Hey,

I spent the weekend hauling boxes across half of Portugal – hence the delayed newsletter – but the good news is I have my office back.

Which means I can record videos again (and yes, we will cover the 2024 Facebook changes soon, which are throwing some for a loop but not yours truly, as I’m dodging AI nonsense like a pro).

In fact, I made a little private video just for my Decoders peeps, showing off my most used work tool – which is not my computer anymore.

Yes, I’m now using my reMarkable 2 more than my exceedingly fancy laptop – something I could never have imagined.

Regular readers will know I’ve been falling deeper and deeper in love with my reMarkable 2 over the last year or two; today I’m going to show you why. Because I think that recent updates to the device, and its software, make it invaluable for authors.

On the surface, it’s a swanky e-ink digital notebook – thinnest tablet in the world, they say – which has its features deliberately limited so you can focus on work. No checking your email, no browsing Wikipedia, no posting on social media. You can send and receive documents but that’s it.

It’s weird that a device attracts you with its lack of functionality but that really was the initial draw for me – a work-focused device with no notifications breaking my flow, no distractions just a click away.

I thought I was buying a tablet I could scratch out first drafts on – and hopefully speed up that part of the process. Many a project – for me at least – seems to get stuck in between filling reams of notebooks and getting typed up on my computer.

What I got was something that ended up organizing my life and sparking creativity in unexpected ways – so very unexpected! Eventually it became something I could plot, draft, and edit an entire novel on, but that came much later.

Even though the reMarkable 2 eventually blew past all of my giddy expectations – it really took some time for me to unlock the full potential of this device and incorporate it efficiently into various workflows.

It wasn’t just me that needed some time – the device has improved immeasurably too, with a constant stream of new features and quality-of-life improvements which have genuinely transformed how you can use it.

Want the short version? Recent software updates, together with the new keyboard cover, are a gamechanger for writers.

That keyboard cover isn’t cheap: $199, which bumps the price up to $579 if you opt for the regular Marker, or $629 if you go for the Marker Plus as well – far from impulse territory. And it’s more like 677 Euro if you are in my part of the world, although shipping is free (and quick).

But if you have the budget then I recommend taking it for a test-drive as there is a 100-day no-fuss returns policy. They are that confident you will love it.

​Check out the reMarkable 2 here.

That’s an affiliate link, but if you have been a subscriber to this newsletter over the last two years, or following me on socials, you will have seen me raving about the reMarkable 2... usually while writing by the sea.

This means I’ll earn a small commission if you decide to keep your device after the 100 days, but that doesn’t affect the price you pay. I bought mine with my own money, this is not sponsored content, I’m reviewing this because I love it and use it every day and think you might like it too. Those disclaimers are necessary because the review is so positive.

But what I really want to do is explain the emotional journey I’ve been on with the reMarkable 2 in some detail, as it took me some time to really incorporate it into my writing process.

And as I’ve been getting a million messages about this, we’ll return to the Book Marketing Tier list next week to survey the stellar S-tier. Thank you for all the positive feedback; truly appreciated and genuinely useful for crafting more resources.

Now let me tell you about this slow-motion love-affair I’ve been having. Read to the end for a cool video demo!

1st 100 Days: OK Cool, But Now What?

It would be a lie to say I started off hating the reMarkable 2, but I was considering returning it simply because I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

The device certainly looked cool – lighter than expected and the feel of writing on it was some kind of witchy magic. Those nibs wear down, you see, and they’ve deliberately engineered the screen to have a little friction; it genuinely feels like scratching away on paper. (Don’t worry, you get 9 spares and I’ve used like 2 in a year-and-a-half.)

That sensation does something to your brain. Something wonderful. You just get lost in the page.

The user interface wasn’t amazing when I first got my device towards the end of 2022, but the tech was so cool – and the handwriting conversion so accurate – that I could see myself doing... something with this.

...once I figured out what that something was.

It sure looked like some piece of futuretech and was a real conversation starter as a result. That marketing line about the lack of functionality being a pro rather than a con was true! Helped me focus to a Zenlike degree for hours on end.

Although it was disappointing the reMarkable 2 couldn’t quite do what I hoped – editing was limited to basically marking up PDFs by hand; useful, but not quite what I imagined.

I was also disappointed I couldn’t hook up any keyboard to it – I had a couple of travel keyboards of different sizes and had hoped to use them on the go.

While I often handwrite my first drafts – and always outline that way – I usually move to a computer for subsequent drafts and certainly for any editing. The dream of writing something from start-to-finish on a device with no distractions, one I can take anywhere, wasn’t quite dead but wasn’t quite realized either.

But what it could do was cool.

I played around with the reMarkable 2 for the first couple of days – as if it were a toy – and then it promptly went into a drawer for a few weeks.

