The world’s cruelest (but probably effective) writing tool

What if your word processor was a cruel, merciless taskmaster. It wasn’t there to make writing easier, but to train you to write better, even if that was painful and difficult.

If you’ve put any effort into being a better writer, you know this: Most of the best paths to being a better writer are painful and difficult. (Not all of them, fortunately.)

Imagine a word processor that deletes what you’ve written if you pause in your writing for more than a few seconds. No matter how good it was, it’s gone. Lost forever.

That would force you to relentlessly charge forward with your first draft without stopping to think or to go back and fix things are you go.

That’s the ideal way all writers should be working: Terrible, messy, error-filled first drafts. Unencumbered by the editing process.

Then you go back, adjust your mindset, and start editing. Fixing the typos. Improving word choice. Rearranging. Deleting the nonsense. Adding details and proof. That’s the way to do it.

That’s hard to do, especially if you’re using a word processor. I violate that ideal all the time.

For example: in my first draft of the previous paragraph, I spelled the word you’re, your. So embarrassing. I saw it right away, then backspaced and corrected it. That’s a mistake. A waste of time. It may have cost me some flash of brilliance because I momentarily shifted from being creative to being judgmental.

So back to the cruel word processor. There is one that does that. It’s called The Most Dangerous Writing App.

I have it and play with it now and then. It’s good for pure freewriting But I’m too afraid to make it my regular first-draft generator.

How about you? Are you ready for a tool that’s just plain cruel — but just might train you to be a much stronger writer?