As I write this, my country is embroiled in a painful waiting game. One that’s taking far longer than we hoped.

Interesting that it’s also the day that a long waiting game ended for me.

You see, I’m writing this on my new Freewrite Traveler.

I backed this project on Indiegogo about two years ago, within the first couple of hours of its beginning.

Two years.

You know, I’d say that was quite a waiting game, but I was in on the Blades in the Dark Kickstarter. That seemed to take forever to fulfill.

Have to say, I was really happy with the final result of Blades in the Dark. I can only hope I’ll be just as happy with the Traveler.

All right. That’s actually a pretty high bar to set. Blades is awesome.

Still. Here I sit, on my couch. My cat Samba is happily ensconced on my shins. I can type away on this sweet mechanical keyboard. Position is comfortable for typing, ergonomically speaking. Feels good. The Traveler is light and mobile.

Screen’s good and easy to read.

However, one thing is bugging me out of the gate. When I start a new paragraph, there’s no way to tell. No indent, no spacing between paragraphs. I’m not sure yet if there’s a way to change that. I’ll dig around.

Now, I know I could  hit a space or two at the start of each paragraph, but I don’t want to do that. See, one way or the other, what I write with this I’ll be formatting in Word or Scrivener. And I’m not going to want to correct for something like that.

Although I suppose, if I have to, I can always set up a macro to correct for it.

Have to say, though. Little formatting issues aside, this is quite good for what it does. Small. Light. Easy to type on. I could see keeping this around when I leave my writing desk.

Now, you might be thinking, “Wait. This is a writing tool. Why won’t you be using it to replace your writing desk?”

Honestly? It’s not impossible that it will, over time. But right now I’ve got a system for writing novels that works for me, and I don’t really want to mess that up.

Mostly, at the moment, I’m planning to use this for note taking, gaming stuff, blog posts, nonfiction, and maybe short stories.

At least, that’s how I see it right now.

Have to say, though. This keyboard feels really good. I’m looking forward to having my Traveler at hand, for spontaneous cool thoughts and the like.

And now, it’s time to see how the syncing works. And oh, how I’m looking forward to when the Freewrite people add OneDrive syncing to this.

All right. First time sync produced a plain text file and a .pdf. Guess I’ll have to log into their website (on a computer) and see how I can change the settings. I know it will at least sync to Google Docs, which should at least let me get a rich text file.

Still, considering all I’ve done since I opened the box is charge it, update the firmware, and type this, I’m impressed. If my only complaint I have so far is that I need to specify my sync settings, it’s pretty darned cool.

I’ll post a follow up in a few weeks, or a month or two. By then I’ll have a better idea of how I like it and how well it works for me.

But out of the box, I’m digging this thing.

Oh, two more things.

First, I like that I can close this, open it again, and just start typing. That’s a really useful trait.

Second, the felt and leather sleeve is a good fit. Should help with protecting it, given that I plan to take it with me a lot.