One Two Fiver - a writer's warm-up

December 20, 2008 10:47 PM

One Two Fiver - a writer's warm-up
One Two Fiver is a simple tool for warming up your writing muscles. It is based on a strategy I developed to overcome my own writing inertia. It relies on a progressively increasing word count that helps you make the transition from staring at the screen to writing. The interface is inspired by feature-free text-editors such as Q10 and WriteRoom, and is designed to be non-distracting. You will need javascript turned on to get the full effect.
posted by hifimofo (14 comments total)

This project was posted to MetaFilter by jbickers on December 31, 2008: One Two Fiver - a writer's warm-up

That's a pretty cool concept. I seldom have a problem getting started though. It's the followthrough that sucks for me.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:56 PM on December 21, 2008

Thanks.

Followthrough is another big issue for me, too. Maybe I should extend One Two Fiver on towards 100,000 and add some opt-in nagging...
posted by hifimofo at 4:37 PM on December 21, 2008

lovely...the text turning grey when you hit the word count is a nice touch.
posted by Miko at 7:57 PM on December 21, 2008

Neat!

(typo alert! "Keep typing until you writing.")
posted by cowbellemoo at 9:08 PM on December 21, 2008

cowbellemoo: Nice catch. Fixed it.
posted by hifimofo at 11:29 PM on December 21, 2008

A little more of an intro would help me - I keep writing two words and then ending up with the 500 words - email screen. This may be a browser issue (I'm using Flock.)
posted by medea42 at 9:56 AM on December 22, 2008

medea42 - I downloaded Flock and it works fine for me.

What you may be seeing is a side effect of hitting tab before the next set is "unlocked". The email field is not disabled, so if you hit tab when inside the current active set you will jump down to that field.

This is annoying.

I might disable the email field as well and then add a click-to-enable Jquery function.

Thanks for the input.
posted by hifimofo at 1:56 PM on December 22, 2008

Very nice indeed. I found it strange that I could write *more* than one word (or two words, etc) in the respective fields, but then concluded that this was a deliberate design decision. Still, I wonder if you should make it more obvious when the next text field is 'unlocked' - it's a bit too subtle at the moment. An optional descending word count would be handy as well.
posted by adrianhon at 8:09 AM on December 25, 2008

adrianhon - being able to write more than the word count was indeed a design decision. I don't enforce anything except the word count needed to unlock the next set. If you wish you can go back to the smaller sets and edit them all you like, including dropping them back down below their sanctioned word count.

The goal was minimum functionality and minimal distraction. The optional descending word count is a good idea in terms of minimising distraction. I'll give some thought to how I can achieve that without making everyone tick or not tick a box. Perhaps something based on roll-over or idle time...
posted by hifimofo at 12:09 AM on December 28, 2008

I could find this being very useful as I try to finish two of my books this year (one of my new years resoloutions). Great job, thanks!
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:25 PM on December 31, 2008

In case anyone is still interested, I've added some community features to the site just now.
posted by hifimofo at 5:56 AM on January 9, 2009

Huh. This is awesome.
posted by Toecutter at 12:41 PM on January 22, 2009

(This is all kinds of awesome.)
posted by Phire at 9:56 AM on July 23, 2009

Oh, and I'd welcome a length addition beyond 500 words.
posted by Phire at 9:58 AM on July 23, 2009