Write or Die 2.0, Putting the "Prod" in Productivity
We're one week into NaNoWriMo and many, many people have used Write or Die.
I'd like to thank you all for your feedback and for sharing this with your friends. Now it's time to introduce a few improvements to the application. No, there's still no Electric Shock mode, though if anyone knows a USB device manufacturer we could perhaps talk.
Without further ado I'd like to introduce:
Here's a rundown of the new features.
- Auto Clipboard Copy! If you navigate away from the page it will prompt you if you'd like to have your work auto-copied to the clipboard. Should save some people some hair loss (credit)
- Pause function added, but it will only work once! This is the only concession I make to your human needs.
- Done button added. If you're done writing, click done and a frame will pop over the text box, showing you what you've written as well as...
- Bragging Widget! On the Done Page, I've added a widget that you can copy to your page to show everyone how much you wrote and in what little time!
- More Evil Sounds! Some people didn't think Rick Astley and Hanson were bad enough, now we've got the Devil's interval, among others.
- Word Count decreases in Kamikaze mode for extra ominosity.
posted by Dr. Wicked at
11:18 AM
124 Comments:
THIS PROGRAM ATE WHAT I WROTE.
I had gotten 300 words done in 8 minutes, I was really excited. I hit the done button and in the little space where I was supposed to see all my hard work, there was a blurb about an HTML error or something of the sort. Ok, I thought. It'll save it to my clipboard when I ask it to. Oh no. What I got was the code for the widget, which was not what I wanted at all.
DX
I really liked this thing. Too bad what I wrote went in the trash.
I'm sorry it ate your words!
What mode were you using? And what browser? I'll do whatever I can to fix it. I just rolled out version 2 as you can see so the done feature might have bugs in it I haven't found yet. I hope you'll come back and use it and let me know the mode/browser you're using so I can hunt down the bug.
Thanks and regards,
Dr Wicked
Fixed the problem!
Was trying to solve one problem (Line breaks not showing up on done page) and created another. Rolled that part of the code back so it should be better now. My most sincere apologies if anyone else lost work.
I love Write or Die!!! It's the best writing program I have ever seen. I get so distracted by everything around me that I don't write. Your program helps me write by putting the popups in my face. And I love it!
I do have one question though. I live and go to school in an area that doesn't have the best internet connection, and I was wondering if there was any way to download Write or Die.
Thank you so much again for creating this!!!
Hey there, I just used Version 2.0 of Write or Die for the first time. I was just writing along, and after my time limit ran out (10 minutes), a happy (but annoying) tune started playing. Is this supposed to happen as a sort of notification that your time limit is up? I kept typing, but the music didn't stop playing. I am using the latest version of Mozilla Firefox, and I was using Normal Mode at the time. I copied my work and hit the Back button, and that solved the problem. Not the biggest deal in the world, but I'm curious.
Actually, it's not negative reinforcement.
In operant conditioning
positive = to add something
negative = to take something away
reinforcement = strengthens a behavior
punishment = weakens a behavior.
Positive and negative don't have anything to do with how pleasant the reinforcement or punishment is.
Thus, negative reinforcement is to reinforce a behavior by taking something away (ie, if you jump over the barrier, you'll stop getting shocked).
This is positive punishment: if you stop writing, you will have an unpleasant effect. Therefore, the likelihood that your writing will stop is REDUCED.
The reason it isn't positive reinforcement, then, is because the stimulus - in this case, the unpleasant popup, noise, or self-destruct) is applied after the behavior of "stopping" not after the behavior of "writing" - thus the only behavior being reacted to is that of "stopping".
So...yup.
Sorry, I'm in a psych class right now and this was a big red flag.
Here's a wiki article, though a psych text would be better explanation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement
This saved my NaNo, when I lost my will to write! Please make a downloadable version for those of us forced to write without net access most days!
(Ignore the name, that is from my non-nano story ;))
Using write or die I wrote something like 6k in just over 4 hours. THANK YOU!
Looks pretty cool so far... definately better since the last version. However, I've fiddled around with the buttons to satisfy my distraction-y needs, and I've found that the pause button doesn't work properly.
