Monday, November 10, 2008

Write Or Die : Dr Wicked's Writing Lab

Hat tip to Lifehacker

Start test:

Well, this ought to be interesting.

The idea is to keep writing. Keep writing, and to do so, make use of automated prods. Keeping writing is one of the suggestions I received early on, but which can be tough to sustain. Write, write, write, and then go back later to cull, edit, sieve, harvest, and retrieve anything good that may have come out of the exercise.

This web app will prod you if you stop writing. There are several modes, such as gentle
\
ok I just hit the first prod. The screen went pink when I stopped wiring for something on the order of ten or 15 seconds. I think that the settings I went with will result in words beginning to disappear from the end if I stop for longer than that.

So far I've been writing to 6 and a half minutes, and I've written 143 words. I don't think I was very realistic in setting my target of 500 words in 10 minutes, but let's see what happens. [No, I was mistaken. The timer counts down, so I had 6 and a half minutes to go.]

I'm thinking I need to simply stop my tendency to backspace and correct things when I'm in this fast mode that I chose to try. Just go go go go go go go go, Het that's a way of chating the word count. I still can't resist the urget o hit the backspace key (did it twice, three times there) but now I'm at four minutes left and 232 words down.

This promises to be a useful device. I wonder if you can get it on a usb key, portable, to use at work, holy shit I waste a lot of time trying to compose stuff at work. maybe allocating five minutes to an email response would be useful. I think eventually you could retrain yourself to be much more productive a the keyboard

See, I'm gettig better already, as shown by the increas in errors. But who cares about errors when the object is to simply write down words for later polishing?

Logjam! Oh, shit, now what? Write! asshole! OK. Oh, man. take a break. See what the second prompt is. Stop now. Well, OK, the screen changed color starting at about 8 secnds, and went to red in one-second increments over about ten seconds. I didn't wait any longer to see what would happen [Apparently it starts making noise, but I don't have sound on this computer.] if I waited more. One minute to go, 389 words down.

Well, this has certainly been an interesting introduction to this web app. I think , no I know, I will be back to make further use of it, but I will be more realistic in my goal setting. 500 words in 10 minutes is pretty fucking intesne. Intense. 321

OK, the exercise is over. I got about 440 words down in ten minutes. Are they any good? Who cares. It was just a test. Could I go back and retrieve anything of value rom this forced stream of consciousness or whatever? maybe.


Congratulations Dr. Wicked! Very interesting. I'll be back.

491
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lab.drwicked.com


PS: There's a "Done" button in the web app that I did not click at the end of the ten minutes, which accounts for the 15 minutes stated in the banner above, and I did not stop typing at the end of ten minutes, which accounts for the higher number of words. Next time I'll get it wright (get it?).

1 comment:

jj mollo said...

Whew! I'm worn out reading it. My own goal is to say more with fewer words. Use poetry rather than prose.