I felt a bit guilty about that and promised my frugal side that if I didn’t start using it more, I’d return it. So, I started popping it in my bag when going out for walks just to see.

Then something weird happened.

2nd 100 Days: WTF Is Happening

Okay so the pen is really annoying me.

It works great, don’t get me wrong. I actually think the official “Marker” as they call it, is worth it, even though it comes across as very expensive.

I think they must have gotten a lot of feedback about that because they now bundle a Marker with the reMarkable 2 in the USA – although not yet in Europe, curiously enough.

Anyway, I was happy to pay the $50 extra for the Marker Plus just for the built-in digital eraser. Not having it would be some kind of micro-aggression every time I made a mistake, and had to tap the interface a few times, but maybe that’s just me.

Plenty are happy with the basic Marker, and lots of budget-conscious reMarkable owners have found cheaper options on Amazon (popular alternatives like the smart-looking Staedtler Jumbo cost considerably less – often $25-$50).

The problem isn’t the Marker itself but the magnets with which it is supposed to attach to the side of the device. They're not strong enough unless you place the Marker very exactly (and even then... it’s not quite strong enough). I keep knocking it off the side; it’s far too easy to do when grabbing it quickly or taking it out of a bag or picking it up from a cafe table. Which are all things you naturally want to do with your reMarkable 2.

After almost losing the Marker a couple of times, or simply knocking it to the floor and holding my breath as it bounced on concrete, I just started lugging it around in an old laptop sleeve – which is a bit galling after spending $99 on a lovely-looking Book Folio cover.

I got the cheaper grey polymer weave option which really does make it look like a notebook, and adds to the stylish, minimal, Scandinavian futuretech vibe. There is a leather cover which is like $50 more, but I personally don’t like those so much - although some drawbacks with my choice would become clear later on. That's called foreshadowing BTW.

The cover looks very smart but it felt somewhat redundant having to lug it around in another cover to avoid losing a pen which would cost me $125 to replace.

If I was put on the spot, I’d say the “extras” are overpriced – except they aren’t really extras. You need some kind of digital pen to operate the device, and you really should have some kind of cover to protect it.

Crucial context though: the device itself feels underpriced for the quality of the build and what it can do. A cynical chap might suggest that’s the marketing strategy here – reel you in on Facebook with the cheaper-sounding price tag, and get you hooked before you realize the “true” cost is a couple of hundred bucks more.

Although all tech companies seem to take this approach now – indeed, I wrote about this marketing strategy – called a Value Ladder – a couple of years ago. We mimic that strategy with our series promotions on Amazon, but I digress.

I can see why the situation annoys some users though. I’m a regular lurker in the reMarkable 2 Facebook groups – of which there are a few, and they’re genuinely helpful. Anyway, this topic comes up a lot and many people prefer the cheaper third-party covers which seem to have solved this problem better.

But here’s the flipside: this only became an issue because I’ve started bringing my reMarkable 2 everywhere.

I can’t leave the house without grabbing my pack, which always, always, always has my reMarkable 2 inside.

I get... twitchy when I’m away from it.

What do I use it for? Well, a bit of everything.

• When I have some scene which is not advancing the story or revealing character or otherwise feeling a little flaccid, I like going back to handwriting and punching up the stakes from a fresh perspective.
• Planning. My life is held together by the glue of To Do lists. Fun fact: I like to start every To Do list with something I’ve already done, and then immediately scratch it off. Hey, maybe I should start doing Have Done lists. Man, that would be fun.
• What portion of everyone’s life is boring admin emails? Why didn’t they invent the AI to do that instead of writing books and painting pictures and making music – you know, all the fun things!?!? I do the dishes and my robot gets to play around with watercolors or drumkits? We went wrong somewhere. Anyway, boring admin emails are 1000% more fun when you are handwriting them on a digital notebook in the sunshine. And it’s even better that you can send them right there and then. Bonus points if you keep mentioning you are working on the beach to everyone who will listen (and those who won’t too).
• Outlining for sure. This thing was built for outlining, ideating, bullet pointing, and digital spit balling of all kinds. It’s like an endless Whiteboard. Did I mention you can livestream from this? It’s nuts. Okay, I got excited for a second. But you can screenshare with it on Zoom – super handy for teaching or showing something visually to someone. Maybe even for live speaking if I ever decide to do that again! But I love outlining blog posts, articles, emails, chapters, scenes, entire books – whatever. It’s perfect for that task. You can even tag things so you can find them easily or arrange all your own sub-folders. Each of my pen names has one, and then all their work is arranged in further sub-folders. It’s pretty neat.

Oh, and I can do all this anywhere.

Buses, trains, planes, moving trucks, parks, beaches, cafes, bars, restaurants, benches – you name it. I feel like I’ve gone back to my roots of writing anywhere and everywhere and I’m absolutely loving it.

