- distraction free (except doodling)
- lower power consumption
- expressive in a way that typing can never be
- tends to discourage editing as you write
edit: and less eye strain
Sometimes slowing down the process like this is helpful, in other cases it's better to make the emission of the words onto the page as immediate as possible, depends on the piece.
You may want to look into writing with your arm instead of your hand
I spent my first few decades trying to train myself not to write in a way that causes physical pain. The closest I got was when I discover Lamy Safari pens, which won’t let me hold them the “wrong” way. That only makes it a little less horrid.
Try a fountain pen. Seriously. Many people press far too hard with ballpoints; with a fountain pen, you can't -- you'll bend the nib and smudge.
Some adults won't have written with one since school; younger ones, never. But they exist for goods solid ergonomic reasons.
After you get used to them you write better, too.
There are good disposable fountain pens now, and I've been using them for a decade and a half. I like the Pilot V-Pen.
https://macchiatoman.com/blog/2020/1/22/pen-review-pilot-v-p...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pilot-Pen-Disposable-Fountain-Black...
Costs about £5, lasts many months of heavy use -- much more than any cartridge pen as the whole barrel is full of ink -- and I have never ever had one leak in my bag or pocket.
Highly recommended.
Unfortunately the above is easially to say, but hard to force. If you are creating something you should stop if the facts are wrong (no point in continuing when you suddenly realize your argument depends on something that might be false) even though fact check is an editing process. You cannot refer to data in a chart until you create the chart. For many people a misspelling is something their brain will not ignore even though they know the word they mean and fixing it belongs to editing - your flow is already interrupted either way and not fixing it means the flow stays interrupted.
My job includes writing technical documents but I use latex and emacs because that's what I have always used.
But practice > tools!
Then I realized that I spend more time about thinking about how to organize my notes than actually taking the notes, or even more importantly focus on the content.
That was a freeing realization that got me unblocked. Now I do not have a "system". My thoughts go wherever is most convenient at that moment, I have papers lying around, docs, Apple notes. If they turn out to be important, they'll naturally become structured.
That being said, whenever I see some tool like this, I still have a passing thought - ah, that's a great system I should have it, it will enable me to be more productive :)
Everything else I just throw around on the filesystem wherever makes sense for the thing I'm doing.
None of the above are bad things. There is nothing wrong with the above so long as you are honest about it, but it starts to consume time that you think you are spending on something else. Woodworkers need a place to work - while must great things are made in a kitchen that not an ideal location (OTHO I have a nice shop but still work in the kitchen because it is faster to get there). Likewise, your guitar is a part of your sound and so you really should try others from time to time; sewers should have some fabric to work with. Many "woodworkers" changed their goal is restoring old tools as well, which again is fine but not what the hobby it about.
So back to the question: what is the goal? If the goal is to write, then you need to write most of your time. Once in a while it is fine to ask "would a better keyboard be worth it", but if you are not spending the majority of your time on writing tasks (which is mostly editing) you are not a writer.
(defun full-screen ()
(interactive)
(shell-command "wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -btoggle,fullscreen")
(menu-bar-mode 0))
(defun just-write ()
"Convert into a big, clean, centered window."
(interactive)
(full-screen) (olivetti-mode) (text-scale-adjust 2) (scroll-bar-mode -1)
(end-of-buffer) (recenter-top-bottom 0))
To my surprise, it actually did the trick. I've written more and more pleasantly since then. I feel it's better than if I had gotten a Writer Deck or similar. So I thought I'd share in case it does the trick for anyone else.
(I also use a font and a color scheme that pleases me, but that's minor.)
[0] https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/09/zen-and...
That said, I'd issue a warning to aspiring writers here on HN: the writer deck culture is really just a big distraction from writing to which technically inclined people are especially prone, and I say this as a huge fan of the concept.
Ultimately, you need discipline to write, period. A writer deck is not going to solve that problem for you. If you already have a functioning laptop you can likely save yourself some money and work on being disciplined and conducting dedicated writing sessions first. After you've done that, writer decks are a good investment if portability is important for your practice and a laptop is too much to lug around.
Otherwise, resist the tantalizing urge to dive down the writer deck rabbit hole. You are really just distracting yourself from writing and spending more time on romanticizing the idea of writing than actually doing it—at least this was the case for me.
[Regarding the devices] The various iterations all look quite attractive, and the final one especially looks kind of like if an Apple IIc and a computer from Brazil had a baby – in a good way! I congratulate the creator on producing so much real hardware and not just renders; I’ve designed and made hardware and it’s hard as hell!
But I’ve also written a pretty good bit (not just code documentation and emails but fiction, short stories), and it’s also hard as hell, and like a lot of people who want to write things I’ve dabbled with all sorts of instruments that I’m convinced will finally be the trick to make the words come out good.
I’ve used legal pads, and composition books, and spiral notebooks, and grid paper notepads.
