The Day I Returned My $499 Typewriter

What Didn't Fix My Writer's Block, And What Did

This essay was written around Christmas last year

It's been two months since I last wrote anything. I still log on to Substack occasionally, but only as a reader. Several writers I follow publish well-crafted 3000-word posts three times a week (Ted Gioia, for example), and they do it with such effortlessness that I can’t help but wonder how such productivity is even possible.

Then there’s me. I know something is off, because I no longer hear my inner voice talking to me during evening showers or on my drive to work. My writing self seems silent and dead — and peacefully so. In fact, I feel almost resigned at its disappearance. Maybe this is just what happens as we get older, and all we can do is to accept it.

Then it's almost the end of the year. I came across a Black Friday deal on the FreeWrite, an ink-screen, distraction-free writing device that essentially only supports a text editor. I'd long wanted to buy one but had always hesitated because of its astounding price tag of $499. The end-of-the-year sale gave me a good excuse to make a rushed purchase decision.

I regretted it almost instantly after clicking “purchase,” not because of the money, but because I knew deep down that a fancy gadget wouldn’t fix me. If the problem was inside me, how could an electronic device help me set it right?

The evening I received my FreeWrite, I forced myself to try it for a 30-min writing session — 30 minutes because that was the longest that I could manage. It was exactly what I expected. Writing felt awkward and painstaking, and my sentences were dry and stiff.

Then something happened. The next morning, instead of listening to a podcast on my drive to work as usual, I let myself sink in silence. I merged into Central Expressway with nothing but the hum of the engine and the wind. The cool morning air felt refreshing, and the moment I realized this, an exhilarating feeling flowed through my body. Suddenly a sentence popped up in my mind: I haven’t felt this good in a while.

All my senses were open now. One sentence led to another, and another. I started noticing the pale golden shades that the morning sun, still mostly hidden under the horizon, cast on one side of the trees along the road. The sun moved fast. Those shades expanded larger and larger, growing brighter and brighter, until I had to put on my sunglasses, and in an instant, those golden glows deepened into a warm, orange hue.

And just like that, my inner voice came back to life again. It wasn’t that the FreeWrite had any sort of black magic; the same thing could have happened if I’d used my laptop or just a plain old notebook. It might even have happened sooner if I’d turned off my Spotify earlier. The secret is so simple that it doesn’t even seem to be worth mentioning: the magic of starting to write is simply to start writing, and the secret to gaining back my inner voice is simply to start listening.

The next day, I returned the FreeWrite.