Gizmos & Gadgets – The Hemingwrite – All You Do Is Type, No Distractions

January 3, 2015

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January 3, 2015 – Imagine you are author trying to write the definitive novel of our age and doing it on a computer system with all the distractions the Internet can offer. Well the designers of The Hemingwrite, hailing from Detroit, Michigan, have just the thing for you — what they describe as “a minimalist digital typewriter for distraction free writing.”

It looks like a retro portable typewriter without a roller for feeding paper and no carriage return. But in so many ways it has the look and feel of typewriters of yore.

It is designed to do one thing very well and that is allow a writer to type without distraction. But it doesn’t ignore the advantages of other aspects of modern technology. Instead of paper it sports a daylight-readable electronic display with the words appearing as e-ink. You can backspace, review what you write. You have a couple of keys not found on the traditional typewriter, a page up, a page down, both of which let you scroll through your manuscript. And after you finish your first draft a send key to save what you have written. Later use your computer to do edits using a format with which you are comfortable. For example if you are Microsoft user, any document created on The Hemingwrite will come up in perfect Word format.

There is no manual, no menu, no toolbar, no software and no Internet distractions whatsoever. Just press the red on button and start typing. When you stop your work is automatically saved and you can begin where you left off. You even can work on three active documents at one time using the document selector knob located to the left of the display.

The Hemingwrite comes with a battery that provides up to four-weeks of power before a recharge is needed. And it comes with WiFi which you turn on using the selector knob to the right of the display. Why do you need WiFi? Because The Hemingwrite lets you instantly save what you have written to the cloud using its own Postbox application. Or you can automatically synch what you write to Google Docs, Evernote or DropBox Internet storage.

A Kickstarter campaign has already raised over $315,000 USD to back the project. A pledge of $399 will get you a deeply discounted product with estimated delivery date of September this year. Or pledge $749 and get one for you and one for an author friend.

Language support besides American English includes German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Turkish. Other languages are in the offing subject to funding and sales revenue.

What would Hemingway have said about The Hemingwrite? “Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.” and maybe if he had known about it, “write it on The Hemingwrite.”