I’ve written with pencils, and ballpoints, and fountain pens, and dip pens with a whole variety of nibs and inks (admittedly that was mostly just for fun).
I’ve written in Acme on Plan 9, in Emacs and Vi on Linux, in Google Docs on a cheap Chromebook, and in BBEdit on a Mac SE/30. I’ve also used a mechanical typewriter, a Selectric electric typewriter, and an AlphaSmart Neo 2.
So I say the following from experience:
* Writing is difficult to do well, regardless of how you’re getting the words down.
* It’s easy to distract yourself, regardless of how you’re getting the words down.
* One of the easiest ways to accomplish #2 is by dreaming about the next perfect writing tool that will really make your writing sing just as soon as you muster up the courage to click “Buy”.
* Once you get your latest writing toy^H^H^Htool, it’s easier to write blog posts about it than to write the things you actually want to write but are deep down too timid to try.
In summary, I applaud Unkyu for making these, and I don’t think they’re likely to help you write better.
Honestly if constant online distractions are an issue - just put your laptop/PC in airplane mode, if you don't have the self control to not turn air plane mode off you likely aren't going to have enough to not pull your phone out/grab your laptop.
It’s why I take a notepad to meetings now. I’ve tried taking notes on a laptop, and simply can’t. I can either fight to make something work even though it’s failed for me for decades, or give in and adopt another strategy.
Use cases: Patio bars in Austin Texas, sunny Medellin Colombia, outside plaza cafes in Barcelona.
Thank you!
Everything gets slowed by it. Even typing fluently feels rough at less than 1Hz.
We need a biiiiig improvement in e ink displays before any products like what you describe could be good.
The benefit I think people don't understand about these low-fi writing setups is that it's much harder to _idly goof off_. There are times where I truly want to read or write, but if I'm on a computer it's too easy for muscle memory to kick in and start typing one of many distracting URLs into the address bar. My tablet is a much more constrained experience, and the screen is monochrome; last time I sat down to write on it, I actually had Google Docs open for three or four hours straight.
Less expensive: PineNote.
Pair with a Bluetooth keyboard.
Well, tariffs have changed that calculation lately...
It's billed as a distraction-free writing device, but if you're supposed to quit the program, stick in a thumb drive, issue commands to mount it, copy the files from some unknown location, dismount, and return to the program, then it's a pretty distraction-full experience.
There basically needs to be a single program (an "OS" in a sense of the word even if it's based on Linux) that is launched upon boot that does more than just editing docs but can also trigger a shutdown, automates mounting of media and copies files over, show overall disk usage, dictionary, spell checking, etc.
Maybe you could have networking enabled, but only in the background and without any software at all that could distract, just a background service syncing files?
I used to have a laptop running FreeDOS for distraction free hobby programming. Used a USB floppy drive and moved files using floppies, which seemed appropriate for a DOS laptop, but was not very convenient. If I set something like that up again I would probably use Linux or some BSD instead, with network in the background somehow. (But possibly DOSBox or QEMU+FreeDOS for the user interface to be less distracting).
In fact, back then the phrase 'online documentation' did not refer to anything hosted on the Internet. 'Online' simply meant 'on the computer' rather than 'in a printed manual'. So online documentation covered man pages, info manuals and the integrated help systems built into environments like QBASIC, Visual Studio (not to be confused with Visual Studio Code), Emacs, Vim or the WinHelp and CHM viewers on Windows.
I sometimes wonder whether that sort of entirely offline workflow is still viable with an ordinary computer with no Internet connection. In limited cases it is. Retrocomputing with something like QBASIC is an obvious example, since it comes with a complete hypertext manual accessible through Alt+H C (for Help > Contents) or F1 for looking up documentation for the current identifier. I still follow this style while working on my Emacs workflows and packages since all of Emacs documentation (including that of every single package installed) is available locally with the helpful C-h bindings. I am also glad that Go and Rust make viewing documentation on the computer so convenient.
But I'm not sure this style of development is possible, in general, anymore for the vast majority of software development since software today have so many dependencies and each dependency may have its own bespoke way of publishing documentation.
And by 'no wifi enabled', I mean it's not enabled in the OS, so I can't even be tempted to turn it on. When I need to sync files/update, I have a USB ethernet dongle.
I love refurbishing old Macbooks/ThinkPads, and I always tell people just buy one, customize it any way you like--paint it, stickers, whatever--and for a few bucks you've got something great.
They have 1 thing wrong: there's nothing virtual about the DOS on my USB keys. 100% the real thing, on the metal.
I think an ideal set up for me would be if I could boot my laptop to an different user on the same os where I only had 1 or 2 apps: Obsidian for notes, and possibly an e-reader for some use cases. Then somehow put a timed lock out on the main os/user. That way I could set a period of time where I was locked into that task, but I wouldn't need a dedicated device
JKCalhoun•2mo ago