Day 02 – Write or Die

What’s everybody’s worst nightmare going into NaNoWriMo? I have no research to back it, but I would say there are two, both variations on the famous Fear of Failure syndrome:

1) Fear of not writing fast enough.
2) Fear of falling behind and never catching up.

I’m writing this post on the new desktop version of Write or Die, Dr. Wicked’s tough-love word processor that makes you keep writing…or else.

When I posted about Write or Die the other day–NaNoWriMo Meets Dr. Wicked– I hadn’t yet discovered a great new feature I had missed in Dr. Evil’s promo.

DISABLE BACKSPACE (!)

What’s so great about Disable Backspace? When Backspace (or Delete) has been “disabled” (temporarily), on your computer, you can’t correct a word, you can’t reformat a paragraph, you can’t insert a phrase or move it elsewhere.

Think what that means: screw up, and there’s not a thing you can do about it–except continue to write forward. So you do. Wow!

It may be ugly, you may be leaving a trail of imperfect prose behind you–but isn’t that what the “rough” in rough draft is all about? Rather than let that rhetorical question hang in the air I’m going to answer it: YES. YES. YES.

Here’s today’s mini-task: download Write or Die. Install it. Start using it.

20 Minutes. GO.