Delete Freak

Natasha Fondren — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:00:00 +0000

This is what I’ve been, lately. Delete, delete, delete. It’s like my obsession with clutter: I can’t fix until I get rid of all the junk around. I get unhappy with my tone or mood and throw the whole thing out. No, I can’t revise or edit it. I have to erase it from existence.

Since December 2009, I believe I have deleted at least 60,000 words. Not even counting the five blog posts I delete for every one I post. How DID I used to write a post every day?

This has got to stop. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me, because I’ve NEVER done this before.

As for good news, the Year of the Ox is over. The Year of the Metal Tiger is here, which is a finish-everything-you-start kind of year. I’m told.

Cool. I can use some of that energy.

(I do know I’m grasping at straws.)

(But whatever works.)

I fired up Write or Die yesterday. Have I talked about Write or Die yet? Why yes, I have. It triples my productivity, but I seem to keep forgetting that fact and not using it. It’s free to use online, but I bought the desktop version ($10), which is prettier and has a few more features. (Customizable font color, background color, save feature that appends to a file, word war, and other stuff.)

It turns writing into a game. You enter a word count or time goal, and you have to keep writing. If you stop writing for more than ten or twenty seconds, it either plays an awful screeching violin sound (Normal Mode), or it starts deleting your words (Kamikaze Mode). It’s fun, and I write fast again. And I actually keep my words, fancy that!

You can give Write or Die a quick whirl online, see if it does it for you or not.

The desktop version also has a “Word War” feature that’s in beta, where you hook up with someone else, and a progress bar at the top of your screen tracks you and your war partner, to see who writes the most words in a certain amount of time. (Doesn’t seem to be working at the moment, though…)

It all sounds silly, I know. But whatever gets the words out. It makes writing feel a bit like a video game. And the quicker I write, the better.

It’s odd, but the faster I write, the better I write. What’s up with that?

Do you have any tricks to get the words out when the words are coming too slow? Ever been on a deleting rampage? Ever play with Write or Die?

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Delete Freak