I've had a passion for story-telling since I was a little kid.
There's something about being able to create a world inside your mind, and then bring it to life on the page, that fuels my little attention-deficit heart. I shamelessly admit that I was a One Direction fanfiction writer on Wattpad, before I matured and moved on to Walking Dead fanfiction as a freshman in High School.
Hey -- everyone starts somewhere.
Needless to say, the positive feedback I received as a kid on something that I loved to do so much is what solidified my dream of one day being a published author.
Writing is difficult for everyone, regardless if you have ADHD or not. (Unless you're Stephen King or James Patterson.) For those of us who cannot finish a 600-page original novel in our sleep, the number one struggle that comes with being a writer is remaining on task.
Now, every now and then my ADHD superpowers will kick into over-drive, and I will find myself kicking out three or four chapters in a single late-night-coffee-induced escapade. But, that wave of hyper-fixation is always temporary, and always results in a period of being burnt out due to the extent to which I exhausted my brain.
Fortunately, we live in the twenty-first century, and these issues have been around for a long while. Technology has blossomed and given us helpful little tools that other writing-nerds have invented to help shepherd our creative little minds towards our goals.
So, here are my personal top three favorite tech resources I utilize as a writer.
1. Flora - Green Focus
Who doesn't love growing little trees? If you're someone like me who is a hugely visual person, this is a great app for staying on task. It's available for free in the app store. (The Forest app is an alternative to this with the same premise if you don't like Flora -- you can purchase it for around $4 on the Apple App Store.)
The premise of this app is to encourage you to complete a task by visually showing you how much progress you've made in the form of a little cartoon tree that grows as you write.
You can set a time for how long you want to focus on a task, and the tree will grow as long as you work and don't navigate away from the application to look at something else. (To avoid shifting into hyper-focus, or burning out, I will often work in 30-minute increments and give myself a little brain break.)
It's also great if you're like me and spend WAY too much screen time on social media. If you open Twitter or another application before your timer is done and your tree is successfully "grown-up," the app will notify you that your tree will die if you don't immediately return to the app and set your phone down.
This app is great for people who are afraid of failure.
Flora - Green Focus, available on the Apple App Store, Google Play, or Chrome.
2. Squibler
Okay, this one is for someone who is more motivated by fear than by cute little cartoon trees.
Squibler is the "most sadistic writing app" on the internet, according to some users. I've only used this in very desperate times of writing distress.
This online application is designed to completely delete all of the work you've written if you stop writing. Like Flora, you can set an amount of time that you want to write and use that to motivate you to write nonstop for the time you've set. (I usually only go for 3 minutes at a time because I do get distracted so easily, but you can set it for longer if that suits you better.)
This is my favorite application to use when I'm stuck on a rough draft or if I'm working through an idea that requires me to just brain dump. If you pause for more than 5 seconds, the screen starts fading as if you had been shot in a video game, and the words start to disappear. Even if you're just back-spacing.
This is a sprint application, not a marathon. It's great for getting your brain juice flowing, and it's kind of fun.
The Squibler gods are merciful and forgiving, however. Your work is only theatrically "lost" as a means of motivation. You are able to export your work whether you make it to the end or not.
3. Block Site
This simple and free Chrome extension is another great way to stop yourself from spending time on applications or websites that suck you in and ruin your writing focus.
Not as extreme as Squibler, this extension allows you to set time blocks on different websites so that you can focus on your set task.
It also turns off notifications for websites you set, so you don't lose that idea you had for your protagonist because your bestie is live-tweeting her most recent break-up.
Pair this with the Do Not Disturb feature on your iPhone, and you'll have that manuscript written in no time!
Try them out and let me know what you think! And, if there are any great tech resources that you use to help you focus as a writer -- let me know!
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