As I await the arrival of my Kickstarter Freewrite, the word processor formerly known as the Hemingwrite, I consider the many machines I have used in an attempt to find the perfect writing device for me. I’ve spent much time and much money. And that time I said I wasn’t a hoarder, but rather a stockpiler? Well, in the spirit of the Deserted Lands (My apocalyptic SF series), I think I am simply a Collector. [I’m writing a blog post for the personal blog at www.robslater.com on my familial history of collecting.]
My first attempt at finding a simple distraction free word-processor involved a jump back in time. I ordered a 
Tandy WP-2 off eBay. I’m not sure how much I spent on it, but it came with a nice cover and a D-cell external battery pack. It had 8 line of 80 characters each. It could save to flash memory card. The keyboard is still one of my favorites, but the hardest thing was getting the files transferred. There was a dos software program that converted the files into rtf, or simple text and allowed them to be opened by modern Microsoft Word.
My next attempt, and probably the most successful to date, was the Apple eMate, an Apple Newton Handheld wrapped in extra green plastic to survive elementary school kids. Has a nice 
carrying handle too, so it can be used as a defensive (or offensive) weapon, plus a cool stylus and really decent handwriting recognition for its time.
I wrote a bunch of poetry, a play, some fiction and did edits on the text for Shakespeare’s The Tempest that I directed at The Skagit Valley Shakespeare Festival. With the backlighting and uber long battery life from the rebuilt battery pack, this thing had it all. The downfall? A spring that got brittle and snapped, shorting out the ribbon cable for the screen. I managed to fix it, but sometime after that it broke again. I bought a used Thinkpad and have been using it and its descendants since.
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