A popup comes up saying you can only do it once and when you click 'OK' you go back to the writing screen... and nothing changes. If you leave it the warnings will still come.
So the pause button doesn't pause. That's the only problem I've found so far :D
This is wonderful. I have a few questions:
- How do you set it to use "The Devil's Interval"?
- For me, twenty seconds of not writing before consequences kick in is too long ;) I'd love a version where you could set the amount of time before the consequences started (I understand that that would be difficult to program, though, so it's just a suggestion).
- I'm not able to drag the whole widget... I'm only able to get one line of text... (I use Safari)
Also, Sarah, I believe that the pause buttoon only works once.
Thank you!
Thanks all for your responses! I'll address a few things here and maybe save some others for a blog post.
Faye:
I was aware that I was butchering the language a bit, but I decided to let it be (trust me, I'm a pedant too and actually stressed out about this)
I went with Negative Reinforcement simply because I think it sounds better and conveys the meaning of the application more effectively (though technically inaccurately) to the mass of users. My fudge around the language is to say that the stimulus (annoying sound) though not present for 20 seconds, is inherent in the program, like the electrified floor in a rat's cage.
So in a sense, writing does take away the stimulus. But I totally agree with you that it's not technically accurate, I just wanted to let you know that it was intentional.
Sarah:
Actually, the popup box IS the pause function, it was the best way I found to halt everything across every mode. But I'll make it more explicit in the text box saying "PAUSED: This only works once". Thanks!
saphiroko:
I've had a few reports of this happening to people. I haven't yet been able to reproduce it but I'll see what I can find. Thanks for the heads up!
moonreader:
The Devil's Interval (sawtooth wave of diminished fifth chord) is one of the new sounds, sounds are still selected at random.
You have to select all the text in the text area below the widget and paste it. It might indeed look like one big line but it should work.
Re:shorter grace period, that's one thing that I've had a lot of comment on and I might reduce that time.
Thanks again all for using the program and for your kind responses. If there's anything further I can do, let me know here or by email to doctorwicked@gmail.com
Dr. Wicked: Thanks!
I'm the most prolific author on Mugglenet, but I struggled to make my daily NaNo goal until a friend recommended Write or Die. Thank you for putting the magic back into my writing!
I love this more than anything in the world. Sometimes, I write, and don't watch the words, but watch the wordcount instead. It inspires me to write faster, and I'm already six days ahead of schedule.
Can I suggest, though, that you make a version of normal mode with only scary, ominous sounds? The threat of horror-movie music coming on at three in the morning in the dark is a great motivator.
aha, I feel smart now =P
Yes, the reduction in grace time is fantastic. If we could adjust that variable ourselves, it would be even cooler.
Thanks for this service!
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
One of the biggest problems I have writing is actually setting aside the time to do it.. and then using that time to actually *write*.
I've used your site, oh, four or five times over the past three days, and each time it's helped me get something done. Some days it's just over 500 words, but that's better than nothing, and it's done so quickly that I often sit there contemplating doing it again. "Hey, that only took me 18 minutes! I bet if I really focus I could get my full daily wordcount out of this!"
Again, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are saving my writer-self from dying of self-defeatism.
btw, the decreased wait time works great. I use Normal Mode and just the screen changing color is enough to spur me on.
Woo! I love this thing! Just today I've gotten over 1700 words written in a total of one hour. That is AMAZING for me! I had just been suffering a mild form of writer's block because my characters were being very dull and not doing anything very original. Well, when I started writing and not thinking too hard about it, they just exploded into these wonderful, snarky, FUN characters that are just a blast to write! Thanks so much! And my plot took a twist that it probably would not have taken had I not used this program.*sends huggles*
The autocopy (and the "copy to clipboard" links didn't work for me either). I'm almost wondering if I got a random word from somebody else's writing, because what I pasted was the word "Courting"-- I'm pretty sure I haven't used that word, let alone copied it, since I turned on the computer this morning.
I'm on MacOS 10.5.5, using Firefox 3.0.3.
