This is not like other blog posts that you will read. How am I so sure?

Well, what it is being written on first of all. You are reading the words that have been hammered out at the key face of the AlphaSmart 3000.

What’s one of them Trev? I hear you ask.

Well, it’s a small portable computer that you can write on, and very little else. It has a four-row LCD display, and I mean an old fashioned grey and black display. No millions of colours here, or alterable resolutions.

Once I have finished writing I just plug it into my computer via USB and it sends the text across as if it was typing it. Really one word at a time, faster than typing speed. this means high compatibility with whatever text software you use.

It also means do not move to another screen while it is doing it or it will soon be typing your magnum opus into your browsers web bar at inhuman speed.

So why am I using this device? Mainly because I struggle with procrastination when I am writing, and when I am using a normal computer/laptop there are so many things that I can become distracted by. Halfway through an article I cannot remember a specific word for example. To the internet!

Then it is half an hour later and I have no memory of what I was looking for, but I do know how many episodes of Blake’s 7 there were. This is why I am never more productive than when I am typing into a dumb device.

I have tried many different things over the years, and I will give you a rundown of them further down if you might want to learn from my mistakes.

Earlier today I wrote an entire article on a typewriter. An electronic one, with word processing capabilities, but a typewriter nonetheless. (Sharp Fontwriter FW 610 that I saved from a bin fact fans.)

I enjoyed it, saved the file to a floppy disk, and it disappeared. That is the problem with old tech.

When it does work, I then have to plug the USB floppy drive into my PC (my Mac does not like the floppy it seems) and then load the file from the typewriter.

I then have to strip out the non-text data, font sizing and layout etc and export it as a text file to Dropbox so that I can open it on my Mac.

So why am I going to so much work just to avoid distractions? Is that not a distraction in itself?

Probably, I have spent part of this evening looking at a device called a Freewrite. It is basically a mechanical keyboard with an e ink screen, like the one in a Kindle book reader, that is designed just to write on. There are not even cursor keys to go back through the document to change things.

The idea is that when you are writing in the first place, in the flow as it were, you should not correct anything. Just let the raw words come out and only afterwards do you take what you have written and make it into something usable.

When I am in the flow I can write very quickly, and probably inaccurately, but that is part of the fun of it.

To get pretentious for a moment, it is akin to the moment that a musician forgets that they are playing their instrument, and just plays it. Connecting musically with it on a whole new level.

As a writer that sometimes happens and words just tumble out, like lego pieces across a shiny wood laminate floor.

Why try and capture them? Let them be free and then try and make something of them afterwards. You can make things this way that you would never be capable of if you put too much thought into it.

So what is the problem with the AlphaSmart then? Surely it is the perfect device for me.

Almost. So very close. The problem is the keyboard itself. It looks like a full keyboard, but the feel is more like Jelly Tots sliding into a jug of gelatinous gravy on a light bed of granite.

Hammering at the keys just to get them to register sometimes, quickly becomes tiring for you, and anyone unfortunate enough to be able to hear you clacking away like a Transformer falling down a flight of metal stairs in a urine stained multi-storey car park.

Is the Freewrite the answer then? Maybe, but it also has a problem. It is over five hundred bloody quid! I could save to buy myself one, but what if I hated it?

Use a pen and paper!

Tried that, there is a problem there too. My handwriting is borderline illegible at the best of times, and when I am writing fast it gets worse. To the point where I cannot read my own writing just a few days later.

I have always used computers to write, from my first Word Processor on my Amstrad CPC 664, which I wrote myself and I spent more time messing with the code than writing with it. Through an Amiga with Protext, an Amstrad NC100 then on to PCs and Macs.

The computer is the perfect way for me to finish off documents, but if that is all I have then I rarely start them.

As an addendum, I am currently looking to buy another Alphasmart, a different model, which reportedly is broadly similar but has a better keyboard. I will let you know how that goes.

As an addendum to the addendum, and more as a reward for having made it this far, I am thinking of making my children’s book Fetlock Bones and the Curious Case of the Budgie Smugglers free to download permanently on my website. Does anyone have any opinions on that? Feel free to shout at me via the sewery cesstubes of the internet.