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I Tried the World’s Most Dangerous Writing Tool
I survived and I live to tell: it’s amazing
When it comes to writing there is one thing that is really difficult to overcome, the writer’s block. I don’t know any fellow writer who hasn’t been there, complaining about being stuck and being miserable about the blank page yelling at them.
There are all sorts of tools and techniques to fight writer’s block and it’s definitely something that you need to sort out if you want to write consistently.
When I am already in the flow, I usually can keep going, but sometimes my imposter syndrome and my writer's block stop me from getting started.
I found squibler.io by accident and it was intriguing enough for me to give it a try.
Don’t stop writing, or all progress will be lost.
This is what the Most Dangerous Writing App says when you arrive on their writing prompt section. Menacing, right?
You need to keep writing or you risk losing all your work. If you stop typing, the text starts to fade away and will be gone forever just after 5 seconds. At that point, everything written will be lost and there is no way of getting it back.
You need to set the limit by which you can download or copy your work. It can be either a time limit (3–60 minutes) or the number of words completed (75–1667 words).
The even scarier hardcore version is when you can only see the letter that you just typed, the rest can’t be seen. It allows you to focus on the keyboard and not on the screen, without spotting typos to correct or without wanting to go back and edit on the go.
It felt like a nice challenge and I set myself for a dangerous writing session of five minutes.
Phew.
[Actually, I am writing the draft of this article using the platform. I feel like the hackers in the movies who look like they know exactly what they are doing and they are just spilling words and code onto the screen without even looking up.]
Advantages
I found it really very useful from several different aspects, so here’s a list of learnings from the writing…
