I have a new favorite tool:
You select a word goal and a time goal and a level of intimidation, and then you type away into a text box, and that’s the simple beauty of it: the site works by prodding you when you stop writing for more than a few seconds. You get a nice little victory trumpet when you reach a word goal, and the same when the time’s up. I’ve only worked on the “gentle” mode, so the worst I’ve gotten is the screen flashing various shades of red at me.
But I did churn out 359 words in 10 minutes, and that was with stopping to think, “Wait, what was that guy’s name in that one play? Oh, right: Hamlet” once or twice.
One significant problem I’ve encountered when I’m working on the dissertation is that I have a tendency to – how best to put this? – not so much lose my path as to veer aimlessly from it, cutting smaller more random paths as I go. I mean this: I’ll set out to write about one scene from The Spanish Tragedy, which will invariably lead me to flip through the play and read other scenes I might like to write about, or get an idea about the etymology of a word and head to the Oxford English Dictionary to look it up, or decide that before I can write anything I absolutely, positively, must right this minute read that article on Galen and the gladiators.
Hours later I’ve got the strands of five different possible arguments in hand but no coherent whole.
Turning off the internet for a set period of time has helped greatly – for the which I use Freedom – though I find myself fighting down the urge to go-look-just-this-one-fact-up-it-really-won’t-take-that-long-and-then-I’ll-get-back-to-writing-I-swear.
But Write or Die has worked well for forcing myself to maintain focus and plow through with concrete, easily-expressible arguments.
Because I am intimidated by flashing screens.
4 Comments
November 17, 2008 at 11:26 am
Hmmm. Interesting idea. Somewhere between automatic writing (spooky, ghosts) and doing intervals on the track. Fun. And not so fun. I think I’ll try it today, though. What’s to lose. I’ll be up for air in a while…
Hey, when are you back in ny? Will you be there by Dec 6th?
THE -Plans- WORKS
(whose gettin’ cryptic now?)
November 17, 2008 at 11:27 am
oh, wait, I see you’re back… welcome back!
so be sure to still be in ny on the 6th!~
December 8, 2008 at 6:12 pm
[...] or Die: the subtle knot discovers another way to feel that you’re not writing enough. I think you could train a dog [...]
April 7, 2009 at 7:53 am
So, I wonder how long this will take… 350 words-per-10-minutes in a sapphire-red screen flashing me to death… I’ve never tried this before so I wonder how it will work… Will I find myself dying of Red-Blur-Disease? It’s flashed three or four times now. I like it. It kind-of hurts my eyes. I read about it from an article… It’s interesting. I want to wait.. But I’m not terrified of flashing screens I won- It’ has shown me that if I push it too far past pink, red takes over, followed by a deafening horn that was invented by the devil, with parts of an old Toyota. By any means necessary, it will work to make you write I suppose. So, how about a more … electrifying nature of… -don’t HONK! DON’T HONK!!- …motivation. OKAY OKAY OKAY!!! GOD You’re worse than my alarm clock, Even IT’s not that harsh on me. I’ll have a die-hard paper or a DAMN strong headache… With three minutes left on the clock, I’ll have the headache first. Pink, red, bright red, no. Pink – - Salmon – - – - – Red – - – -Bright red and the imminently impending horn removes my will to wait – or test – any longer. – Have I finished, finally? No. Not Yet. Just an angry red screen watching me intently. Thirty seconds on the clock. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen. I still haven’t fi- And the honk is suddenly replaced by Royal French Horns… I’ve finished? No, I’ve pissed it off and it gave up on me. I’ve reached 264- now.