I’m glad to have my office back, don’t get me wrong. But this has added a new flexibility to my working day. Nice sunny day outside? Want to feel that onshore breeze down by the water? I can just grab my reMarkable 2 and go. And I do.

I feel like I’ve settled in on how to use this device. But just when I think I’ve found myself in a comfortable place, something odd happens.

I don’t know if it’s the template I’ve started using – which is like the lined copybook I used in school – but I’ve started doodling in the margins, just like I was back in that classroom, bored to tears.

The reMarkable 2 doesn’t do a great job of telling you about all its cool features, so it took a while to discover that the handwriting conversion is significantly more accurate if I use a lined-page template – presumably it helps the OCR recognition if everything is in line.

...and now I’m sketching animals when I get bored.

It’s such a trip, I can almost hear my teachers shouting at me. They used to roar themselves hoarse; I was an awful child.

Of course, back here today in late-stage capitalism, my actual notebooks are gathering dust now. I used to go through so very many of those things. Haven’t touched one in months. I don't know myself.

3rd Hundred Days: Show Me The Monet

I’m not quite sure how to explain this but I’m an artist now?

Okay, okay, we’re using the term loosely, but it seems my new favorite way of winding down at the end of the day is watching YouTube videos of how to sketch pandas and sloths and baby labradors and following along with them.

This is strange.

In fact, I’m sketching to relax one second and creating merch the next; I’ve even designed some wallpaper for my new house.

I’m not sure what’s happening but I’m also not fighting it.

The reMarkable 2 allows you to select different pens and pencils – even a paintbrush, a highlighter, a mechanical pencil, or a fountain pen. And because it can detect pressure at various levels, and the angle you are holding the Marker, you get different brush strokes and effects depending on how you hold it. And it’s quite something to experience.

(Please note: I can’t vouch all this stuff is possible with the third-party digital pens as I haven’t personally tried them.)

You are officially limited to just two colors – black and grey, it’s e-ink – but my world expands dramatically once I realize that I can really draw in three colors as the eraser is white and can be manipulated the same way as the other two colors.

I’m accidentally learning about negative space. Also, I want to draw pandas for the rest of my life.

4th Hundred Days: I Need An Intervention

I can’t live without my reMarkable 2. I realized this after leaving it behind in a cafe and totally freaking out. It was not cool; I was not cool.

The level of emotion wasn’t justified – all my work is automatically backed up to the cloud (you can use their cloud or things like Google Drive and Dropbox if you prefer) so it’s not like that time I lost 200 pages of a novel and was so heartbroken I abandoned it completely. Or that time I lost my entire Master’s thesis. Hey, it was 2003. Clouds didn’t exist.

There’s also a mobile app and a desktop app so having everything in the cloud allows you to easily move between devices.

Which is handy because my reMarkable 2 does everything now. I bring it everywhere and use it for all sorts of things, including:

• writing first drafts
• plotting new books
• breaking down tricky scenes
• designing merch
• going over plans for our new house
• sketching to relax
• planning my week

I do everything but waste time; it’s perfect. I wouldn’t change a thi-- oh my. What’s this?

5th Hundred Days: OMG a keyboard

A lot of people made dismissive comments when the Type folio come out. Friends, I was one of those people.

Wasn’t the point of the reMarkable 2 to get out of the stuffy office and away from legacy computers and rediscover the joy and focus that handwriting brings?

Not that I hadn’t tried to hack the device myself.

There were times I wished I could whip out my little fold-up keyboard and clean up the text a little more efficiently. It has one of those on-screen keyboards, but this is more like tapping a Kindle than an iPad – the screen is e-ink and optimized for use with the Marker; tapping it isn’t always the most responsive when trying to write quickly.

But even typing on an iPad screen isn’t the best – certainly not ergonomically! I mean, it works in a pinch, but you wouldn’t want to write a book that way or edit anything of real length unless you’re married to a chiropractor.

Unfortunately, the device remained unhackable – by me, at least.

It was something you could do, in a roundabout way, with the old reMarkable 1, and there was one enterprising chap on Reddit who had managed to do it with the reMarkable 2, but that involved getting up close and personal with a soldering iron; I gave up.

Even so, I had mixed feelings when they announced the Type Folio for the reMarkable 2 – basically a keyboard cover. It seemed pricey but I was more worried the tight focus of the device would get diluted. Future updates would turn it into something else... when I loved exactly what it was.

Then I saw how it opened – the beautiful way it had been designed – and I couldn’t click that Buy button fast enough.

Although some credit must go to the pigeon who invaded my cafe table when I was writing away wistfully on some clifftop or other. It knocked over my beer, soaking my Book Folio.

That original cover did its job in the sense that it saved my reMarkable 2 from any damage. I’ve certainly splashed the surface before – but I also suspect you would be in serious trouble if you got water in any of those ports. While you can comfortably use it in direct sunlight, I certainly wouldn’t use it when raining! Or inside a geyser perhaps.

