Tools You Can Use: Write or Die

Calvin: You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.

Hobbes: What mood is that?

Calvin: Last-minute panic.— Bill Watterson

By Scoti Springfield Domeij

Put the Prod into Productivity

Do you…?

• Need to write an article or chapter, but the words refuse to emerge?
  
• Spend hour after hour trying to crank out your writing project?
  
• Lack the inspiration to write in spite of a looming deadline?
  
• Stare at a blank screen with writer's block?
  
• Find it difficult to sit down and write?
  
• Get easily distracted from writing?
  
• Admit to being a lazy writer?
  
• Over think your writing?
  
• Procrastinate?
  

Tough Love for Procrastinators or Writer's Block

Then Dr. Wicked's Write or Die will prod you to churn out words. You set a word count or time goal, or both. Then you set a Gentle, Normal or Kamikaze mode.

When you stop typing in the writing window, Write or Die gives you a grace period, and then introduces consequences. A pop up text box reminds you to write in the Gentle Mode. Normal mode introduces a red screen and screams annoying music. Kamikaze consequences? Your document starts to unwrite itself, one word at a time. Electric Shock mode doesn't work. It's a joke.

Once you close the writing window, it asks you to copy your text to a clipboard that you can paste into a Word document. This could be a serious salvation tool for NaNoWriMo fiction writers.