.by Jenna Kalinsky.
Some writing days, the sentences pour out like water. When you finally pause for air, you’ve got a cold coffee by your side and 1200 words to show for yourself. (We love those!) On other days, you’d rather bathe a cat than go anywhere near your computer. Naturally, though, you can’t indulge your whims every time you have them or you’ll never achieve your writing goals. Help here here. For the times when you’re tired, distracted, or feel empty, you can jumpstart your flow and get back to work by using The Most Dangerous Writing App.
To be clear, while it’s incredibly effective, The Most Dangerous Writing App is app-ly named because it is mean, scary, and draconian. Its purpose is to shove you out of your wordless funk and back into generating new writing.
The app’s function is simple. You set a timer for anywhere from 5 to 60 punishing minutes, and during that time, you must type.
“Must” is the operative word.
If you stop, even for a second, the edges of the screen become tinged with red. The longer you go without typing, the redder the edges become, until, after five seconds of inactivity, [author’s note: yep, you read that right!] your progress is unceremoniously erased. Forever.
In her review, Rhodes calls the app “sadistic.” For if you pause to reconsider your last sentence or wonder what interesting thing you should say next, it goes red, as in the color of the blood you will have on your hands if you don’t start typing again before your beautiful thoughts disappear.
What Have You Got to Lose? Everything.
Careful crafting, revising, and editing are all essential to the eventual viability of any work of literature. But this kind of thoughtful piecework can and should only take place after you have a completed draft.
This makes sense; as Jodi Picoult says, “You can’t edit a blank page.” Before you can tinker, redesign, and redevelop, you need something to work with.
That something is often the hardest part for authors as you’re starting from zero, or feeling the pressure of filling a blank page. Often writers get tripped up during this phase as it is vulnerable working with early thoughts, and even more ego-busting to see what they look like freshly birthed (yick).
Yet this gawky process is critical for any book, story, essay, or long-form article; after all, the clay must exist before it can be sculpted.
To effectively fill pages without getting tripped up by your own inner critic, you must shut yourself off and be “an engine of words,” or simply, “a typist.”
When you are forced into a situation of volume not thoughtful care—and volume produced at a clip—you don’t have time to worry about the two things that trip up most writers: whether what you’re writing is any good, and more globally, whether you’re any good as a writer.
Not being strangled by worry creates the most perfect first-draft ecosystem where the material can emerge and become the first step of what it’s ultimately going to be.
Inside your head and gut, ideas aren’t words; they’re shapes, feelings, concepts. Letting them out and turning them into a system of human experience—language and communication—can at times be freeing and exalted, while at others, painful, a transmogrification. The process is, at its core, sorcery, and much of the magic contained within it is unknown to the writer, to the ideas, or to both until the ideas take on the shape of words and then a life of their own.
Letting that process happen, theoretical ideas becoming actual ideas in their rough, raw, unfiltered, imperfect, and half-formed state, is the grace you should gift yourself in order to ultimately “see what you want to say.”
If you worry too much over whether the sentences are any good, or whether you’re any good, or whether the words sound or look a certain way as they’re emerging is akin to wringing a dry washcloth. You can twist and twist, but nothing will ever come out because it’s too soon. That cloth has to be good and soaked when you twist it for the water to come out.
In her excellent and widely taught book on writing, Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life, Natalie Goldberg gives her wise, insightful, and funny 7 rules for writers:
⇒ Write without “trying” to make the writing do anything
⇒ Write rough without worrying about logistics
⇒ Write without thinking
⇒ and, just like with the Most Dangerous Writing App, write without lifting your hand.
When you sit down to write, whether it’s for ten minutes or an hour, once you begin, don’t stop. If an atom bomb drops at your feet eight minutes after you have begun and you were going to write for ten minutes, don’t budge. You’ll go out writing.
When you relinquish conscious control and let your unconscious mind roam, interesting, unkempt, and real things emerge. Things you’re afraid to talk about; things you don’t want to confront; things that exceed what you believe you know when you otherwise corral and cage your ideas.
As we writers like to say, “That’s where the energy is.”
The reason The Most Dangerous Writing app is a valuable tool and the ideal way to yield the best first draft is it puts you into a position of having to give over to this process and trust in the natural unfiltered action of the mind.
There are a few people for whom this app isn’t necessary:
Oates’ current catalogue for example is 58 novels, numerous plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction (though that figure was likely out of date 10 minutes after this article was published).
