One of the things I enjoyed doing in my role as “Edtech guy” was putting up hints & tips in the faculty washrooms — “Learning in the Loo”. One of my most favorite discoveries for that was The World’s Most Dangerous Writing App (WMDWA): https://www.squibler.io/writing-prompt-generator .
When I made my New Year’s Resolution to write a post Monday to Thursday, I did so to practice “Hit Send” (see Carl Oliver); I needed to get over the “if it’s not perfect, keep working on it”. The WMDWA does that too, and here’s now.
When you go to the app, click on the Start Writing w/o a Prompt and you’ll get a blank word processor — very simple, no formatting, just type! (You can take your work and open it in Word later).
As you write, there’s a black bar that keeps track of your progress in the total time writing (defaults to five minutes). As well, you have to keep typing without stopping — if you stop typing, the text will begin to turn fuzzy and a red fringe begins to creep in from the sides of the screen to warn you. Start typing again and the warning resets; fail to begin typing will end your session and prompt you to save your work — your session is over.
There are a couple of options: you can change the total amount of writing time — and you can add Hardcore Mode. In regular mode, if you fail to keep writing, it prompts you to save what you wrote. In Hardcore Mode, it’s gone forever. Like, forever forever.
It helps! It helps to stay committed to writing for five minutes and to just get. things. down. There are also a whole collection of writing prompts to help you with creativy.
Give it a try — it’s a least a little bit of fun for a Friday afternoon class!
