The Most Dangerous Writing App

224 pointsby maebertabout 9 years ago

43 comments

6stringmercabout 9 years ago

Here's what I bashed out in a 5 minute session:What makes a writing app dangerous? Is it the blank space set up before the writer? Is it the notion of using a form of communication without context? Does it have some other type of functional definition or characteristic that makes it dangerous?Well let's have a look - there's a timer, a generic area for typing that appears to be fully justified, and in the lower left hand corner there is some very faint text illustrating typing speed and some other metrics. I'm still not seeing much of any danger as I would relate to the term. There's a bit of mystery - as in, what is the actual purpose of this other than intrinsic use of the language?Oh, I see. Taking a bit of time to contemplate the next line and the screen starts to fade away. Is it taking the text along? Where does it put the text if it disappears? Will this be chopped up into 140 character components and spread amongst the world a la E-Horse Books? That could be dangerous, at least moreso than a general sense of foreboding that text will be gone if the writer doesn't keep going, and going, and going, which while constructive in its own right, isn't particularly known as the best approach to writing. Sometimes thought should be given a priority.So, at the end of this five minute exercise, we discover what's really dangerous about the program. It's clever. The reason the app is so dangerous is that it prompts a person to keep typing and writing with minimal amount of active thought. Yay.

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ohjeezabout 9 years ago

Really, they think that _this_ is how you get into flow?The last thing I need is an unconscious worry that I must-keep-typing.It's okay to think when you're in flow. But the whole point is that you aren't aware that you're thinking. You're not distracted. You're wholly in-the-moment.Context: Professional writer and editor for 25 years.

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slindzabout 9 years ago

I love the idea, but I'm not sure if I'm using it right.The premise is your writing session dies if you go 5 seconds without typing as a means to get you in to flow. When your session 'dies', everything you wrote disappears forever (as far as I can tell) so there's a lot of incentive to keep going whatever the cost. I presume there's some sort of congratulatory messaging/saving opportunity if you last your entire stretch (I didn't last the minimum 5 minutes)Given these stakes, I'd be too nervous to use it for anything I'd actually want to hold on to due to the risk of something out of my control commanding my attention for five seconds.I'm still glad the project exists - it's easy to picture it being great for somebody.

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jayhuangabout 9 years ago

Interesting concept, but little more.Enforcing keystrokes every 5 seconds is a horrible way to facilitate writing.In fact, this reminds me quite a bit of those algorithmic sites that give interviewees a time limit (ie: 30 minutes) to come up with a solution. As the timer approaches 1 minute or so, the timer turns red, blinks, sometimes increases in size, or beeps. I'm sure if you measured the output during those stressful moments, productivity goes down immensely.

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DanielStraightabout 9 years ago

Many more options here: <a href="http://writeordie.com/" rel="nofollow">http://writeordie.com/</a>

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irremediableabout 9 years ago

Maybe they should let users pay to recover their deleted writing?

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elcapitanabout 9 years ago

Is there a pro version that gives you electroshocks a second before the time is up?

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owenversteegabout 9 years ago

For those of you that didn't see the tiny, grey-on-grey Help link, it's a writing app that deletes all your work if you don't type something in five seconds.

fit2ruleabout 9 years ago

I remember, when the first Titanium Powerbook was released, having something akin to what I must describe, simply, as a "Writers Moment of Nirvana".I'd just received the machine, a reward for a schedule met, on a Friday afternoon. Charged, ready to go, I put it in my briefcase (in 2000, this was a phenomenon like no other), and .. left the office. With the power supply, box, etc.So I had a weekends' worth of "fresh tiBook" time .. a very visceral and surreal moment as I transitioned from "Ops-Center" bound, to "can hack Unix code in the park".I climbed the hills of Griffith Park, and camped out at the (then-) recently burned-out hills, under what was once some old tree. I wish I'd known its species, but I'll never forget the scene; the entirety of the LA basin beneath me, as far as the Pacific, and me perched atop it. Press the button.BONG!I had nothing much to run on it, so I opened Terminal, fired up vi, adjusted the font to what was then an amazing degree of clarity, and wrote. For as long as the batteries held out, I set up my personal diary, pure text mode, and got it all out.Still had power for a few mail-checks and touchups over the weekend, powered out on Sunday evening. The next day in LA, Monday morning, I went on the hunt for a power supply.Hasn't been the same since.My point? You don't need an app for that. Just vi.

