[HN Gopher] Enso: write now, edit later
___________________________________________________________________
Enso: write now, edit later
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 240 points
Date : 2023-10-26 13:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (enso.sonnet.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (enso.sonnet.io)
| dewey wrote:
| If you are using iA Writer, it also has this feature:
| https://ia.net/writer/support/editor/focus-mode
| kstrauser wrote:
| Close: Writer still lets you edit text in that mode. Enso looks
| like typewriter mode, and is also append-only. Writer doesn't
| have that bit.
| dewey wrote:
| True, good point.
|
| I feel like the main point is that you are not able to "edit"
| your text in the sense that you re-structure paragraphs,
| moving bits around, not about not being able to correct a
| typo.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I think you're right. For me, the fading is enough to
| greatly reduce that temptation. I _could_ just turn off
| focus mode, but there 's a big "out of sight, out of mind"
| component, too.
|
| It would be kinda cool to have a way to disable backward
| cursor movement, or a "enable focus mode until I restart
| the app" option as another barrier to "I just want to make
| this one quick change...".
|
| Huh. Wonder if I could emulate the cursor stuff with
| Keyboard Maestro by making it swallow those keypresses?
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Yup, that's one of the reasons I built Enso instead of using
| iA Writer.
| 101008 wrote:
| I really like it. As a writer of novels, this is useful for those
| moments when I have too many doubts about how it should look. One
| minor feedback: deleting should be forbidden - it's a way to edit
| the text.
|
| So it should be like a writing machine + the fade out effect.
| surprisetalk wrote:
| So few novelists on HN! Where can I read your stuff?
| 101008 wrote:
| I'd prefer to try to not associate my user with some personal
| data. But thanks for the interest!
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Hehe, I considered that in my first prototypes. I avoid any
| kind of customisation like fire when it comes to Enso, but
| perhaps I should change my approach after all...
|
| My main source of inspiration was writing by hand, and then
| typing.
| 101008 wrote:
| Writing by hand definitely does not allow to delete! :-)
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| There're these things called erasers...
| gilcot wrote:
| ...or correction fluid (like Tipp-Ex)
| mkl wrote:
| ...or just crossing out.
| teo_zero wrote:
| You must be kidding. Striking through the text is
| ridiculously easy.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Love the idea. Also, a fun elisp project to try and figure out.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's clever, and I see the appeal. The UI looks an awful lot
| like iA Writer in typewriter mode. That's a compliment.
|
| But it does seem like a feature that iA could add, calling it
| "write-only" mode or such, and then you could have that nice
| experience with all the other awesomeness that Writer brings.
|
| Still, unless/until they do, I totally get why someone would want
| to use this. Nice job!
| CharlesW wrote:
| Horses for courses, but the fading gimmick would not work for me
| at all.
|
| However, this is conceptually interesting. It might be fun to
| speak the first draft of my next piece and transcribe the result
| with Whisper.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| I experimenting with sth similar actually.
|
| One small additional requirement: although I studied
| linguistics and took a year-long course in English phonology,
| speech-to-text _still_ struggles with my accent.
|
| The approach I'm playing with atm is inspired by some advice
| from Simon Willis, here on HN:
|
| record audio - transcribe using whisper - clean up and format
| using a GPT prompt
|
| So far the results have been pretty good: the original meaning
| is preserved but the text is much easier to read (and the
| missing/"misheard" words are often corrected).
|
| What I'm experimenting at the moment:
|
| - picking the right model size, tweaking the prompts
|
| - better UX (e.g. immediate visual feedback)
| ksynwa wrote:
| I found this obscure emacs package last week that seems related:
| https://github.com/KeyWeeUsr/typewriter-roll-mode
|
| (I'm not related to this package in any way. Don't use it
| either.)
| livrem wrote:
| 50 lines of elisp.
|
| I tried it just now, and it seems like what it does is that
| every time I press space it scrolls the buffer so that I am at
| the top and only see the current line I am editing. Does not
| look as nice as that fading out editor, but maybe it is
| functional enough. It would be more like that other editor if
| it would show at least one or two previous lines of text.
| oritron wrote:
| That's easy enough to adjust if you'd like, redefine
| typewriter-roll--scroll-up to call (recenter-top-bottom 2)
| instead of 0.
