Writers are picky. They are picky about their tools, their software, and their writing spaces. And when the muse strikes, heaven forefend if they don’t have the right gear.
Luckily, you can help them out. Here are our picks for great gifts for the writers (or writers-to-be) in your life.
The Moleskine Soft Cover Journal
Moleskine is famous for these little journals and we always recommend the softcover versions for maximum portability. They’re great for travel, great for when inspiration hits, and they’re an amazing way to make them feel like Hemingway in Paris. The question, however, is whether or not your writer ever uses pen and paper. If not, there are a few other options we’ve picked out for them later in this article.
Lamy Safari
We love this pen from German manufacturer Lamy. Why? They write like a dream, the ink is amazing, and the handfeel is great. Your writer will fall in love with writing again with one of these in your arsenal and if they don’t at least they’ll have a cool (and not so expensive) pen to show off.
Palomino Blackwing Pencils
The Palomino Blackwing is the Cadillac of pencils. These amazing pencils feature huge erasers and solid internal lead. You’ll also notice they sharpen quite nicely with even simple pencil sharpeners. Again, if your writer doesn’t like jotting things down by hand at least they’ll have these artifacts of a simpler and more elegant time.
The Kindle Scribe
If your writer wants to jot down ideas but doesn’t want to use paper, Amazon recently came out with the Kindle Scribe. This is basically an e-ink tablet that allows you to read documents and annotate them in real time. Imagine being able to edit your own writing on a tablet the size of an iPad and you get the picture. It delivers on November 30 so you’ll have plenty of time to wrap this up for the holidays.
The Freewrite
Your writer has probably looked at this longingly for a long time. This $669 product is basically an e-ink typewriter that forces you to focus only on writing. It has an amazing keyboard, great screen, and it’s basically the closest you’ll get to an old Olivetti in the digital age.
This is a deep cut. The Alphasmart was a popular education device used by kids in the early 2000s. The Alphasmart has become a favorite for many writers and is basically a super simple word processor with very few features and a lot of flexibility. You can find these things online for about $100 and it would make a great surprise for the minimalist writer in your life.