I wrote this piece without using the internet. Can you tell?
A new word processor allows writers to get work done without distraction. Which is fine until you need to check a fact
It's called the Freewrite, it began on Kickstarter, and immediately I understand. It's a machine for writing on, and only for writing on, like typewriters used to be, but souped up with selected benefits of the digital era. So it has an e-ink screen, like a Kindle, which does away with the need for paper and ribbon and Tippex. And there's a wifi connection that will save your work to the cloud. That way you will never lose a novel, as Anthony Burgess once did, by dropping his finished typescript into a canal.
The Freewrite costs $500 (358), but I'm testing a truly free version here, simply by not using the internet. I must say it goes against the grain. That story about Burgess, for instance; I think it's true but I can't check. I remember reading it in his autobiography many years ago, and I have his autobiography right here, but there's nothing in the index about a "typescript, dropped in canal". True, I haven't been sucked into Wikipedia; instead, I've been sucked into the book. Typewriters were all very well before the internet, because at least then your readers had the same trouble trying to catch you out.
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