| pier25 wrote:
| I've always noticed when writing by hand I could get into the
| zone more easily but always thought it was because of the lack of
| speed compared to typing. I had never considered maybe the huge
| effort required to edit was another factor that kept my mind
| focused in the present.
| zogrodea wrote:
| It might also partially be that the activity and movements of
| writing by hand put you in the zone better than using a
| keyboard. When you have a pen/pencil in hand, your body may
| feel "it's prose/whatever writing time" rather than when you
| have a keyboard in hand, when the multitude of activities
| (browsing HN for example or texting on IRC or whatever) dilutes
| a similar mental association between tool and activity.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| > All of your changes are saved locally. Enso works perfectly
| fine even without internet connection.
|
| I know this is a sign of the times and so I'm not blaming the
| author, but Christ, what a depressing development that this is
| enough of a feature to be one of the headline hero paragraphs on
| the landing page.
| nine_k wrote:
| Developing for the web client and having centralized control
| over both code and data on your server is just _so_ much easier
| for the developer. Not necessarily the best client experience,
| but the difference in development and support cost is huge.
|
| Thus any local-first software is more rare, if it has to also
| include an online component. It's just harder.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Author here:
|
| 0) Enso's on the top page of HN? what the hell!
|
| 1) it's fun to use Enso in the middle of the woods with no
| internet access (done that), but
|
| 2) the main reason I build web apps this way is that following
| offline-first (generally) results in a better user experience,
| especially for people without access to optic fibre or 5G[*].
| And with Enso this was trivial to implement.
|
| 3) the second reason I do that: often it's much easier to write
| offline first apps. 10 years ago we already had tools like
| pouchdb to do so much heavy lifting for us.
|
| [*] Ironically, having lived in Shoreditch for 7 years helped
| me develop this mindset, as every single flat I rented there
| turned out to be _the one_ without fibre. In one of them the
| windows even acted as a Faraday cage, so no luck with 4G!
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Yeah, I want to be totally clear that this wasn't a dig at
| you - Enso looks really cool and I'm glad to see a web
| application embrace offline-first development. This was more
| just generic griping at how the web has become the only real
| cross-platform application development environment,
| regardless of how well it's actually fit for that purpose.
| But that has nothing to do with you - keep rocking with this
| :)
| jll29 wrote:
| Kudos for the "offline first" approach.
|
| But Shoreditch? ;) When I worked there (2015) I was wondering
| where all the alleged hipsters were of the "Silicon
| Roundabout", since all of the people in cafes had FB on their
| laptop screens instead of code, and it wasn't cheap either.
| Not sure if it changed for better or worse since, but since
| then Google closed Campus.
| yu3zhou4 wrote:
| Nice tool Rafal!
| maxisaurus wrote:
| Made me think of Excalidraw when I saw it - cool stuff! Will try
| my 750 words on it.
| g-b-r wrote:
| ed was right all along?
| kstrauser wrote:
| Or cat.
| nico wrote:
| Reminds me a lot of Omm writer, really nice peaceful writing
| experience, designed to keep you focused on just writing
| dheera wrote:
| Seems like it would be a good tool for coding interviews that
| want to mimic the whiteboard-coding experience without a physical
| whiteboard. /s
| norir wrote:
| Very nice. In my experience writing both prose and code, rewrites
| are usually better than edits. Strangely, this tool reminds me a
| bit of how Fossil does not have rebase. The history is useful for
| context, but it shouldn't be edited.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| This kind of stream of consciousness is how I do a lot of my GPT
| work. I have double command key tap to start dictation, and then
| I launch into these stream of consciousness dialogues with uhms,
| ohhs, and uhhs etc. GPT is able to then summarize that for me,
| filter out the garbage, and we can iterate from there.
| kaba0 wrote:
| I really don't want to bash it as the web version is free, and I
| absolutely agree that authors should be able to get money in
| exchange for their work, but still... not sure if the Mac version
| does anything more, but if not, making it paid when it is a
| program most people can reproduce in at tops 100 lines in any
| framework of their choice rubs me a bit in the wrong way.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I don't understand this comment. If it's that easy to reproduce
| (and I don't necessarily disagree), go ahead and do it, and
| users can use that instead.
|
| Or, if it's not worth your time, consider paying the person who
| took the time to build it.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Cue the famous HN post saying dropbox could be replaced by
| ftp.
| kaba0 wrote:
| It's literally a textfield with a fade-off effect on top.