Great idea for a program, though!
@stinkyharry
I know it's not possible for things to get crossed between users because the whole script is run client-side (i.e. your computer runs the script and the server stores nothing). The copy function is written in flash and it might even be a little bit of a hack.
Are you using Flash 10? That might be the link between the different accounts of non-workiness (sorry for my special ed words, I've been up since 4).
Great app. But one suggestion: Currently the text output after clicking on the "done" button is rendered as HTML, so, for instance, line breaks are stripped. It might be better to mark it as code or preformatted text so this doesn't happen.
I think you should add a more evil Kamikaze mode in addition to the current one. It looks like Kamikaze mode deletes one word per second. The more severe mode could delete words at an accelerating rate. Start it at one word per second for maybe three seconds, then amp it up to one word per 0.75 seconds for a few seconds, then 0.5 seconds, then 0.25 seconds and so on. Bring da pain! Just throwing that out there, like I mentioned on Youtube.
Great app, btw.
I have no idea how to use the clipboard function, alas, but other than that, this works really, really well! I gave myself an hour to write 500 words, and ended up doing it in less than 20 minutes! What a great idea. Thank you.
@andrew g:
Very good suggestion! I will implement it post-haste!
@brian
I may be wicked, but I'm not evil. Hopefully people realize their work is being deleted within a few words. Perhaps I could make it so that if kamikaze mode catches you a couple of times it starts deleting two words at a time or something like that, hmm. I shall ponder.
@leah
The clipboard thing should work automatically by either clicking the copy to clipboard link on the done page or by pressing okay when you exit the page. Though it's always good to make sure you've copied your work into a document before you leave the page as the autocopy function has been known to be finicky on flash 10.
It could be very useful! Is there any chance of having this as an offline app? I would love to use it during my long train trips...
I don't know how hard this would be, but could you add a fifteen minute option? That would make it a lot easier for me to write 500 words, because 20 minutes is simply too much for that. Or you could just have something where you type in how many minutes. I don't know if that would be difficult . . . just a suggestion. Thanks!
for the Electric Shock mode you should have one of those Screaming Shock.swf for those that have serious ADD/ADHD(I'm one) or for those that can't afford the major coffee bill this month.
I love you. Can I marry you? You saved my NaNo wordcount from falling drastically behind! 2000 words in about an hour and a half at most!
This is truly the only useful writing tool I have found on the net. You are a genius. I have tried everything to try to get myself to write, but all the "positive reinforcement" / Artist's Way kind of stuff just didn't do it for me.. in the pants. This widget on the other hand is HOT. I plan on staying up with it all night. Thnx.
GREAT PROGRAM. Seriously. Kamikaze mode is perfect for word wars in Nano. My only request would be that you maybe add a 5 minute and 15 minute interval, for people who do word wars often (the general time seems to be about 15 minutes) or who only want to write for five minutes or so to get jumpstarted. But it's just an idea and the program works great without it. Thank you!
I admit, I was skeptical of this at first-but I got 110 words done in one minute, and my confidence was restored. Definitely using this for my NaNo and my two impending essays!
-Rayne (melodramaqueen)
my kamikaze mode won't select!!!
wow. Just wow. This is the best writing reinforcement ever. Seriously. I'm with everyone else. Create your own company and market this. This is the very first app I was willing to pay to download. Although...yes, I think the normal music needs to be more annoying, lol. The youtube video was cool. Thanks for thinking outside the box.
When will the electric shock mode going to be up and running? I think that I might need it.
Hmm. The annoying sounds for Normal Mode don't seem to be working on my computer. Any ideas as to what the problem might be?
@emily
What browser are you using and do you have the flash plugin installed and enabled? Write or Die uses flash to play its sounds.
I was using Firefox, although I just tried it on Internet Explorer and the same thing happened.
I apparently have the Shockwave Flash 10.0 r12 plugin, and it isn't disabled.
Never mind - it still doesn't want to work for Firefox or IE, but I just tried Safari and it gave me a truly horrendous noise after I let the screen get red.
