i bet there is an emacs minor mode that disables backspace and various other editing commands. If not, someone ought to do it.
I've kind of wanted to augment the backspace with some mild swearing while it is being used: "damnit damnit ughh damnit".
Show HN: Turn your fancy, expensive computer into a stupid typewriter
21–30 of 51 posts
Re: Show HN: Turn your fancy, expensive computer into a stupid typewriter
#22I've been taking a writing class through Second City, and I've found it incredibly useful to write out my first drafts on paper, by hand. I don't think I'm losing any time by having to type my second draft into the computer afresh - you're going to be looking at it anyway, and it's useful to be forced to reread every word. It's easy to skip over parts if you don't need to touch them. There's the bonus that my noteboo…
Once when stuck on how to structure my second chapter of my thesis, and had been procrastinating over it for a week, I was sitting in the library with my computer, and I instead pulled out a pad of paper and wrote out the whole damn chapter in pen in about an hour.
It was all in my head, it just needed to come out. Somehow the words just flowed with a pen.
Re: Show HN: Turn your fancy, expensive computer into a stupid typewriter
#23I think that learning to type on an actual typewriter makes these kinds of exercises not as useful for me. Although I learned on electric typewriters that allowed one full line of text, displayed in a LCD, to be typed before "printing", the first half of the class we were not allowed to use this feature. When I want to put words down without intrusion, I disable spellcheck and generally don't find myself that concern…
I bet. I'm in the first generation raised on Mavis Beacon, and I've been writing in malleable text environments most of my life. The temptation to edit as I go can be overwhelming, and I sometimes envy the writers who were forced by their tools to work in actual drafts.
My first draft of a story is always in pen. Followed by a very cringey typing it in.
Re: Show HN: Turn your fancy, expensive computer into a stupid typewriter
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Parallel invention! Do you want to be Newton or Leibniz? I'll be honest. Your typewriter has a better enamel finish. :)
I'll take Leibniz. That said, I think the actual typewriter inventors have both of us beat by a fair amount. :) How has the "typewriter" changed the way that you draft?
Right now I mainly use it in my morning warm-ups: I'll set a timer for five minutes and get as many words down as I can. It's taken some getting used to, but it's definitely helping me learn to Just Write. I plan to start using it for drafting my WIP soon.
Re: Show HN: Turn your fancy, expensive computer into a stupid typewriter
#25I would like it more if the "full-screen" mode was almost completely the content written, similar to a typewriter display.
No picture of a typewriter, minimal controls, a small box for the new line, and everything else is what you've typed so far.
Re: Show HN: Turn your fancy, expensive computer into a stupid typewriter
#26This is a concept that comes up fairly often and I must stress that what works for one person may not work for everyone else, whether that's writing longhand on paper, a mechanical or electric typewriter, dedicated word processing device, WordPerfect 5.1 in DOS, Microsoft Word, Google Sheets, Notepad, Emacs, Vim, iA Writer, or anything else.
And though constraints can be helpful in some cases, I don't find the appeal to nostalgia like this site uses to be all that useful. Again, find what works for you.
And I find this particular implementation very hard to use, because text jumps from the input box to another box as I type, which is very distracting. The Hacker News comment input box is easier to work with and use as typewriter than this is.
Re: Show HN: Turn your fancy, expensive computer into a stupid typewriter
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends what you're writing. I find the writing time to not be a big impediment - for creative writing, I have to think about what's coming next anyway. If I were writing other things, it night make more of a difference.
For me in creative writing, "what happens next", tends to appear in large batches of inspiration, and I really want the high bandwidth of a keyboard to make sure I can record all/most of it before it decoheres. It's a personal thing. I always respect those with the patience to draft longhand. :)
Fair enough! I'm writing mostly things of a short nature -- this class focused on satirical writing, so under 1000 words. I've also done some sketch comedy, so perhaps five pages. It might be very different if I were writing anything longer, that didn't require tiny pieces to fit together.
Re: Show HN: Turn your fancy, expensive computer into a stupid typewriter
#28I've been taking a writing class through Second City, and I've found it incredibly useful to write out my first drafts on paper, by hand. I don't think I'm losing any time by having to type my second draft into the computer afresh - you're going to be looking at it anyway, and it's useful to be forced to reread every word. It's easy to skip over parts if you don't need to touch them. There's the bonus that my noteboo…
Once when stuck on how to structure my second chapter of my thesis, and had been procrastinating over it for a week, I was sitting in the library with my computer, and I instead pulled out a pad of paper and wrote out the whole damn chapter in pen in about an hour. It was all in my head, it just needed to come out. Somehow the words just flowed with a pen.
I find a mechanical keyboard has the same effect on me. My kids hate hearing my model M when they have work to do in the same room.
Re: Show HN: Turn your fancy, expensive computer into a stupid typewriter
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bet. I'm in the first generation raised on Mavis Beacon, and I've been writing in malleable text environments most of my life. The temptation to edit as I go can be overwhelming, and I sometimes envy the writers who were forced by their tools to work in actual drafts.
My first draft of a story is always in pen. Followed by a very cringey typing it in.
The cringe is very real. You have to push through and fix it in the next draft. :)
Re: Show HN: Turn your fancy, expensive computer into a stupid typewriter
#30This reminds me of how Jonathan Franzen writes on a giant old laptop with no internet. (Forgot where I read this.) Different dimension of keeping it simple. Interesting to contrast with the likes of grammarly or google suggestions. I can’t stand having that stuff in my ear while writing. However, I did have a friend who was a non-native English speaker and he liked it because he felt less self-conscious about screwin…
My approach is to do heavy writing in a plain text editor, then I paste into a word doc and format. Having to worry about spell correct and auto-indent doing weird stuff, grammar suggestions, all very distracting when you're trying to brain-dump words into a document.
Drafts (https://getdrafts.com/) was made for this.