. Nor can anything else for it that I’ve found elsewhere.

The closest to a digital revision device I found was my little Packard Bell Windows 7 tablet. It’s a lovely little notebook with a keyboard. Twist the screen around and you get a tablet which can be used for scribbling notes, changing the actual text and highlighting passages.

It’s a fantastic small laptop. As a paper replacement it’s marginally better than the iPad but still deeply unsatisfactory. Windows just isn’t tuned to work as a tablet-based editing system at the moment. You need a stylus that doesn't work so well. You run out of places to write. When you want to change a simple typo you have to faff around with a little keyboard. It may be closer than the iPad but it will still drive you nuts in short order.

I messed with these things at great length. But you know what? I was racing up a dead-end alley. The most wonderful touchscreen in the world, coupled with software that’s yet to be invented, still won’t beat paper when it comes to revise editing a manuscript from an author's point of view. Yes, agents and editors may be able to make notes on manuscripts that way. But they're principally making annotations. I’m a writer. I need to do a lot more than scribble a note in the margin.

The revelation came to me when I printed out the latest project and started to sift through the pages with a pen. This is such a rich experience it's ridiculous to think it can be replaced by a single ten inch screen. When I work this way I normally lie on the bed, surrounded by scattered pages. It may sound simple but this is a complex process happening subtly across several dimensions.

Here are a few…
<ol>
	<li>Correcting typos and poor writing.</li>
	<li>Making notes in the margin about things to be checked and referenced with other parts of the book.</li>
	<li>Highlighting or ringing passages that will, at some stage, need to be considered again, in general not specific terms.</li>
	<li>Flicking forwards and backwards to other passages in a script that, in my case, may run to 120,000 words or more, checking continuity, looking for gaps in the narrative.</li>
	<li>Setting aside passages that will need further work or rereading in the context of something that comes later.</li>
	<li>Referring to other printed material such as notes and checking up the odd thing on a laptop on the other side of the bed.</li>
	<li>Making piles of important pages requiring attention so that they don’t slip through the net.</li>
</ol>
What I end up with is a pile of pages requiring attention, and a pile that doesn't. Simple enough idea with physical paper. But how on earth do you manage that on a single screen?

It's that word physical that's the clincher. When I print out a manuscript it takes on another, more real nature, one it fails to possess when it's just a digital image. There is one trick you can do with these gizmos which is, I think, worthwhile. I sometimes like reading a manuscript in iBooks or Kindle and seeing how it looks as it might appear as a book. So I will occasionally print out a draft in book form, with single line spacing, two book pages to a single A4 page so that it looks just like a paperback. If you're uncertain about a project this gives you a whole new perspective on it.

You can do that digitally. Kindle is great if you have a full Kindle account (in other words you've bought the Kindle hardware). You can <a href="http://davidhewson.com/2010/08/30/kindle-as-a-book-revision-tool/">read more about that in the post here. </a>You can do the same with an iPad too. You need to export your manuscript as an epub file and import it into your iPad via iTunes -- <a href="http://davidhewson.com/2010/10/22/the-ipad-for-book-revision-a-definite-fail/">I write about this here </a>and you'll find plenty of more detailed instructions if you hunt for them. Unfortunately you can't get your own Kindle file onto the Kindle app on the iPad (as far as I can see) because the iPad won't let you put the file in the right place. So an Android tablet might be a lot better if you want to use Kindle (it's a bit daft I can do this easily on my Android phone but not on the iPad).

Kindle or iBook, what you end up with is a manuscript that looks like any other ebook. You can't edit the text but you can make notes throughout. With Kindle you can export those notes as a simple text file and use them on your PC or Mac. With iBooks they seem trapped on the iPad so you'd need to set up the screen next to your computer and use the notes as a reference mark.

This is actually a lot more usable than it sounds. You do the same with a marked paper page after all.

But that book-page revision process is as far as it goes. When you come to the full and rich experience of leaping in and trying to fix a rough draft you need to see the thing from so many different directions, highlighting, referring back to earlier pages, making complex annotations. It just isn't doable for a full-blown edit in my experience, and frankly I don't see this becoming feasible from an author's point of view for some time to come.

Agents and editors who need only to make a simple entry in the margin may feel otherwise, and good luck to them. But for me the search for efficiency ends here. From now on it’s back to two physical printouts and a read-through with simple notes on the iPad if I feel I need it (and I don't with every project).

God bless paper. It’s the smartest, cheapest, most convenient writer’s medium we have. And it never crashes or runs out of power.