Writer’s Tool Review: Write or DIE

Before I say anything… I have to admit I already loved this program before I started using it, all because of its name.

Write or Die is a little program that will make sure you keep writing, and don’t get distracted. And this is handy for any kind of writing. If you have a crazy assignment you have to hand in in two hours, this is THE tool to keep you focused.

The online version

Screenshot of Write or Die online, Click to enlarge

The online version of Write or Die offers you a few options.  You can select a word goal and/or a time goal, four “consequencences” modes (gentle, normal, kamikaze or electric shock) and three Grace Periods (forgiving, strict, evil).

After having made your selection and clicked “WRITE!” you will be sent to a blank browser page in which you can write your text. At first this may look innocent, but wait for it. If you don’t continue writing because you’ve been distracted by Twitter, Facebook, or any other distraction of doom, your Write or Die page will turn red. If you don’t return to your writing soon enough, it will start removing the words you wrote so far. Quite the motivator, no?

The downpoint of the online version is that it’s in your browser, and for me that means it’s among all the other tabs I’ve open. I’m really easily distracted, so for me, the desktop edition is much more useful, which I’ll promote present next. ^_^

You can find the online version of Write or Die on the main page of their website, on the right.

The desktop version

You can buy the desktop edition for $10 and it’s MUCH cooler than the online version. It offers you an additional bunch of options:

Screenshot of Write or Die Dekstop, click to enlarge

• Disable Backspace (For increased evil!)
• Fullscreen Mode (Shut out all distractions)
• Disable save until goal reached (To really crack the whip)
• Always in front (Why would you want to look at anything else?)
• Gradual Grace Period Slider (For extreme subtlety!)
• Any Time Limit You Want! (How long can you hold up?)

If you don’t write long enough… The consequences are pretty rough: you can select the sound you want to be alerted with, from crying babies, to evil violins to the alarm clock from hell. >:D

You can also customize the fonts, colors and background colors of your writepage. Another cool addition is that you can get stats of the amount of words you wrote in total, the amount of punishments you received, your average words per minute and the amount of words the Kamikaze mode ate. You can also make it disable the save function, so that you can only save your work after you finished. I personally am too scared my laptop will crash during that time so I usually don’t use it. But it’s still pretty neat.

They recently integrated buttons that allow you to instantly publish the text you wrote in Write or Die to Blogger, Livejournal and WordPress, which is pretty cool!

Also, if your friends use this program as well, you can participate in something called the “Word War”, so you can see who wrote the biggest amount of words the fastest.

If you want to buy Write or Die, you can do so here: http://writeordie.com/buy/ Write or Die is written in Adobe AIR, so is available for Windows, Mac and Linux!

Have you ever used Write or Die? What’s your experience?

Or have you used something similar to Write or Die?

Please share your thoughts and ideas!