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blisterpeanutsabout 9 years ago

Workaround: Mac speech-to-text app. The timer never starts when you don't use the keyboard. I wasn't trying to cheat, just wanted to save my hands and wrists which have been sore lately from too much typing.

codazodaabout 9 years ago

I ended up writing 351 words in 5 minutes (70wpm).I've been meaning to write a weekly blog post for a while now, and I've set aside an hour for research, but I keep talking myself out of actually writing it. This just forced me to type a blog post length document in 5 minutes. It probably needs 15 minutes of editing now, but this actually got me to write and do so quickly.I like it. It has its place.

akhodakivskiyabout 9 years ago

Hello, I'm just beginning to type, and I have no idea what's going to appear here. The concept of writing under the fear of loosing all the progress is fascinating. But I actually need to first see what it means to 'loose progress'. Ok, I see now, the screen begins to turn red, it reminds me of taking damage in first person shooters. But yeh, this concept can be extremely motivating to carry on. When musicians improvise, they also have this sort of pressure. It manifests in the need to keep the music going, maintaining the rhythm, melody, and the form. It's much more challenging than just writing some text. Although I can do none of music improvisation. The parallel to music would be writing poem under the pressure of loosing all the progress. I'm also not capable of rhyming words. But it's Ok though. Being witty, and creative is a skill. Another skill is being thoughtful and persistent, just at different pace.I'm wondering if this text can actually be read by a stranger...

marcsterabout 9 years ago

This definitely did a good job in getting me into the flow, the 5 second timeout forced me into writing something down as soon as I had something in mind, no matter what that turned out to be. In one way, that made me rehash several ideas I had just written, in another way, it forced me to leap into a few weird ideas that I've never thought of before, and that happened because I was trying not to do the mistake of rehashing. Interesting how being put on the spot might even pressure you into getting creative!

felipeeriasabout 9 years ago

I was unconvinced at first, but it's actually fun to try to write a story this way:"Once upon a time there was a girl who lived in the forest. This was a green bushy forest, full of living trees that would sing together at sunset. It was a good place to live.One day, an army was passing by the forest and they started cutting down trees to make bonfires to spend the night. It was late autumn, and nights were getting cold and damp. The men felt as if they had icy roots delving deep into the ground, sourcing the humidity and the dampness and the cold up to their bones.So rather than becoming frozen trees themselves, they had started felling the trees.Many trees had been felled already, when the girl noticed. She had stepped out for a walk, to check that the little birds had enough to eat in the harsh weather. At first, she didn't understand what was going on. Sections of the forest that had been there for all her life, trees that looked as stable, as permanent, as fixed in place as the hills themselves, were now laying on the wet grass, chopped. It was unreal.Red twinkling bonfires could already be seen by the encampment. A great tent was set in the middle.In this tent, there was a great general and his son. The general was old and knotty and ruthless. The son was kind of heart, but had grown up in a violent environment and didn't know much better than his father..."