It’s hard to look at these writers’ productivity and not feel inadequate, but such a speedy schedule is extreme, and app or no app, it’s not sustainable for most regular folks.
For everyone else, the app is a highly useful tool. It’s a relief to have something guiding your words for a spell!
➔ It’s great when you’re newer to writing and haven’t yet gotten an established routine for how to help yourself out of a slump or talk your mind out of a too-early critique.
➔ Or when you’re a serious or professional writer with myriad tools and supports but simply, as Oates calls it, “feel as thin as a playing card.”
For anyone who writes, the app is simply a fun tool that will shake up your routine, give you a productive kick in the pants, and get your heart racing!
Being pushed by this app into a non-thinking space is a kind of luxury. We spend all day thinking and making decisions. If you’re weary or have decision fatigue, letting something else boss you around is a relief. Further, we’re constantly performing, pretending to be a certain way or wear a variety of masks. This app lets us be ourselves in ways we don’t even know exist.
The beautiful irony is the best, most articulate, most intelligent work you will ever do will be borne in this non-performative let-it-all-hang-out state.
FREE: Cold Turkey (Windows) and SelfControl (Mac)
PAID: Freedom app (Zadie Smith uses this one)
One of the main time suckers for people is distractions. While you can’t shut off your kids or your spouse (if only!), you can turn off your ability to access the Internet while you’re writing.
These apps take away your ability to go online, send messages, or check your email. If it’s your habit to write a bit and stray to Instagram, losing 5 or even 10 minutes each time to mindless scrolling, these apps will force you to stay in the zone and duke it out with your work. The result is rewiring your brain to have longer and improved attention. Your writing will thank you.
Note: These apps work on a timer. If you’re ambitious and then get timer remorse, it’s kind of tough noodles; no amount of begging, weeping, or dismantling your computer will bring your internet access back until the timer runs out.
These paid apps are useful and enhance your productivity on several levels: organization, development, reducing distraction, and more.
iA Writer
Novlr (free and paid versions)
Ulysses
Dabble (14-day free trial)
Scrivener *considered by many professional writers to be the “gold standard”- check out our review of it’s usefulness for brainstorming, outlining, and writing here.
Gamifying your writing is a fun way to keep your energy up and the writing process spontaneous and inspired. With this app-sistance, you will find yourself sitting up in your chair and typing, as Anne Lamott says in her incredible book Bird by Bird, “as fast as a court reporter.”
But this app has its downsides; if you struggle with hand injury or pain, or you would prefer a carrot over a stick, you might like to try another app to help you with your writing.
With this fun app, after completing a set number of words, you’re rewarded with pictures of, you guessed it, kittens!
This paid app turns your writing into a fantasy game. It’s ideal if you’re working on fantasy, romantasy, other other-worldly fiction, or if you’re writing very real or difficult material and need to lighten things up.
Have a look at our review of the 10 most recommended writing apps for creating, brainstorming, developing, organizing, writing, and proofreading!
Look, you’re only human. Though saying things like “get your bum in the chair” or to suck it up and be a “machine of words” sounds cool, on some days, it’s unrealistic. Writer’s block can happen when we’re stressed, overwhelmed, or simply having a rough day.
Because the show must go on, when you can’t or don’t want to simply sail into your chair and happily write away, The Most Dangerous Writing app will help you get back to it.
True, what you write under duress may be gibberish. But sometimes that’s all you need to source your best interiority and get to the heart of what you wish to say. Other times, that pressure will bring you into the state of creativity more quickly and efficiently than if you dawdle around on your own, squeeze out a few words, and end up bathing a cat.
In all cases, if an app is what’s needed to send sparks of endorphins sizzling through you and to get your energy back up, go for it- and see for yourself how much more writing you get done.
So what do you think? Feeling dangerous?
Apps are fantastic tools, but regular personal support from a writing coach and editor or an all-in-one program to help you write your book ensures you’re supported throughout your writing process in even more applicable ways.
Contact us any time to establish and further a productive, positive, and highly motivating writing practice, so you can publish your work and reach your writing goals!
Our 4-month Mentored Book Programs, Online Courses, & Writing Coaching and Editing Hours. From November 21-27, 2023
4 Responses
Wow. Hell, indeed.
I have read yor blog it is super amazing. We have the same website that you suggest for the people.
As a writer I have been using the app quite often. I believe the link has changed to mostdangerouswritingapp.com.
Raj, thank you so much for letting me know the app URL has changed (I published this article back in early 2018!). It’s fixed now. Appreciate your comment very much, and all the best with your writing! ~Jenna