|
| But your take is also correct in most cases, I just felt that
| this one hits a particularly strange balance here.
| tene80i wrote:
| Most people? You mean most programmers, presumably?
| Hamcha wrote:
| Reminds me of http://al.chemy.org A dead (sigh) drawing app with
| no layers and no undo and tons of wacky brushes. The main idea is
| that you can doodle and let the "happy little accidents" drive
| you into something that you can use as inspiration for a piece
| (think of it like ink blots)
| SeriousM wrote:
| I would't call it dead, rather done. It's good that it doesn't
| get more features.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| I love this, thank you for sharing.
| st3ve445678 wrote:
| If you want a dead simple writing app, I think this is a better
| option for mac users: simpletext.app
|
| Costs 9 bucks for a lifetime license.
| dewey wrote:
| Better option: Apple's Notes.app which comes included, you can
| also make a note full screen and it looks almost the same. On
| top of being iCloud synced to all your devices for free.
| addaon wrote:
| Unfortunately, Notes is incredibly slow. Even with just a few
| hundred pages of text in a note, and no images or complex
| formatting, it stutters on text input on an iPhone 15 and,
| while not stuttering in input, is jerky and slow to scroll on
| an M1 MacBook Pro. That means that there's management
| overhead -- going back and editing notes to split them up --
| to keep it usable, which is almost exactly contrary to the
| point of this article's type of writing-and-writing-alone
| tool.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I like this idea, I do this all the time. Not sure I need an app
| though, I'll just turn off the monitor.
| dewey wrote:
| I would be very worried that there's some random action
| stealing the focus of the writing app and me just typing
| letters into the void.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| The hotkey to return to my window manager is pretty hard to
| hit by accident. As for the writing app, it's just a python
| script looping over lines read from stdin and writing them to
| disk. Not many opportunities to do anything else.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Heh, for that exact reason I'm using it with my screen dimmed
| as much as possible and even considered adding a night[*]
| (black to red) mode for OLED screens (I write at night, I'm a
| vampire).
|
| One of the use-cases I found when I was researching Enso:
| there was a blogger who'd split writing into two steps:
|
| 1. writing with their screen dimmed as much as possible
|
| 2. editing the next day
|
| Also, perhaps a pure-black screen with a simple indicator of
| the number of characters/words written would work here? You'd
| still know that the editor is recording your changes. Seems
| like a nice idea for a little app/toy.
|
| [*]examples, inspiration:
| https://untested.sonnet.io/Obsidian+for+Vampires (apologies
| for messy notes, this project is separate from my main site)
| abcd_f wrote:
| Looks pretty close to what iA Writer has been doing since its
| inception over a decade ago. Back then it was a very unique
| approach.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IA_Writer
| reidjs wrote:
| Big fan of this app because it lets you write plaintext (.md or
| .txt) on your iphone
| marban wrote:
| There are at least a dozen Mac apps that have been doing this for
| decades. Why the upvotes?
| bonif wrote:
| As a non-writer, I don't know those apps, I saw this on HN,
| tried it for 30 secs, and loved it. I'll never be a customer
| btw.
| maebert wrote:
| Or, if you prefer to write with sweaty palms and the gun of
| permanent literary destruction against your head, there's the
| Most Dangerous Writing App of course.
| https://maebert.github.io/themostdangerouswritingapp
| hnreport wrote:
| How long before it actually saves?
| reidjs wrote:
| you set the session lenght before you start in the tooltip
| brickers wrote:
| I made something similar at https://drivl.app. I should have
| known someone else had already done it
| submain wrote:
| Here's a naive bash implementation of this, just for fun:
| while true; do clear tail -n 5 /tmp/notes
| read line echo "$line" >> /tmp/notes done
| SeriousM wrote:
| Is there a plugin for obsidian?
| rpastuszak wrote:
| There are two experiments AFAIK: one done by Steph Ango
| (Obsidian CEO) and another one by me. I didn't publish mine
| because I thought no one would like it, but I'm happy to do it
| if more people express interest.
|
| https://x.com/rafalpast/status/1693961256879726684?s=20
|
| PS I use Enso with Obsidian for my morning notes:
| https://untested.sonnet.io/Stream+of+Consciousness+Morning+N...
| SeriousM wrote:
| I would try it if you like! Drop me a mail at
| enos.luxurious788@aleeas.com (real mail alias)
| adaboese wrote:
| I am building a writing tool and this serves as an inspiration.