The cover was toast though – being of that very absorbent woven-cloth-effect material (I think it’s officially called a polymer weave); it stank of stale beer, which didn’t quite jive with the clean Nordic vibe.

I decided to try the Type Folio, reeled in by a $50 discount for existing owners (I'm a sucker for a deal), and then everything changed again. A couple of software updates dropped right afterwards which revolutionized what you could do with the reMarkable 2.

Well… it was 50% that and 50% me being a total idiot – not realizing a basic feature of the device, there all along, hiding in plain sight from my lying eyes.

It’s a little difficult to describe so I have made a quick video for you here to demonstrate which you can watch here. Warning: contains gratuitous beach shots.

But let me try to explain in more detail here newsletter also.

Picture each page of reMarkable 2 documents as an endless scroll of paper. You can literally write forever; Kerouac would have dug it.

But you can also add pages, so Page 1 is an endless scroll of paper, as is Page 2, and so on as much as you like.

When you convert your handwriting into typed text – a simple tap of a button, assuming you have a wifi connection – the reMarkable 2 creates a new page in your document.

Page 1 is your original handwritten text.

Page 2 is the converted typed text – and you can move back and forth easily just by swiping; it’s quite intuitive.

And with the Type Folio, you can now easily edit that typed text. In fact, there’s a very logical flow to creation now on the reMarkable 2:

(a) I usually start with a literal blank page – in portrait mode which I find most natural for writing. There are all sorts of templates to choose from but when plotting or outlining or bullet-pointing, I like it blank, and the feeling I can go any direction, I guess.

(b) Once I have my outline or bullet points down, I swipe across to create a new page – and I make this a lined notebook page, so my handwriting is neater. This is where I write the first draft of that chapter, scene, newsletter, or whatever I’m working on.

(c) When finished, I tap “Convert to Text” and the typed foot will appear on Page 3 of my document (Page 1 being the outline, and Page 2 being the handwritten body of text). It usually only takes a minute or so, unless what you have written is very long (or your wifi is very poor). I’ve done this in cafes and restaurants all across Portugal and it has only failed maybe once – and I’m sure that was the connection rather than the device or software.

(d) Now the magic happens: I slide out the keyboard, the device goes into Landscape made and sits at a perfect angle for typing. This is no proper mechanical keyboard – the device would be significantly heftier if that was the case. Nevertheless, typing is surprisingly pleasant, considering. It’s no match for either of the lovely mechanical keyboards I have in my office, but I’ve certainly done some huge sessions on it without issue. And being able to do it anywhere – even in direct sunlight – is a real treat. The battery lasts forever – I never have to worry about charging it – and the setup is compact enough to work anywhere. I’ve written and typed on buses, trains, cramped airline seats; it works somehow because it has a tiny footprint and opens in such a clever way. What’s super handy is being able to swipe back and forth between the typed text, the handwriting, and the outline, as needed – keeps me in the flow state and just gets the job done much quicker. I’m no longer the crazy person in the corner of the cafe with a pile of notebooks and a laptop and like ten different pages scattered on the table.

(e) The final trick is the addition of proofreader marks, courtesy of a recent update, and you can now edit mark up your typed text by hand. Feels like something from the future, honestly.

The only thing the reMarkable 2 can’t do is spellcheck – so I still send chapters to my computer for a quick whizz through.

I’m fine with this though.

This might be personal to me but I tend to be so distractable that a spelling error will pull me out of my flow as it often leads to one rabbit hole, and then another. Now where was I?

Same with formatting – which is minimal but gets the job done. When I write in Word, I’m constantly fussing with formatting and breaking my flow.

The reMarkable 2 eliminates that by keeping you focused, and I hope they keep that as their guiding star as they continue to develop the software.

Improvements can be made, still.

The SuperNote – a competing device – has a greater range of proofreader marks. And you still can’t edit imported PDFs in any way other than simply writing on top of them.

I sometimes wonder if a future software update could convert our imported PDFs and make them fully editable, as you can with docs native to the reMarkable 2. Now that would be something.

Although what it can do right now is pretty damn special.

I love my reMarkable 2 – it’s no exaggeration to say it has changed my life. Enriched my creative side and made work more enjoyable.

A hell of a 1-2 for a writer.

If you went to check it out, remember the full official package – including my preferred Marker Pro and the Type Folio keyboard – will set you back $629 at the time of writing (prices vary somewhat internationally but I’m seeing 677 Euro for the full premium package right now).

But you can get that cost down a couple of hundred bucks by using third-party pens and covers. And don’t forget the 100-day return policy too – that’s what convinced me to take the leap; I’m so glad I did.

​Check out the reMarkable 2 here (aff link).

I’m off to work on the beach...

Dave

P. S. Writing music this week is Alpha Blondy with Wish You Were Here.