Alright ladies and gentlemen, I am writing this at an ungodly hour and I am hoping to the gods that my brain holds up just thirty minutes longer. Of course, that will make it four in the morning, but nevertheless. Tonight I come to the masses like a prophet, yielding undying knowledge upon the lesser men and women. Well at this point in time, I’m most likely the crazy one. However! In my never ending search for the “Ultimate Writing Dream” I have finally crafted it. Not the app I tried desperately to make, however a completely (for now) free solution to which I pass on to you.

Do you own a Windows PC? Or Phone? Or Tablet? Or all of the above?!

May you also own an iMac? Or iPhone? Or iPad?! Perhaps you also own all of those?!

As for me, I am living in a household which I am sure makes the local power grid flicker when we turn on our setup. My girlfriend and I both own iPhones (3G and my 3GS), we have an iPad 3 and I am writing this on an iMac. Before this I was a Windows man and my laptop now sits in the shadows, the ever so dull hum of its hard drive methodically pleading for attention…

This brings me to my point… I am a writer! And I wanted to be able to work on the same story from every device I own! I am also a nerd! Thus, I will make it so!

My original idea was a USB stick, which failed at iPad and iPhone. The Wiki, however, is still on there.

Idea number two was the App Store! After getting my iPhone I became a free app well… promiscuous gentleman. I would download anything and everything… no matter how dirty or ridiculous it was. Especially if it was free! After searching across both the OS X and the iOS stores, I found a few which used iCloud and Dropbox. Most of these solutions costed money, which Apple has ruined me… I mean made me thrifty. Anyway, I didn’t want to risk even a dollar if the app wasn’t what I wanted and didn’t work across all of my platforms. Enter XCode.

XCode is Apple’s development system and after tinkering around for a bit had an app that would allow you to simply write in it. Three years of a Computer Science degree and I couldn’t come up with more, I suppose if I had actually taken the time to learn Objective C, I may have gotten further. I have other ideas for apps, so I’ll save the frustration of coding for another day.

Now, for you patient people out there, I came to a solution I used awhile ago and simply never checked up on.

Google.

The team over there have been busy innovating the world and I haven’t been paying much attention. I mean, I use Chrome and sync all of my bookmarks and open tabs across my five devices, why pay attention?! Now Google was working on some kind of drive thing… Whatever. Also this is not a fancy method, you will get a free editor with a selection of choices, but the smartphone site is minimalist.

Now, pay close attention to the wonderful process here. If you want to write some stories or anything across all of your devices, I hope this helps!

Step One:
First off, sign up for a Gmail account. This is your passport between all of your devices.

Step Two:
Download Google Drive for your main computer, at this point you can also download it to your tablets or smartphones (for me, they have a Google Drive App in the iOS app store).

Step Three:
Once they’ve all downloaded and installed head to your main computer, ensure all documents you create are also editable offline. That’s grand for your desktop. For the mobile ones, only select the file you want to take on the go for editing offline. This just keeps everything from checking for updates all the time and focus on the one you’re working on.

Step Four:
Realize that Google Drives only allows you to edit things offline on your smartphone. What I mean by this is you should always have a Google Docs window open for use. I have Chrome on all of my devices, so I leave one Chrome tab open on each device for this. Otherwise on iOS you can make use of the Google Drive app’s “Open in Safari” button, but you still need to be able to load the document editor before losing your wireless connection.

Step Five:
Watch on your desktop as what you write on your mobile transfers over to the Google Drive version! It updates in real time (with lag) But you can edit your documents wonderfully like this! Enjoy! Also to note that if you want to be able to edit completely without preloading the Google Docs page, they do have a Docs App on the iOS app store but I won’t link it because it appears to be getting some bad reviews.

Some notes on this method:
Number One – Offline means you can edit this without an internet connection.
Number Two – Offline on anything mobile will require an internet connection to load the Google Docs Editor, Unless you have preloaded it.
Number Three – It organizes by time edited. If you edit on your iPhone while in airplane mode, then make edits after that on your iPad, they will be arranged properly once everything is synced.
Number Four – On your iPhone, DO NOT use the desktop site for Google Docs. You might be tempted to for word count, but just don’t.
Number Five – You can use the iPad for the desktop version of Google Docs. If you are using the on screen keypad the words will go straight under it. Use a bluetooth one if you like the desktop site.
Number Six – Buy a cheap roll up capable bluetooth keyboard, they are rechargeable and portable. Also if you spill coffee on it, it will survive.
Number Seven – You’ll notice on your mobiles the font changes from each person editing. Don’t fret, on the desktop it all looks the same.
Number Eight – Use Chrome + Google Drive Web App to be able to use their document editor offline. (That should be higher, just going in the order of my notes).
Number Nine – Chrome for iOS will report it cannot handle some of the features for the desktop site of Google Docs, it is right on for iPhone but the iPad only has the keyboard issue.
Number Ten – When you get published because this worked for you, be sure to toss me out a thanks as well as Google!

Okay, so now it is unconscious o’ clock and I have a full day of writing to do tomorrow! If you have any questions, please feel free to email me or comment here. If you’d be so kind, please pass this along if you read it! I’m hoping to help as many writers as I possibly can and the more feedback I get the better I can fine tune this article as well as my own writing! Thanks for reading and now…

Zzz…