| So beautiful!
| sea6ear wrote:
| I've played around with a similar idea with a less attractive UI,
| using Vim or Emacs.
|
| With sufficient adjustments, you can reduce the GUI versions of
| Vim or Emacs to a single line of text. That way you can just
| write, but can't see what you've written one it's left that line,
| until you expand the window to see the full document.
|
| It gives a good sense of flow, although I find that if I'm just
| forcing myself to write and push forward, it's easy to get into a
| situation where I'm just pushing text, and not really enforcing
| any kind of structure on my thoughts.
|
| It's useful to get me into a mode where I'm thinking about new
| stuff, but I have to be ok with producing a lot of noise that I
| have to sift back though. Eventually that sifting starts to wear
| me out.
|
| If 90% percent of everything I write is crap, sorting back
| through to find the 10% that's good and useful, is more effort
| than I can make myself keep doing on a regular basis.
| drekipus wrote:
| I also made a nvim plugin but from a different angle.
|
| I set up a "write only" mode, so you can't use backspace or get
| out of insert mode, you just gotta keep writing forward (also
| disable <c-w> )
|
| To get out of it, you tap escape 15 times in a row. (to avoid
| my habitual ESC :wa)
|
| Note': I like the plugin but I don't know if it's helpful. My
| writing career has been exceptionally short for the moment
| gilcot wrote:
| With vim, one can go from single setting[1] to something more
| complex[2] or use one of the available plugins (e.g.
| typewriter-vim[3] or vim-goyo[4] or vim-focus[5] or Lite-DFM[6]
| or zen-mode[7] etc.)
|
| [1] https://superuser.com/a/368275
|
| [2] https://vitalyparnas.com/guides/vim-typewriter-mode/
|
| [3] https://github.com/logico/typewriter-vim
|
| [4] https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim
|
| [5] https://github.com/merlinrebrovic/focus.vim
|
| [6] https://github.com/bilalq/lite-dfm
|
| [7] https://github.com/folke/zen-mode.nvim
| soneca wrote:
| I am amateur (but wannabe professional) fiction writer. When I
| see this type of tool I realize that I have a conceptual
| misalignment with some (most?) writers in regarding to focus,
| editing, flow.
|
| For me, editing _is_ part of the flow. I like to edit things as
| they go through my head, as part of my state of flow, not as a
| separate chore from which I have to "protect" my draft writing
| from.
|
| I think of it as an analogy from sculpting. The first draft
| writing is getting the amorphous block into a rough shape of,
| e.g., a hand. Then, editing is the fine work to make the bones,
| skin wrinkles and veins of the hand to make it perfect.
|
| In this analogy, the editing is the hardest, most focus
| demanding, most detail-oriented work that requires no
| distractions.
|
| But just offering my perspective here. A good thing about having
| more software developers in the world is the diversity of tools
| available for diverse people. So I am happy that this exists.
| mat_epice wrote:
| I'm with you, although any writing I do is technical. I find
| that immediately micro-editing the fragment/sentence/paragraph
| I just wrote is easier than coming back as a separate step.
| Maybe it's because my first cut is so bad!
| drekipus wrote:
| I think it's the same analogy, the tool is supposed to separate
| it so that you can get the rough shape in before you try to
| perfect the hand, (then realise it's facing the wrong way.)
| powersnail wrote:
| It's less about flow but more about a practical problem faced
| by some writers:
|
| Some writers have the trouble stopping themselves from constant
| editing of the words they've just write, to the extent that
| significantly impact their ability to produce an actual draft.
| Lots of the editing are useless anyway, since when you are
| really editing the draft later, most likely you are going to
| throw away many pages and paragraphs of work, so all the time
| spent on micro-editing are wasted.
|
| The biggest contrast between sculpting and writing is that
| sculpting is non-revocable. You can negotiate over a single
| paragraph for hours, rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.
| There is no redo button for chiseling.
| soneca wrote:
| > _"since when you are really editing the draft later, most
| likely you are going to throw away many pages and paragraphs
| of work"_
|
| It seems relevant that I also do not write like this.
|
| When I wrote my first novel, I wrote the draft and gave to my
| beta readers. Most of the feedback I got was that I needed to
| _add_ stuff. Develop a character more, take more time to get
| to the resolution of a problem, add a new perspective.