Not sure what the problem is with some browsers as opposed to others, but I guess I can just use Safari if I want to do the Normal mode.
I just want to add my 25 cents to the offline version vote. I'm sure you could package up a version of the site that has all the resources necessary to run the javascript without having net access. Just the color changing alone has been enough to help me get back on track from missing a couple days of NaNo work but I would definitely prefer to do everything I can to stay away from the timesink of the internet! This thing is so damn useful that if you don't make an offline version soon I may be tempted to dig into the source and make one... ;)
Wow, this is fantastic. I just wrote 2500 words in an hour, plus under all the pressure of hoping that I wouldn't lose it all to the kamikaze thing, I came up with an amazing little turn in my plot that has given me great hope in completing it the way I want it to end.
Thanks!
This thing is amazing! I thought my NaNo was dead, but apparently, there is now hope! This program is great - 1000 words in 15 minutes?!? That's just ridiculous! I was also wondering if there is a way to get an offline version of Write or Die? Please let me know.
Thanks!
This is awesome! Vastly improves my writing efficiency.
Is there any way to get an "offline" version to download and use when internet isn't available?
Thanks!
Write or Die rocks. I've been trying to maintain ten minutes of straight writing with short breaks somehow, and timers alone haven't done it for me. Yay for kamikaze mode. I don't want to lose my precious words, so I just keep writing. Increased productivity? Why, yes!
This is amazing! I've promoted it to all the Wrimos I know... I normally write about 1000 words in an hour, and I did nearly 1800 in 40 minutes earlier. I reached my daily word count target before 10am!
um. am i dumb? must be. i rolled over every link i could find on this page and elsewhere on your website and i can't find a link to where i actually download the app. help?
okay, i AM dumb. just figured it out. nevermind ;P
Have you considered making an offline version of this? This would be useful when I'm on the road with my laptop.
Ah, just saw the blog post. Excellent, about working on an offline version.
You...are my hero. I just wrote 957 words in 20 minutes! I have been crazy behind in my Nano novel, and you just saved it. Thank you so much!
Wow! It's awesome. By using this program, I did about 2000 words in one hour and got my NaNoWriMo:s 50000 words done in 10 days. For now on, I'm going to write with this always!
Fantastic. I just wrote 1000 words in 30 mins. I never knew I could type so fast! love, LOVE, this app :D
I totally LOVE this program!
Yesterday I was about 4K behind in my writing... used the program in three seperate occasions during the day and managed to get about
3K done with it. (This on top of the only 900 I had done that day without the program.)
Write or Die saved my Nano!
BRILLIANT!
Thank you so much! I am writing a thesis, and have fallen way behind because of I have so much difficulty getting myself to start writing when I sit down to do it. Now, I may not have to write the whole thing in the last week!!! You just saved my life.
One small question: Is there any way to make the font bigger? It's tiny, and I'm having trouble reading it
This is an amazing tool for us WriMo's. But I, too, would like to request that you add a 15 minute option; the most common duration for word wars in my region (and many more, it seems) is 15 minutes.
Thanks for this great tool!
I do believe I'm going to cry. I was typing along and, apparently, accidentally hit the [tab] key, which made the focus move to the 'done' button, and the next keystroke activate it, giving me a dialog box asking if I wanted to save all my work. The options were 'Ok' and 'Cancel'. Now, since I didn't actually intend to quit, I hit 'Cancel', thinking it would drop me back into the app and let me continue. Only, it didn't. Instead, it quit the app without saving any of what I'd written!
It would be really nice to have some way to tell the app that you did NOT want to quit and go back to your writing.
Using Normal mode and Firefox 3.0.4.
@munky
I am so very sorry you lost your writing! The dialogue that pops up is asking you if you want to copy it to the clipboard, stopping it from leaving the page is a little tricky (IE supports the function, but it's a hack). It's definitely a feature I want to implement in the future. Once again, I'm very sorry you lost your writing. If you decide to use it again, and I hope you will, test it out by typing in something meaningless and then try leaving the page and pressing okay. It should then copy automatically to your clipboard.
