Hm. Apparently Ulysses installed an update and… it’s re-downloading my entire library from iCloud.

Why would it be doing that?

That sure doesn’t make me feel good, knowing my data (including the manuscript of my novel) is, ultimately, reliant on Apple’s servers.

I feel myself becoming more of a Luddite every day, but Local-first software, please. 😑️

Ok, a little more.

I’m sure the people who made The Hemingwrite (and its slightly-less-flagrantly-pandering-to-wannabe-writers sibling The Freewrite) are earnest in their desire to help writers “escape distraction” and get more writing done, but this sort of product offering—pay hundreds of dollars for a crippled version of the electronic devices you already have 2-3 of—is just such a cynically effective way to extract money from people with disposable income who believe, perhaps desperately believe, that all they need to “be a writer” is the one tool that will magically overcome whatever stupid bullshit is keeping them from writing.

Because believe me: if you want to write, and you’re not writing, then you are not writing because of some stupid bullshit, not because your top-of-the-line Real Computer is “too distracting”.

I say all of this with such venom because I am 1000% the target audience of this product, my hand jerked towards my goddamned debit card as soon as I saw its e-ink screen and chunky keycaps.

I bought an AlphaSmart in the early 2000s for this exact reason: let me write on a digital tool without all the distractions available on my iMac, and I’ve spent plenty of time and money on other ineffective solutions for the problem of “why aren’t I cranking out novels the way my graven idol Hemingway did????”

*Why do I feel like I want to write, but I never do?*

There is an answer to this question, and it’s probably different for you than it is for me. But take my advice—it costs a lot less than USD $899—the tools you use to write are not your problem.

The ghost of Hemingway will not save you. And when someone throws him in your face to make a buck, I recommend you flip them the bird, no matter how well-meaning they might be.

I’ll give the team behind The Hemingway this, though: they made me mad enough to write all of the above, and that’s something.

Via @jack, the “Hemingwrite”. Jack said:

➽ One of the silliest things I ever bought was the “Freewrite”. It was originally called the “Hemmingwrite” but they were forced to change the name. They now have a custom “Hemmingwrite” edition of the Freewrite and it’s $800. I don’t feel so bad now, because that would be the dumbest thing I ever bought.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the amount of time a writer spends thinking about how Hemingway did anything is inversely proportional to how much writing they ever get done. 😜️

Thinking about declaring “bankruptcy” (enter: Michael Scott clip) on my task manager and my ideas list.

Just blowing away everything in OmniFocus, and Ulysses (and Drafts, and the other nine note/text-collecting apps I use 😏) that isn’t an active project and starting over.

Thinking of it less like “bankruptcy” (which has a powerful undertone of “You have failed. FAILED!”) and more of a “refresh”.

For every idea I’ve ever had and done nothing with, I’ll have a hundred more ideas in the next year alone.

For every task I’ve recorded with the thought, “Someday I’ll do/see/buy/read this,” there’s an infinite number of those waiting in the future. (Heck, there’s four dozen books already on my Kindle I haven’t read yet.)

I could use less psychic baggage of the form “Oh, I should really get around to THIS someday…”

What’s truly important will come back around. Or has yet to reveal itself.

In Q4 2019, I played a LOT of Skyrim.

I’m sort of missing it. It’s a fun fantasy sandbox to play in.

It’s hard for me to play games like that without letting eat all my free time, though.

I’d rather be building my own fantasy sandbox than playing in someone else’s. But the latter is so much easier, and so tempting. 🕹