Distraction Free Writing Tool

I have photo-phobia. I don’t know if you could diagnose me with photo-phobia but my eyes start to hurt and I get migraine headaches if I’m exposed to bright lights for too long.

I like the look of e-ink e-readers. The pages look like one in a physical book made of wood pulp. E-ink screens are somewhat new in the universe of gadgets and were promoted by Amazon and the like, to bring old school readers of actual books into the fold. If you don’t turn the page the e-ink just sits there. No back light. You don’t feel like you’re reading a paused video. It feels static, because it is.

E-ink readers have LCD displays. The screen doesn’t constantly refresh like an LED display. It doesn’t need to. And when it isn’t refreshing it also isn’t consuming power. If you were to use an e-ink, LCD screen to process words the screen would have to refresh everytime you pressed a key or you’d get lost. If you were capable of typing 60 words per minute means the screen would have to refresh 500 times a page. Were you reading a book, the refresh rate would be maybe one time every minute. Battery consumption would go through the roof.

Currently I’m using an AlphaSmart NEO2 to create this document. I bought it used on eBay for $40. Normally I use Google Docs with my Chrome browser on my gaming PC. I set up the page with a black background, which is easier on my photo-phobic eyes, and use a green New Courier font. I feel like I’m writing on my favorite machine, my Apple IIe. The combination of the noisy, clicky keyed keyboard, at just the right height and angle along with that seemingly passive black screen with green letters. I could happily write for hours.

The NEO I’m using has a laptop style keyboard that doesn’t have that satisfying clatter of a mechanical keyboard while really burning through an idea. I get used to it, but it’s not as comforting. 

The NEO has a green screen with black letters. It think it’s an LCD screen, just not in the way the e-ink screens are. It’s also easy on the eyes, it’s just doesn’t look as cool as the Freewrite with their e-ink screens.

The Freewrite was called Hemingway during the development stage, I suppose because Hemingway used a typewriter? And that’s what their machine is emulating?

I recently found out that the Freewrite has no arrow keys. The only editing key you have is backspace. You might think, “Sure, just like a typewriter,” but that’s incorrect. You can go back and change a word by brushing White Out over it, or type Xes over a word, so you’ll know not to use it on the rewrite.

The Freewrite seems to be a beautifully excecuted machine but they went too far in limited what it can do. They advertise it as a first draft electronic typewriter, but a first draft on a typewriter wouldn’t be that limited. You could do so much more.

I’d come to that conclusion because I thought I might buy one, even though they cost $700. Lately the ads for the Freewrite are defensive about that price point. It’s not a good sign when you have to defend how much you charge for your product, but they’ve taken an odd angle. They say that a laptop is a $1500 distraction machine.

I’m not sure who they’re targeting with those ads. In my life I’ve NEVER paid $1500 for a laptop. I don’t even think Apple charges that much for their laptops and they’ve always been overpriced. If all I wanted to do was write I could buy 4 or 5 old laptops that would get the job done.

Apple Computer never defended it’s prices, that I know of. It was smart because Apple was in a league of it’s own. Nothing about an Apple Computer product even resembled an IBM/Microsoft PC for decades. If you wanted an Apple Computer it was an expensive buy in. It was a boutique computer with its own separate universe.

The Freewrite is a key capture device that’s completely dependent on computers for rewrites. I don’t know what my NEO2 cost retail, or my other AlphaSmart NEO (I have 2 of them) but it wasn’t $700. I’m pretty sure both of them together cost less than $100.

If a NEO were that expensive people would be hard pressed to choose the Freewrite because the NEO has much more flexibility. I could write an entire novel with it, do all my rewrites, then plug it directly into a printer, and print all the pages. I could take a book from conception to completion. Can a Freewrite do that?

The company that makes the Freewrite being publicly defensive about the price of their product is a huge mistake. The complaints don’t seem to be about the product’s severe limitations, just the price.

From my perspective, someone with photo-phobia, who was looking for a battery powered typewriter that was easy on the eyes, selling the Freewrite as distraction free writing tool is also a misfire. 

I’m using my NEO in front of my gaming PC. I pulled it out to start writing in my journal while watching a long YouTube video. That way the video could be full screen and it’s a simple matter of plugging in the NEO and pressing the send key to transfer this document to a Google Doc when I’m finished writing.

If I didn’t have a broad shouldered gaming PC with a clicky keyboard sitting within arm’s reach, my phone is still connected to the internet and I’m not going to cut myself off from the world just to write the next great American novel.

George R. R. Martin uses an old PC: one with a 486 processor, and a copy of WordPerfect to write the thousands of pages of his Game of Thrones series. That doesn’t mean he’s going to be distraction free. Sure, that machine doesn’t connect to the internet, if it ever did, but he can use it to fully edit his novel before it ever gets uploaded to the grand machines of commerce.

When I’m using my Frankenstein’s monster of a home-built gaming PC to write, I’m constantly popping over to check my Gmail, or see if my funny comment on FB landed, of if someone addressed my concerns on Reddit or if anyone commented on my blog. Eventually I get back to the writing.

If you need to limit yourself to get a piece written, maybe your pieces aren’t that important and you just have a romantic notion of being a writer, of living that writer’s lifestyle, living the life of the mind and sitting at a coffee shop slightly unkempt but bathed and shampooed. And if you want to do that with a clunky $700 electronic typewriter, then go for it.

If you’re struggling to write maybe it’s not for you. Maybe you should drive a truck for a living.

It’s not a good sign that Freewrite is defensive about its prices. It makes it seems like their distraction free writing tool is not selling at the rate the founders had hoped and they may jump ship, meaning the remaining inventory will end up being deeply discounted while they go through bankruptcy court. I might end up with one in my stable of ‘distraction free’ writing machines.

For now I’ll just use my Alphasmart NEO if I need the non backlit 4 line screen because I’m suffering from a light induced migraine headache. And, when I’m finished with it, I can shove it in a drawer for a few months. When I want it again it will come on instantly because there is no draw on the battery while it’s turned off. And I won’t feel guilty neglecting it because I only paid $40 for it. It’s just one of the many writing tools that I have. If the battery’s dead the next time I try to turn it on I’ll pull out one of the spiral bound notebooks my NEO is resting on.