@dr wicked
*whimper* Well, at least I hadn't gotten very far. It was only about 350 words. And, yes, I'll keep using it. A fellow NaNo at a write-in told me about it, and since I'm notoriously bad about actually writing at write-ins, I gave it a shot. It definitely kept me writing at times when previously I would've stopped and chatted with others. :)
i write reviews for music albums and i've used your tool to clear all this month's due reviews in one evening!.
as an additional mode -probably low on your priority list- i'd suggest adding a pre-timer just to get previous research (i use the band's myspace and wikipedia page, for example) and notes together in another tab. five minutes and a fanfare would do it :)
I love this! It was stupid because I used to know what to write next, I had a whole outline, but I just couldn't seem to get the words out, I'd just stare into the distance... I'm unbelievably behind on my NaNovel, I'm hoping this'll help!
One problem: In the Normal mode, it doesn't make any sound when I stop writing, like it's supposed to. I think it might be because I use Safari, but I don't know. It's a shame. :)
Great program, love it, it's saved my NaNo, but I have one MAJOR complaint: When you're in Kamikaze mode and you've paused it, when you unpause it starts untyping your work as if you stopped writing. When this happened to me, I clicked in the box and began to type. When I clicked, I didn't realize it highlighted everything I had, so when I typed I lost well over 600 words T_T If possible, could you fix it so it doesn't punish you for clicking pause?
where the hell is the "clipboard" which has no explanation for usage on the main page??? i lost 1200 words no thank you!!
Hehe. Sara and Joe: the clipboard is in your computer. It means that when something is copied to your clipboard, the next time you right-click/paste into a word processing program, what you wrote in Write or Die will be copied. It's not something that's part of Write or Die.
this is so cool! I have this site saved in my favorites and bookmarked. A very valuable tool for writing motivation. Thank you Dr. Wicked. U Rock!
I managed to break my record. With Write or die, I have increased my speed for writing 2k a day to nearly five hours down to a single hour. Today I managed to write 1k in a half hour! (1064 words in 30 minutes).
Thank you so much for saving that huge chunk of time!
Is there a NaNoer you haven't thrilled with this amazing creation? I love it! It's keeping me on track! I'm spitting out the same random crap as before, but this time, MUCH QUICKER! With an old favorite movie in the background I don't feel like I'm actually working, but not having to pay attention to the movie, my word count is SKYROCKETING!
Yep, it's official. I love it.
Thank you SO MUCH for this program. It got me out of my rut, I churned out 22,000 words in the past ten days, and finally finished the book I've been working on for eleven months.
You are a LIFESAVER.
Great idea! I love it! :) Also, in the spirit of "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", I've written a very basic emacs minor-mode version. (http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/WriteOrDieMode)
Please let me know if it's helpful to anyone.
@Duncan
I am working on an offline version but thanks for doing an emacs version. I doubt you'd be taking much of my potential customer base. I'm fairly nerdy but I'm not quite that nerdy. Thanks for contributing.
Wow! I like this
for future upgrades, you may want to invest some time in developing a button that will not allow you to use the backspace or arrow keys.
Love the program, unfortunately due to a "perfect storm" I managed to unpause my one and only pause while showing a colleague something else on my pc and lost about 800 words. Not sure if any future updates are planned, but automatically copying the words to the clipboard when the pause is used would be AWESOME. Just saying. Thanks for putting this together, a great program and way to get the words out for later revision.
I got like 2,000 words in 40 minutes. It works like wonders :D I like this, because I started late, so I have to catch up with like 7,000 words every day, but with this, I would only have to write for around a little over three hours, which is a total relief x] I like this, and I bookmarked it. Which is pretty awesome, since I'm only 1/5 done with my novel so far. And since I keep staring at my time limit and word count, it just makes me feel giddy and pretty satisfied with my work.
I love this. It has literally saved my NaNo. Before I started using this I was so far behind it wasn't even funny, once I saw this and started using it, I not only caught up, but I actually finished early. Thank you so much for making this. It has allowed me to write 2000 words in an hour.