|
| From the first draft to the final version, it got probably
| around 30% bigger. Very few paragraphs were cut after that
| initial draft.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| I hate to invoke the tired "plotters and pantsers"
| dichotomy, but this does seem like one of those things that
| comes down to whether you set out to write with some kind
| of scaffold in mind (or on paper) or whether you're more
| inclined to let the blank page take you wherever it takes
| you.
|
| I'm definitely in the former camp, and have the same line-
| by-line editing habits that you describe, both in my
| professional and personal writing. And like you, end up
| throwing away very little, because anything I included the
| first time around was included deliberately.
|
| OTOH it stresses me out a little imagining what it's like
| to write more spontaneously, without even a vague sense of
| where you're headed--what happens when you hit a dead end
| and need to backtrack? Do you just throw out hours and
| hours of work and try again?
| girvo wrote:
| > what happens when you hit a dead end and need to
| backtrack? Do you just throw out hours and hours of work
| and try again?
|
| Quite literally, yes! :)
| powersnail wrote:
| We all have different processes. I write short stories, and
| almost always have to axe/rewrite/move whole sections when
| editing. I usually edit my draft in 3 tiers: structural
| editing, then language editing, and finally copyediting.
| noduerme wrote:
| This just made me think... what would be really interesting
| would be a destructive, non-revocable writing app. You start
| with a giant pile of GPT garbage and just remove things.
| soneca wrote:
| Sudowrite, an AI tool for fiction writing, sort of has this
| philosophy. I interviewed with them and the analogy they
| used is that they want to "provide the clay so you can mold
| it". They generate some basic text for you and then you
| edit it.
| ryanianian wrote:
| This kind of tool is great for outline-level rough drafts. Much
| like steam of consciousness journaling to see where your mind
| goes. Then decide how much if any of that to bring into the
| rough draft in an edit-friendly editor.
| ryangittins wrote:
| You and I are what Kurt Vonnegut called Bashers:
|
| > Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-
| crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again
| painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or
| doesn't work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it
| exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they're
| done they're done.
|
| I always found this frustrating in high school, as some
| assignments required submission of a first draft, second draft,
| and final version of a paper. I always wrote the final version
| first and then worked backwards to created a second and then a
| first draft by removing sentences and generally making it
| worse.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| > _I always found this frustrating in high school, as some
| assignments required submission of a first draft, second
| draft, and final version of a paper. I always wrote the final
| version first and then worked backwards to created a second
| and then a first draft by removing sentences and generally
| making it worse._
|
| I always did this as well. You are the first other person
| I've heard describe that.
| noduerme wrote:
| Just as a side note, I worked for several ad agencies with
| art directors who did the same thing. We'd make the final ad,
| then screw it up intentionally and show it to the client so
| they'd spot the obvious flaws/mistakes, tell us to fix them,
| and then we'd give them what we'd already done.
|
| It's not a strategy I use in my own work now, but it taught
| me something interesting about the psychology of clients. I
| think there are better ways to let them know they got their
| money's worth, like writing full explanations of your choices
| and thought processes. But intentionally sabotaging your
| first draft is definitely a well-worn method in the art and
| design world.
| spanktheuser wrote:
| Every ad / design agency I've worked for engages in this
| practice. Futhermore, in the large corporate rebranding
| exercises I've witnessed approximately 75% of the
| engagement consists of make-work designed to justify the
| price.
|
| From a purely psychological perspective I find it
| fascinating. If you want to get a handle on how it looks
| IDEO is a company that publishes and speaks on "process"
| quite prolifically. Keyword: "Design Thinking."
| hinkley wrote:
| I got a general contractor talking shop once and he
| confessed to me that they overwhelm the customers with
| cosmetic choices on purpose. People need to put a certain
| amount of energy into a process to feel they have done
| their due diligence, and it often doesn't really matter how
| that energy is spent, just that it is.
|
| In his case it was to distract the customer from worrying
| about things they can't control, like physics and building
| codes. The bones of a building only allow so many locations
| for a sink, for instance. Trying to fight that can snowball
| an entire project.
|
| Easy decisions that you ultimately question leave a sliver
| of doubt and regret in your mind. I could have done more. I
| should have said something. Things you work your ass of on
| and still don't succeed, you can say you did your best.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| This is a bit like the age-old tale about the contractor
| that adds waits at the end of each function in his
| codebase, then when the client complains about performance
| in one area, he just removes the wait, then bills them more
| money for "optimizations."
