I’m giving Sprinter a go. It’s an online tool that lives in your web browser. It comes from the folks at Astrohaus, who create the wonderful but pricey Astrohaus Freewrite and Freewrite Traveler, two tools that let you write as if using a typewriter, but digitally edit your text later on your computer using Word or other platforms on your computer through Wi-Fi syncing.

Sprinter is essentially the online version of these machines. It’s free, and it promises a distraction-free environment in which to write. You’ve also got a 15-minute timer on the right-hand side, which you can view constantly (without it distracting you). It seems, then, that the promise of Sprinter is to do exactly that, Sprint-write. For 15-minutes, you just open up this website and write until the timer runs out. It’s quite a good idea, and might be the ideal tool for someone trying to create a writing habit. You also can’t do anything with your text apart from backspace. There’s no clicking into a section of text you’ve already written. You either backspace, or you move ever forwards. (This is something I’m discovering as I write this.)
Many reviewers of Astrohaus’s various writing products find this to be a fault of their products. The fact that you can’t be as flexible with your text during the writing process as you might be able to be in almost every other writing app available. We’ve become so accustomed to “editing as we go” that we’ve forgotten that people used to write first, edit later.
And there are advantages to that, but perhaps it’s also a cause of much of the modern-day writer’s block that we hear so much about and spend so much time-consuming content that promises to help us avoid. Google “how to avoid writer’s block” and you’ll find enough articles, YouTube videos, and podcasts to spend the rest of your days. However, Astrohaus might be onto something. For many years now, I’ve been very interested in typewriters. I almost always have one sitting on my desk, and a few in various stages of repair sitting in my closet. I love these machines, partly because I find them brilliant pieces of industrial design, and partly because of what they represent: a whole era of writers used these machines to create reverent works that we still read and enjoy today, but these machines have become wholly irrelevant. Or have they? They represent something that we no longer value: machines with a singular purpose. With the advent of the iPhone, and the “smart” phone in general, we value tech that can do as much as possible, not the least possible. We want our phone to be our camera, our phone, our email device, our game device, our video device, our movie-watching device, and so much more. “There’s an app for that,” the saying goes.
However, when it comes to creative output, is this always the most helpful approach? If I need to sit down and write for fifteen minutes, is it helpful that my writing machine also has email and text notifications, social media, websites, and so much more right at our fingertips? I’m not convinced. Many of us are spending more time on our devices, and less time doing what we actually want.
So, I think Astrohaus has got it right. I think the singular purpose is a feature, not a bug. And I think a lot of our modern-day malaise could be solved with less multi-functional technology and more devices with singular purposes. And this rings ever more true in the world we live in today, with an increasing number of us working from home, creating an even blurrier line between work and personal life. Might it not only help out creative life, but our mental health, if we’re able to keep some sort of distinction between the various elements of our life? I think that might be true.
And here’s where Sprinter is good, but Astrohaus’ physical devices might be great. While writing this, an email notification interrupted my flow. I generally have notifications set to a minimum, but this one fits through the filters, and it is important. But it isn’t so critical that I need to interrupt this fifteen-minute writing session to look at it. So, Sprinter works — to an extent.
I’m very interested in Astrohaus’ other work, namely their Freewrite. Especially their latest iteration, which was just announced recently. However, the price-tag is too high for me to justify, and probably is for many people.
And that’s because the price, $599, can buy you a piece of tech that does so much more than the Freewrite. And the value proposition, as viewed by the modern-day consumer, simply isn’t there. Especially when you also need a computer to do anything with what you write on the Freewrite.
So for all but the most wealthy writers, or those who write so often for their professional lives that they can afford to spend that sort of money on a machine that does nothing else, a computer is often still a better choice.
And if you need to supplement your computer with something that helps you focus on writing, a nicely restored typewriter is still cheaper too.
However, if you’re looking for an online tool to help you craft a daily writing habit and get rid of the distractions, Sprinter might just be for you. I think it’s for me. And until I can afford a Freewrite machine, it’s what I’ll be using each morning to get 15 minutes of typing in each morning.