I'd like to second (or whatever number we're on) the creation of the fifteen minute interval, it would be a lot of help.
This app saved me from Nanowrimo hell! I was down more than 10,000 words, and so far, it's helped me catch up half way in one day! I've been writing for about a total of 2 hours, and managed to get a little over 5,000 words. Thanks for making Evil and Kamikaze an option!
This thing is a bloody life saver! Today I was over 6k behind for NaNo and I've been able to write over 1000 words in just under 20 minutes!
At this rate, I'll be able to catch up and then some!
Thank you SO MUCH! This program let me get over 2,500 words in an hour! That is amazing! This thing saved my NaNo novel! :D
This program is definitely the best thing I've ever used to up my wordcount. It makes me focus (which is nearly impossible for me) and just in the first day, I got 1800+ words in three sessions. I love it because it tells me just how many words I've written as I'm writing and I can stop whenever I've reached my goal.
50K or BUST!!
This was amazing. 1000 words done in 44 minutes... That has to be a record for me. And thanks to those 1000 words, not only has my wordcount jumped, but I now have a new plot device! Thank you so much!
Issues:
- Copy and Paste link doesn't work... AutoCopy works when directed away from the page though.
- What happened to my line breaks? D=
- When I reached the widget page, there was a weird little ticker in the background... it was like a string of "something something 00002", and the "00002" bit kept on growing longer and longer: with each second that ticked by, another 0 would be added. It wasn't really anything that bothered me, per se, but it was just a little disconcerting to see the horizontal slider at the bottom of the page getting smaller and smaller as the string pushed towards infinity.
I've written almost my entire NaNoWriMo novel this year using this app. It's been amazing, and has forced me to use ideas I might not otherwise have run with. THANK YOU for creating it!
I LOVE THIS PROGRAM!!!
I wrote 600 words in 20 minutes! :D
LOVE IT!!!!!!!
Your site is brilliant! I found it at a time when I was spending all day trying to add 2,000 words to my NaNoWriMo novel and suddenly I am finishing my word quotas in half the time! I owe at least half my novel to your little program. Thank you so much! :-)
I love this program! Just one thing, that banana phone song is NOT negative! I like it, though it drives my roommate crazy. And the Peanut Butter Jelly Time song. Definetly not negative! ;)
ok. you're kinda brilliant.
Love it!
It helps me a lot. I use it for NaNoWriMo and it always gets me going.
Thank you!
I love this app! It's definitely saving my NaNo, in about half an hour I managed to write over 1000 words. With out this thing I'd normally get about 500 or so done in the same amount of time from all the distractions of the internet. I think this just might be the key to surviving my first NaNoWriMo.
Thank you for this. :) I just wrote a little over 5K in two hours, and I'm shooting for five more before bed because your program just helped me prove it was possible.
I'm a young author who, let's just say gets a little ADD sometimes. I use this program one time and I'm in love. (1500 words in an hour!)
I've even recommended this to some of my friends who have used it. One of them liked it a lot and the other said it was "the most sadistic thing EVER." But that friend is more ADD than I.
As soon as I can get some time to write for an hour or so, I'll be back to work on my stories. Who knows? I may use this to write a term paper or two! ^_^
LUV's from Khaos
Is there any reason for the fact that it often shows that I've written more words than I actually have? I mean, it's possible that it's my mistake, but Microsoft Word, which tends, I think, to tell me I have more words than other counters, says I have less than you tell me, as does the NaNoWriMo counter. Occasionally I can have, say, 234 words, type one more, and my count will be 236. Why is this happening? It's making it very difficult for me to keep my word count current.
Never mind. I figured it out. I put two spaces after sentences, and for some reason it makes the next word count as two words. So basically, I get an extra word per sentence. So I know why now. It's still annoying. Maybe something to keep in mind when making future changes?
I love write-or-die --- about 35,000 words of my nano novel have been written using it so far.
I use emacs as my text editor, so today (instead of writing ;() I ported write-or-die to emacs; I've posted about it here
Thanks for the prod, Dr. Wicked!