peterkellyabout 9 years ago

My first session:I have to admit that the idea is rather clever. A writing app that forces you to continue writing without pause, and terminates your session if you don't complete. That's a pretty strong incentive, if you ask me.One of the problems I often encounter with writing is encountering writer's block. I have a general idea of what I want to say, but I'm worried that the way in which I present it will not be ideal, or that the text will be confusing to the reader. These concerns hold me back from writing as much or as quickly as possible.One thing I've noticed with this app is that it doesn't force you to keep writing as much as possible, as such, but rather that you keep working. Editing counts as activity, and thus going back to revise what you have written is a valid way of keeping the app alive. And although the penalty for pausing too long is that it destroys everything you have written, you can still select all and copy to the clipboard, so you have the text around so it can be pasted into another app.I think this app is a fantastic idea. It's a great way to put on the pressure necessary to get work done, avoiding the distractions of meandering off to look up references, getting lost reading other material. It really forces you to think hard and actively penalises you for not doing so.I've now completed the five minutes. I'm pretty impressed with that because normally I wouldn't be able to get this much written without an enormous amount of motivation. Usually I lack the focus necessary to be this productive. Thankyou!

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ramkarthikkabout 9 years ago

I like this app because it gets you writing. The problem most of the times is just start to write something. When I sit down to write, I have no idea where to begin with. This would definitely get me in the flow. Yes, I cannot write stuff that makes sense. But it gives me a way to get everything on my mind out and get me into the writing flow. I can then close this app and take that flow to write something more meaningful.I also like what others have written using this tool and posted here. It is interesting how we tend to write in simple language when we have constraints. That's the it should be. Not the constraints, but the language. Use jargon or too complex words and most of the times you have lost me as a reader. So, in a way, this app really helps you in writing the way you usually think or speak.I think we can use this app to write proper stuff too. If we set it to 1 min, we can write much better stuff using this tool. Also, it would be great to have the functionality of not having the choice to delete what we have typed. Probably remove the backspace, delete and arrow-keys. I figure that I spend most of the time hitting backspace and deleting sentences. If I don't like the way I start a sentence, I should only be allowed to hit full-stop and start the new line and edit those things later.I hit backspace many times when writing this post. It considers backspace also writing something. Another option would be to just not count backspace/delete/arrow keys as typing something.This was really fun writing the whole thing set to 5 sec timer. I didn't know I could write so much without a 5 second gap.

moron4hireabout 9 years ago

I had a project similar to this this a few years ago, but it also organized your writing into chapters, save to and load from Dropbox or Google Drive, analyze your text for word usage and phrase repetition, berated you for not coming back to the site more often, and generated EPUB packages[0]. Two friends of mine used it to write and complete book projects after years of not being successful at motivating themselves to write.I just recently shut it down, because I couldn't figure out any way to monetize it that wouldn't involve destroying the minimal aesthetic, and I didn't want to keep losing money on the hosting costs anymore.If you're interested in checking it out for yourself, though, I published the code on GitHub: <a href="http://www.github.com/capnmidnight/JWD" rel="nofollow">http://www.github.com/capnmidnight/JWD</a>It's 100% client-side JS code. It was my first SPA project that I put real, significant effort into. Now, I work on virtual reality junk in the browser.[0] Though Amazon has an effective monopoly on eBooks and they don't support EPUB, there is a converter from EPUB to their proprietary format. I had always wanted to make it automatic, though.

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glossyscrabout 9 years ago

Nice idea was my first thought. Later I was looking for the site again, googled 'most dangerous wrting app' & found this:<a href="http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/28/10853534/flowstate-writing-app-mac-ios-delete-everything" rel="nofollow">http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/28/10853534/flowstate-writing...</a>