| iamtedd wrote:
| https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop
| Avshalom wrote:
| I would just re-write my one-and-final draft by
| intentionally-poor hand because I knew no one was gonna call
| that bluff.
| huehehue wrote:
| https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/
|
| > Duck: a feature added for no other reason than to draw
| management attention and be removed, thus avoiding
| unnecessary changes in other aspects of the product.
| voltaireodactyl wrote:
| In animation they called it "the thumb on the frame" for
| obvious reasons.
| hinkley wrote:
| I am also a Basher. But I've always suspected it as a sort of
| perfectionism that ultimately holds you back from getting
| better. I have a couple of pastimes where I've gone out of my
| way to try to avoid this. I find it is often easier to
| 'change your ways' in one context than globally. But it's
| also a sort of 'end of the beginning' rather than 'beginning
| of the end' in spending more energy on doing and less on
| fussing about doing it well. Take that too more and you're
| trying to do well on your first try.
|
| If you ever played board games with someone who operates this
| way, it's _exhausting_. The fact that it 's meant to be fun
| probably amplifies that experience, but I do wonder sometimes
| how people experience me and whether they think the same
| sorts of things I think about a perfectionist gamer.
| dceddia wrote:
| Fellow Basher here. I've heard the advice to "just get it all
| on the page and edit later" so many times and it has never
| really made sense to me. I write something like _Shlemiel the
| painter's algorithm_ from this old Joel on Software article
| [0]. Write a bit, reread everything, tweak, write some more,
| reread everything again, tweak. The re-reading cycles aren't
| always back to the very beginning, sometimes it's just the
| current paragraph or sentence. But I'd definitely say I edit
| as I go. I've tried not doing this, but I never get very far
| with that before it starts to stress me out that the writing
| isn't coming out right.
|
| And then afterwards, read the thing another 50 times just in
| case, especially if it's an email.
|
| 0: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/12/11/back-to-basics/
| microtherion wrote:
| The iconic example of a Swooper is Jack Kerouac, who typed up
| "On the Road" on a scroll of paper, so he would not disrupt
| his flow by having to switch pages:
| https://www.npr.org/2007/07/05/11709924/jack-kerouacs-
| famous...
|
| But contrary to legend, it appears that said scroll did not
| represent the first draft, but the final product of numerous
| editing iteration.
| vidarh wrote:
| This varies greatly between writers. I've self published two
| scifi novels, and I found I wrote faster when I didn't edit as
| I went (even when subsequent editing was factored in), but fast
| isn't always what you're going for. And I don't personally need
| (or want) tools to push me not to edit.
|
| But where editing really kills you are for those who get stuck
| in "endless" polishing of the smallest little details before
| they have _anything_ , and as a result never get anywhere. Then
| having tools to push you past that can be useful.
| adamc wrote:
| ^This.Maybe part of the problem is that I've been around a
| while, and already _have_ a bunch of habits around writing, and
| one of them is that I like to edit while I write, because
| writing is an attempt to work out _what_ I actually think.
|
| Having something that blocks me from editing as I write would
| be a huge downgrade. Zero interest.
| cratermoon wrote:
| On the Basher/Swooper working style, I believe there value for
| each type to incorporate a little of the other type. Through
| most of my education, I was a Basher. I didn't write drafts, I
| wrote start to finish, but it was never as good as I'd wished.
|
| Later in life I began to deliberately practice some of the
| Swooper techniques, and my writing got more satisfying.
|
| It's possible the difference is somewhat generational as well,
| because the Basher style is suitable for writing with the
| somewhat cranky typewriter on paper, because rework is harder
| _. Today, it 's almost trivial to mix and mash our writing
| because all it takes is ctrl-C ctrl-V.
|
| _ Unless you're William S. Burrows, in which case, just don't
| get too near me with those scissors.
| https://www.faena.com/aleph/cut-up-the-creative-technique-us...
| lucharo wrote:
| This is what I wrote trying out the product, seems really focused
| haha:
|
| _So today I 'm thinking about potatoes
|
| warm potatoes, the kind that you eat with cheese
|
| or other saucy stuff really
|
| why not
|
| talk about potatoes today, does this go to the end of the line,
| oh yeah it does, and it goes to the new line, there's a counter
| at the bottom, displaying a number, it's word count I think, yeah
| I'm pretty sure 65 66 definitely
|
| cool, I like it!_
| ryanianian wrote:
| Sounds like the start of productive therapy.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I've been writing like this into text files for over a decade
| now. It feels like therapy, alright, but I wouldn't claim
| it's productive.