This thing has saved my NaNoWriMo. On the last day, it helped me to do 10,000 words, each with 1,000 in 30 minute segments. I never would have finished without this. Thank you so much!
Best little gadget on the internet in my opinion. Thanks muchly for the creation. It's saved me from continuing to suffer a horrendous writer's block.
Hope to see a net-free version. =]
Yeah, i liked it!
Record: 4036 words in 60 minutes ^-^
Though I really love this program it has of late not been working for me. Sometimes it when I start to write it will not record my word count, and even when it does record word count it will more often than not, do nothing when I cease writing, instead a long list of one sentence: "song1" is an invalid sound ID," appears below the word box.
just wanted to let you know since I really like this program. It helps a lot when I cannot think of anything to say.
Thank you.
I really mean it. :)
Dr. Wicked-
I think you just saved my master's thesis.
Eternally Grateful,
Stephanie
Great app! It's definitely helping me in the process of writing my thesis
:)
But I found a bug in your version 2.0, I was working on kamikaze mode and it was going great (it actually deleted some words when I was lazy enough to write), but after I used the pause button the app stoped working, I mean the screen become red and so on, but no words were deleted and i avoid my writing again. Hope you can fix it.
Thanks so much!
Greetings from Mexico!
I made a Windows-only offline clone called Punish Pad. Still rough around the edges (no fancy sounds, for example) but if you need an offline app and use Windows, it got the job done for me last Nano.
I lost my text, written in two hours. About thousand words of my new novel. I copied it, to paste it in a scrivener file; pressed the done bottom and the option "abbrechen" in order to come back. But the program closed the browser (safari) and when I wanted to save the text, I realized, that it was gone.
Could you please help me to find it again?
Its in german.
Firstly, I used this program many times in the past, and I have to say its fantastic! However, today, the 'copy to clipboard' function seems to be broken. Neither the links nor the dialogue box that comes up when I close the browser actually save to the clipboard.
I've tested in both IE7 and Firefox3.
Still great - just remember to copy and paste manually for now..
I just wrote about your fiendishly clever web app on my blog for writers, and gave it a glowing review. Thought you'd want to check it out. Positive (and free) publicity is always a good thing.
Delightfully Wicked Web App for Writers
I also tweeted about it on Twitter to promote the review. I'd be interested to know if you get any referrals from my site. I'm putting you on my links page, too.
Thanks for a brilliant program.
Deb Gallardo
The Story Ideas Virtuoso
Suggestion for your Electric Shock mode:
The noise = annoying buzzing/siren sound
Visual = Lighting bolts (not sure if it's possible)
Motivation = Random words throughout your text are deleted
PS: I LOVE WRITE OR DIE! Can't wait for the download version.
Some notes on what could be improved:
The "this is what you wrote" lost the paragraph breaks, which were really important for me to separate things out (I wasn't writing in complete sentences). But I see you're having trouble fixing that - g'luck. I'd rather have unbroken text than no text!
AND the first two times I heard the "evil sound" (on Normal, Moderate, Time Limit) the sound effect actually made me LAUGH. Is it possible to CHOOSE the evil sound? Screeching violin, crying babies, etc., much more effective than peanut butter jelly time on me.
That said, excellent program, thank you for putting so much time into this. I really love the color change, it catches my wandering attention (like they say about ADD--oh! bicycle, shiny) without punishing me until I REALLY don't write.
What can I say...this gem saves my authorial bacon every time I sit down to write! I love it and recommend it at every opportunity.
You know what would be really awesome for us hardcore wordcount crunchers? An element of self-competition.
You already have the wordcount and timer; how about adding more stats, such as Best Minute, Last Minute, Average Minute, Best Ten Minutes, Last Ten Minutes, Average Ten Minutes. Calculated in blocks of course, not recalculating every second! What do you say, can it be done?
I time myself in ten-minute blocks and compare each block to the others, but as it stands I have to keep the numbers in my head. The "prod" effect would be much greater if I could see when I was "beating" myself...
