Recently, my friend Makena Neal shared with me a super neat gadget she acquired for focused writing. It is called a FreeWrite. Essentially, it has a WiFi connection for the sole purpose of sending what you write up to the cloud. Other than that, it is geared for distraction free writing like we used to have on typewriters, but this thing comes with the affordances of having the writing in digital. Plus, the monitor is e-ink technology which basically means it is like reading ink on paper compared to reading on pixels of an LCD screen.
The timing of her sharing this with me was so interesting because the weekend prior I had been doing extensive Googling on ways to convert my Kindle to a distraction free and eye friendly way of working on writing. How cool is a FreeWite to be designed for exactly this?
This sent me further into an online hunt for ways to better digitally write offline.
So, this past weekend I decided to do some searching on similar kinds of gadgets that wouldn’t break the bank and I was pleasantly delighted to stumble upon the AppleSmart 3000.
That’s right folks. I’m moving up in the world. I just upgraded to a brand new (used) smart device.
It doesn’t connect to the internet. It runs on 3 AA batteries for up to 700 hours. When I am done typing, I can connect it to a computer to send my writings there. Yes, it is 20+ years old and it feels like my 1998 typing class keyboard in high school. Still, I can’t even begin to tell you how gritty this makes me. Finally, I can write off the grid in a digital format without having the distractions of email, google, slack, twitter, texts and basically all the things that are so good at interrupting streams of thought that happen only while one can write.
Writing with distractions is nearly impossible to do. For me, trying to write around the noise of other people or of social media is like trying to talk to someone while also talking to someone else on the phone. Now I am one step closer to writing distraction free. Bonus: it cost me $30.
Take that, internet.
The children of the 80s and 90s are still alive and kicking the truly smart technologies.