| powera wrote:
| I accomplish something similar by typing with my eyes closed (or
| simply looking away from the screen).
|
| And, despite the "you can't edit" marketing, you can use the
| backspace key for typos. (which is good)
| kazinator wrote:
| Neko! Write, now edit later: $ cat > file
| You can't edit anything. So you have to think.
| wholesomepotato wrote:
| Wow, how much do I pay to run it on MacOS?
| kazinator wrote:
| For most, the answer would be, "quite a lot".
|
| However, I happen to have a VirtualBox VM of an bootleg copy
| of an old MacOS version (32 bit x86).
| joemi wrote:
| The desire/need for focused writing apps has always baffled me,
| but then again I'm probably not the target audience for such an
| app. I do some technical writing and some non-technical blogging,
| and have never felt impeded by just writing in vim or textedit
| (or anything else that accepts text input).
|
| I'd love to better understand how such apps help people with
| their writing. I guess I'm kind of skeptical that they actually
| do help (compared to simply fullscreening any app that you can
| write in), but since there are so many apps designed for this I
| accept that they must be helpful to some people. I'd love to hear
| from people for whom they have helped. (I'm not trying to start a
| discussion about uselessness. I'd like to hear about
| _usefulness_. I truly want to understand it better.)
| oDot wrote:
| I have built https://FileMonger.app (which keeps a diffable
| undo history of a file) exactly after becoming skeptical as you
| are.
|
| After a bit of research I've figured that main need for this
| kind of focus is fear of the document changing too much, to the
| point where the current idea for an edit will no longer
| relevant.
|
| Apps such as OP try to solve it by hiding the problem, while
| with FileMonger the writer gets a guarantee that they can
| revert to any save at any time, if document indeed changes too
| much (it usually doesn't).
|
| If you've mentioned vim and technical writing you're probably
| writing plain text files and are knowledgeable enough to use
| manual version control like git when necessary, which is why
| this baffles you.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Some people are just compulsive about some stuff. It's not
| always a thing you're (or they're) going to understand.
| dberst wrote:
| I'm not a professional writer, but as someone with severe ADHD
| I have battled frequently with my own version of "writer's
| block". When I'm stuck in this way sometimes small things can
| make a tremendous difference (positive or negative) in my
| productivity.
|
| I guess what it comes down to is distractibility. This app
| seems focused on reducing the distraction of perfectionism: the
| thoughts of possible improvements to the structure of the
| current paragraph or feelings that a sentence could've come out
| better. For me, and I expect for some writers, this type of
| second guessing may take up a significant amount of the time
| I've allocated to sit down and write. Especially if there's a
| lot of external pressure for my work to be of a certain
| quality, correctness, or completeness.
|
| So while I don't personally use a tool like this, I can see how
| reducing distractions could raise productivity. And if it I
| were my livelihood, then even a 20-30% raise in productivity
| could be well worth installing and learning to use a dedicated
| piece of software.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| > ...then again I'm probably not the target audience for such
| an app. I do some technical writing...
|
| For technical writing in particular, I feel like being able to
| see (and manipulate) the entire document at once is actually
| helpful, if not outright necessary, since the structure of a
| document is just as important as its content. In that sense, a
| no-frills text editor might actually be the specific "focus
| mode" that you need for technical documents.
|
| But it's certainly not the same type of focus that people seek
| when they write fiction. Which I unfortunately can't comment
| on, because I write fiction the same way I write manuals :P
| blueagle wrote:
| This by far one of my favorite pieces of software ever.
|
| It's perfect for journaling and just doing a complete brain dump
| of thoughts. I frequently am surprised by the word count when I
| download the text file after the end of one of my writing binges.
|
| Thank you for your work on this rpastuszak!
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| In what way are you surprised? I am always surprised with how
| few words I actually wrote.
| noduerme wrote:
| This is a neat idea. But I accomplish the same thing with a pen
| and paper. Once I start to write there's no time to go back and
| read or edit until later. Additionally, pen and paper forces me
| to consider each word more carefully, because my writing speed is
| always slower than my thinking.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-10-27 23:00 UTC)