Luftschiffabout 9 years ago

So here's what I wrote in my 5 minute session. I like the App, it forced me to do a more introspective form of writing I'm pretty sure I would have not done otherwise. It's also a nice way to see just how much stuff can be written down in 5 minutes if you don't care too much (or at all) about content. I don't know if it has any applications beyond the novelty of the concept but it could be an ice way to do some journaling/get some stuff out of your head.Lets see how this works. It counts my words per minute. Im slow. I guess. I dont know. Jason sneel seems to be faster than me. hmmm. I¿ve run out of ideas and everything is sloooowing down. also id like a nice mechanical keyboard if only for the hipsterness of it all. and maybe i wouldnt get confused about keyboardlayout then. maybe I would, who knows. All I know is that I should really be working right now. Also: Why am I writing in English instead of Spanish or German? Is this really the language I can most comfortably express myself? I guess 8 years of GIBS and a lifetime of consuming american media has taken its toll. Not that I'm complaining. I like English, its fun, its easy. There is no formal way to adress people and there is only a single article. Using the for everything is great. It spares me from a lot of problems. Also not having accents. Thats super nice. Only the occasional ' which I am completely ignorning at the moment. Oh and capital letters, there are none. Except. At. The. Beginning. Of. Sentences. Thats super neat too. Everything that keeps me from thinking too much about how to write lets me think more about what to write. I wont complain. I am seeing that you can write a loot of stuff in 5 minutes if you dont care about the content. This is probably mostly gibberish but there might be something useful in here. Im still slow though, right now stabilizing at around 60 wpm. I can type faster but I am still thinking too much. Mostly about the keyboard and the placement of my fingers on it. its not entirely comfortable. And im done.

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igraviousabout 9 years ago

(After a couple of tries)You can cheat by just typing dsajlfkjsdlfkjhfsdl when the red mist descends and then erasing it.It turns out that the easiest mode of writing is "conversational observation mode". What do I mean by this?Imagine that I am talking to you and just describing my surroundings, and my inner states, and my activity.Surroundings: office, desk, energy drink, laptop. In that order.Inner state: bit wired (see above-mentioned energy drink), feeling nice after sauna in college gym.Activity: testing out this new writing app that is meant to help me get "in the flow" whatever that means. But all it has really done is show me that the only kind of sustained writing I can do is this simple narrative observation mode thingy.The app is interesting in that it has shown me that the only way that I am able to generate a continuous stream of words that have some chance of having logical coherence is

dredmorbiusabout 9 years ago

The last app I need to see is one that encourages drivel.My killer writing apps:4x6 index cards. For capturing quick thoughts, identifying references, marking items for verification or further interest. Advantages: you can write a fair bit on them (they've two sides), you can continue to another card, you box them for reference, you flashcard them for reminders. You can re-order, shuffle, or organise them however you want.A notebook for longer / temporally sequential writing. I'm working on what sizes I like most, though I'm leaning increasingly to large lab-book sized engineering tablets. Smaller ones for on-the-go work. Heavy enough paper for a fountain pen not to bleed (I've picked up a relatively inexpensive but nice one recently).For online composition: vim. Increasingly, Markdown, though I'm conversent in HTML, LaTeX, and a few other markup languages. The biggest challenge to composing online is that it's difficult to cut-and-paste in the original sense -- cutting out a segment of text and pasting it, whole, in a new spot. Vim's mark-and-move operators are actually among the better option, along with split-window view.Various online editors almost all pretty much precisely suck. The notable exception is Reddit using RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite), with its full-tab window (better yet with the browser set to full-screen), offering side-by-side source and Markdown formatted output. It's not quite as fluid as vim, but for up to about 40k characters (6,600 words or so), it's doable.The biggest problems I have when writing aren't writing. It's organising. My references. My thoughts. The overall structure of the document. Yes, quick jot-and-file systems are handy (a local email account used to file thoughts to is one of the better modes I've come up with -- everything is datestamped, has a subject, and may have additional metadata added), but ... constant pressure to ... just produce for no reason. Is stupid.As others have noted here, and as a tremendous literature of experience and research on getting-in-the-flow and true creativity supports, the modality of this particular gimmick is pretty much certifiably bullshit.

