Feeling exhausted?
Frustrated?
Anxious?
Congratulations, you just might be a writer.
From a spectator’s point of view, writing seems easy. All you have to do is sit down and let the words flow out of your minds and onto the page.
The reality is rather different, and you are certainly familiar with what we are talking about.
Staring at a blank page for hours, going through dozens of different drafts, each one more frustrating than the last, the approaching deadlines, and disgruntled clients, among other things.
Writing can be arduous, but even the most difficult periods and dry spells can be made more productive and less exhausting by introducing some elements of gaming into the process.
Fortunately, you don’t even have to think of any yourself, because there are plenty of apps and tools already designed for that very purpose.
5 super-useful apps for writers that will make writing a lot more fun
1. Ilys
Sometimes the worst source of distraction can be your text editor, with all those unnecessary options and buttons. Instead, try using Ilys.
What makes Ilys unique is that you won’t be able to see the full text on your screen, nor you will be able to make any changes or edits to your work until you’ve matched the desired word count. In the process, you will only be able to see that last letter you have typed, and that’s the only thing that will be visible on your screen.
By focusing on writing, and nothing else, you will be able to get more work done in a way that is a bit more fun that your usual writing process.
m quite boring, to be honest.
What makes Goalscape so unique is its eye-catching and clever interface.
All of your goals are presented in the shape of a large, concentric pie chart that allows you to enter your goals, set their size based on importance, and track your goals by dragging a slider in order to indicate their completeness.
While this app is designed to help you focus on the bigger picture, you can use it focus on your writing goals instead.
3. Beeminder
If keeping track of your goals and meeting them is still not stimulating enough for you, you should try Beeminder.
What it does is all allow you to create a goal, keep track of your progress, and if you happen to fall behind, the app will simply take your money. But don’t worry, because it’s not a scam.
The money that gets taken from your credit card is used to keep the service up and running for you, as well as others. We don’t know about you, but this definitely got us in the mood to write and not lose out cash in the process.
4. Habitica
Habitica is probably the most fun app on this list.
It introduces a clever twist by treating your personal and professional goals as an RPG game. But, instead of boosting your character’s health, strength, or skills, you are tasked with developing good habits, which are represented as monsters that you need to defeat in order to progress further in the game.
In its essence, it is a to-do list application, which allows you to create three main lists: Habits , Dailies, and To-Dos.
Habits are focused toward getting you to develop useful habits and make use of them from time to time.
Dailies contain all of the things you should be doing on a daily basis, and To-Dos list serves as reminder that the deadline for a particular goal is getting closer.
5. Write or Die
Write or Die is one of the most unforgiving writing apps you will find because it will start deleting your work if you are not able to match the writing pace you have set yourself inside the app.
On top of that, you can choose one of its three already famous modes: Reward, Consequence, and Stimulus.
Inside the Reward mode, you will be rewarded, obviously, for all your hard work, whether it’s with pictures of cute puppies or pleasant sounds of bells.
The app’s Consequence mode is the polar opposite of the Reward mode, because if you dare to slip up, you will be punished with such awful things like ugly spiders, or loud alarm noises.
And finally, there is the Stimuli mode, which is more geared toward helping you concentrate and remain more productive by changing the audio-visual aspect of the app to make it more stimulating.
While this may seem counterproductive, especially regarding the mode where your work gets deleted if you are not writing fast enough, the idea is just to get you to write anything and get your writing juices flowing.
Conclusion
Struggling to move past a blank page can be extremely frustrating, and we don’t help by putting unnecessary pressure on ourselves and striving to be perfect every single time, either.
That is probably the single most important benefit of these writing resources: they help you take your mind off all the obstacles that prevent you from writing.
You are only left with your writing skills and nothing else, and that’s certainly something you have confidence in.
After that, all the other pieces will fall into place.
Good luck!
About the Author
Joan Selby is a content marketer at Edugeeksclub.com which provides online assistance to students and supports them. Former CalArts graduate and a fancy shoe lover. A writer by day and reader by night. Giving creative touch to everything. Find her on Twitter and Facebook
