I’m a huge fan of the Astrohaus Freewrite, but it is only really good for first drafts. You can’t edit on it. I wrote my own software, WareWoolf, for editing on a computer, but I missed the isolation of the Freewrite–the separation of my writing tool from my everything-else tool. My distraction-doom-and-death tool. So I decided to build my own modern word processor, or “writerDeck”.

I made it out of oak and sheet copper I folded/hammered into shape, making it all up as I went along. The screen is just a premade all-in-one housing for a Raspberry Pi which I painted, stripped the speakers out of, and mounted on a DIY copper plate/hinge. The white cord poking out the top is not a permanent feature–its only there because the global microprocessor shortage has Raspberry Pis out of stock everywhere. So right now it runs off my Raspberry Pi 400 externally.

The butt-plug you see there is made out of cork I took from a wine bottle and cut down to protect the keyboard cable from the copper and keep it snug. The black cable coming from the screen is the power cord. If I do a revised version, I’ll think up a better system for handling the power cord than just wrapping it around the neck. But it works.

Eventually, I’d like to replace the screen with e-ink. But until then, I’ve turned the backlight down as much as it will go. I can’t wait to put it to work.