lisemanabout 9 years ago

what an interesting concept: technology as a constraint forcing you to focus. not just focus: focus more than you naturally would. focus more than you're comfortable with. continue going doing keeping on, regardless of whether you're comfortable with how it's going, with what you're keeping. will it all fade at the end? yeah, definitionally it will. fuck: and a word + character + wpm counter at the bottom? really hitting all the unhealthy adictiveness buttons. or healthily addictive in the right quantities? what's the ld50 on a writing app? on an app of any sort? the most dangerous app? i wonder if it'll be entirely different than the most-regulated app, a la chemicals. fuck is that really all i can do? 2:30 worth of content, including rambling digressions? it's a very real possibility. this fades, faster than the normal recession to black/white. ... let's see, what else is on my mind... ... to stay or go? i failed at ignoring politics, in spite of my success since protesting in 'free speech zones' at bush's reinauguration rnc in nyc. (found out years later that many other riders of critical mass got arrested) i'm convinced trump is going to win. it's bad: he's the president the average american deserves. the world doesn't, though; that's nearly narendra-modi-armani-level sad. and likely more negative at scale.

thomasskisabout 9 years ago

I was excited to use this for practicing writing Korean. Unfortunately it looks like whatever regex is looking at what I type does not like Korean characters... :/

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joluxabout 9 years ago

I'm not accusing you of anything but this app <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/28/10853534/flowstate-writing-app-mac-ios-delete-everything" rel="nofollow">http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/28/10853534/flowstate-writing...</a> does exactly the same thing but it's Mac native instead of web based. This Verge article also bills it as "the most dangerous app."

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totallymikeabout 9 years ago

I had no idea what this was, or why it might have been dangerous, so I tried it out.I typed stream of consciousness stuff about not really being sure why I was typing for about two minutes, and then paused briefly.I happened to spot the words fading away just as I resumed typing, so I typed some more about how I was curious about what happens when it fades all the way away. Then I paused for a moment again to find out.I found out.

desipenguinabout 9 years ago

I never understood the meme "there is an emacs package for that" till now. <a href="https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/write-or-die.el" rel="nofollow">https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/write-or-die.el</a> (obligatory xkcd reference : <a href="https://xkcd.com/378" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/378</a>)

TuringNYCabout 9 years ago

@maebert -- Just tried the app and I love it in every way! I finally wrote a letter that i've been meaning to write for over 2.5yrs!

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fbelzileabout 9 years ago

Similar idea, but I created a text editor that simply blocks you from everything on your computer until you reach a goal: <a href="http://writersblock.io" rel="nofollow">http://writersblock.io</a>

yitchelleabout 9 years ago

Imagine using this tool to create your next webapp. Launch within 5mins or your code wiped from the server.Sorry to be sarcastic about it, but I doubt if I could write anything meaningful if my writing is under such a risky burden.

eloyabout 9 years ago

I read the most dangerous App Writing... so I tried making a basic Javascript app to see what would happening... Now I read it again I see why everything disappeared...

troyinjapanabout 9 years ago

Or, a more full featured version, that was available a long time ago.<a href="http://writeordie.com/" rel="nofollow">http://writeordie.com/</a>

lukeinator42about 9 years ago

awesome app. just hacked together a desktop version with electron so I don't get distracted by other browser tabs. <a href="https://github.com/lukeinator42/themostdangerouswritingappdesktopedition" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/lukeinator42/themostdangerouswritingappde...</a>

martindaleabout 9 years ago

I wrote something really cool and the application failed to register my typing after about three minutes. Lost my work.

goshxabout 9 years ago

The flappy bird of writing apps. Well done.

tempodoxabout 9 years ago

Must be great training for politicians, sales persons and other professional producers of hot air.

badloginagainabout 9 years ago

The win condition is slightly meh. I want to see end stats, words mispelled, maybe a leaderboard.

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karstengwabout 9 years ago

Of course, you can use your 5 seconds to hit Strg-A Strg-C so your typed text is not lost.

Brendinoooabout 9 years ago

Very neat concept. Will probably use again. Thanks for making and sharing!

searineabout 9 years ago

Gimmick.

barkteryxabout 9 years ago

For capturing your Buckminster Fullerest of notes.

tanv_nadkarniabout 9 years ago

Many of us might suck at spellings and grammars to simply pay serious attention to detail. The dangerous editor isnt for us.

zootamabout 9 years ago

neat idea

simplemathabout 9 years ago

The Most Annoying Writing AppFTFY