WareWoolf Alpha: A Single-Purpose Writing Device I Built

word processor with vertical screen and keyboard, made of copper and dark stained oak with brown retro-styled keys

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”.

side view of word processor with vertical screen and keyboard

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.

The Tick Nominated for PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize

My short story THE TICK was nominated by the excellent people at Barrelhouse for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.

Each journal is allowed to nominate four first-time writers, and there are a lot of journals out there, so the odds are much longer than that graphic implies, but I’m happy just to be nominated. After struggling so long to get anything published at all, to have my first story selected for this is a great encouragement.

Now I need to get back to writing more fiction–and better.