Actually, I can see this as a Facebook app where we are in direct competition with other writers and there are highscores for sessions/minutes/ten-minute blocks. Of course you'd have to block the Paste function and employ a language filter to prevent gobbledygook from winning.
It would also be lovely if your window was able to use smart curly quotes/apostrophes so I don't have to go through afterwards and replace them all!
You rock, keep up the good work :)
I, and my chemistry grade this semester, would like to thank you FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR TIRED LITTLE HEARTS. I discovered this last year and used it (to great effect) for NaNo, but I was sitting here a few hours ago contemplating an all-nighter, squeezing out a few words at a time, and ending the night still on a first draft. But thanks to you, I now have a fully complete chemistry draft, which I now have the rest of the evening to edit.
I love Write or Die.
I have ADD without hyperactivity, and procrastination is one of the most annoying symptoms. Whenever I've realized I've gotten myself in trouble and waited to the last day I come here and am always surprised with how fast I can get my work done!
Great, just great. A true service to humanity.
A friend told me about Write or Die, and I just wanted to say thanks! What a fine piece of work!
Deb
Fantastic application, so useful - boosted the amount I write in a month wonderfully. Any chance there'll be an offline version available?
For all the people clamoring for an offline version, a program with similar functionality as an offline app for Windows: google "Punish Pad".
Sorry, that's "PunishPad", one word, no space.
PunishPad.
Hi! I love your program. Just a couple suggestions, I don't know if they're feasible or not:
1. Have an option to disable the backspace button.
2. Give a choice of the "annoying stimulus" instead of making it random; Different people find different sounds more annoying and might even find some of the sounds enjoyable. I was using it with the banana phone sound, and whenever someone would come in I'd stop writing so the sound would play. Well, one person started dancing to it... and singing :)
I wrote 1100 words in TWENTY MINUTES on here!!! It was coherent except for a few typos, that time included a bunch of changes...it was so dang awesome. I can never motivate myself to start and continue writing, but I do love it. I've written more today than i normally do in 2 weeks. I love this site, I've spent all day telling everyone how neat it is.
Okay, I guess I'm just blind, but I can't find a download link anywhere on your page. I wanna try it out!
Angie,
You don't have to download it, you use it directly from your browser (took me a little while to get that too, the first time). Go here:
http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html
Then (in the little box at the top left) enter your word goal and/or time goal, pick how strict you want the program to be, then click on "Write". That's all! :)
This website helped me write my first piece of writing in months, due to a harsh writer's block!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
-sob- I feel like I've been set free!
Write or Die is Amazing!
The only bad thing is, I can't put in tabs to start paragraphs, and at the end, after you click the 'done' button, my words show up as one big blob. Once I pasted it inside a document, I had to make paragraphs, indents, etc.
xD Still amazing!
This helped be because I fall asleep a lot towards the end of the night. Car alarms and screaming babies definitely help keep me awake and writing. Thanks a lot!
This is so great. :D I had a scene that I was stalling on writing for days because the subject matter was difficult for me, and WoD got me to just push through and write it. I'm going to use this all the time now.
First off, let me say that I thoroughly enjoy using your program. It certainly makes the task of writing easier for those of us who can't just sit down and get work done.
However, I agree with many of those who already commented in that normal mode should allow a person to choose the sound that is played. I also think you could use to add something incredibly irritating, like a high-pitched screech.
It's also annoying that touching anything on the keyboard resets the grace period. Even touching the light-up volume button on my laptop is enough.
I would definitely like to see a shorter grace period overall. Something like five seconds would be great.
Although Write or Die is fab for me, I can get distracted by anything, especially editing.
There's a writing/organising program called Liquid Storybinder XE that has a typewriter mode. The typewriter disables all arrow buttons and anything except minimal backspace. That's something brilliant for me but then I don't have the active reinforcement to write.
I think a combination of the two would be absolutely perfect. ; )
Also, for the annoying sound we seem to have missed a trick.
You know that physically painful sound that makes you cringe just remembering it?
Yup. Nails down a blackboard.
:D
Talk about a glutton for punishment. XD
I think I may be in love. I am off to test my feelings.
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