Earnest – A writing tool for first drafts

http://www.moreofless.co.uk/earnest/

by rhubarbcustard • 12 years ago

69 58 12 years ago

moreofless.co.uk

slvv2• 12 years ago

This is a super interesting idea. I work with a lot of undergraduate students who struggle with the writing/editing divide, and I will absolutely be recommending that they try this tool.

rhubarbcustard6• 12 years ago

Hey, OP here. Glad you liked Earnest, I wrote it for myself a while back and have been using it for almost all my writing, does make a hell of a difference for me - seeing as I found it so useful I decided to tidy it up and release it.

TillE• 12 years ago

I've never done anything resembling professional writing, but I've always found myself creatively paralyzed when sitting in front of a keyboard. Not quite sure why, but it's so much easier to let it all flow out with a pencil and paper.

slvv2• 12 years ago

That can definitely help! I do work with some students who have learning challenges or other issues with writing, physical or otherwise, for whom writing by hand isn't an option. Freewriting is a good idea whether by pencil or by keyboard, though!

the1evilgenius• 12 years ago

That's a good idea. Seeking perfection the first time around can kill productivity. I know it has for me.

DanBC3• 12 years ago

This is a great idea.

I would love an option to have bigger text size for writing. The current editing text is too small for comfort.

The text on the info page is also far too small for me. Sorry to sound like I'm whining.

I spotted one typo - "Earnest automatically saves you writing every". I gave up reading because my eyesight is so bad and I just couldn't read the smaller text.

I do really freaking like the idea though. I will be using it. Is there any way to send you a (small) amount of money?

rhubarbcustard6• 12 years ago

Hey Dan, OP here.

Thanks for the kind words, glad you liked it. Are you viewing Earnest on a table or phone? Think I need to tidy my CSS up a bit for smaller screens.

DanBC3• 12 years ago

I'm using Chrome on iOS on an iPhone 4s.

mythealias• 12 years ago

Browser zoom (Ctrl + +) works fine for me.

konspence• 12 years ago

Other than adding a word count that only periodically updates, what value does this add to something like Notes in OS X?

DanBC3• 12 years ago

For me the enforced no editing is useful.

Theodores• 12 years ago

Would this not work better as a plugin 'editor' for a CMS such as Wordpress?

Imagine you log in to Wordpress as 'contributor' and write with the 'Earnest' plugin, no edits possible, but still in the knowledge that you are writing for the blog and surrounded by the WP interface you know well. The autosaved article would only be 'draft'.

Then, you log in as 'editor' to do the editing, with the regular WP editor.

For me I could see the attraction of such a work flow and it would not be like I was having to learn a new tool, as is the case here.

rhubarbcustard6• 12 years ago

That's a good idea, that could definitely work. I created Earnest as a standalone page for myself mainly so that I could do away with almost all controls and clutter on the page and just have the textarea - keeping distractions to a minimum.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 12 years ago

Good idea, and it looks nice too.

Here's a similar, though uglier, idea[0] for the console, the console because less opportunity for hn, facebook, distractionware, etc. Backspace deletes the whole word.

[0] https://github.com/hagna/prolix

euphemize• 12 years ago

Like this a lot too.

Earnest shows you the number of words in your text, useful for people who need to hit a particular word-count, but it only re-calculates the number every minute to deter you from constantly keeping an eye on your progress. The word-count should not be a distraction from your writing.

I would maybe have the counter be real-time, but require the user to leave the keyboard (or some other significant action) to show it? (ex: on mouseover). I was trying this out and still was looking at the "0 words" and thinking "damn, I wonder how many words there are."

ollysb• 12 years ago

Perhaps the writer could enter the target number of words. You could show a progress bar (with a course granularity of say quarters) then when you're near the target show the word count in real time so that you can fine tune your words into the limit.

baddox• 12 years ago

The write-only concept is interesting. I suspect I would find it irritating, but I'm not a writer. I wonder what other constraints could help.

chj• 12 years ago

There is an app for that

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/write-only/id590507955?mt=8

danvoell• 12 years ago

Interesting. I never realized how often I hit backspace. Everyone should test this out just for fun.

drye• 12 years ago

Looks like shift+arrow keys will still select the text and the selected text can be replaced by typing over it.

trop• 12 years ago

Also tapping within the text and typing quickly will also overwrite/insert...

soneca3• 12 years ago

Great concept, but "not delete" feature? God no! A total deal breaker for me!

I like to correct obvious mistakes, such as typos, when i see it. I like to insert a paragraph, or a phrase, on a early section, when i think of it. I like to erase whole paragraphs that a new one I just wrote contradict or substitute.

I am starting to write some essays and this would be perfect, except for this write-only. You disrupted too much my process.

rhubarbcustard6• 12 years ago

The "no delete" feature is super-weird to begin with and takes a lot of getting used to. If your workflow is to edit-in-place all the time then Earnest is probably not for you.

Thanks for checking it out.

soneca3• 12 years ago

Weird, first time i feel rejected by a company/service. Feels like highschool.

dj-wonk• 12 years ago

I do respect the "this is the vision, take it or leave it" way of thinking, but there is a middle ground. Perhaps give one edit per 100 characters (or something configurable).

Put another way -- you don't have to make something entirely impossible to discourage a user from doing it. What other ways are there to reduce in-place editing?

Just one idea: don't show what people are writing for more than a few seconds, and then gradually fade it away.

Pacabel2• 12 years ago

Why wouldn't you just use a minimalistic text editor like Notepad or nano, then?

They avoid the distractions of spell checking and all that, while still saving files locally, and while still allowing you to delete text you've written.

bennyg• 12 years ago

I use Sublime Text for my writing for this purpose. I'm fairly good at not making spelling errors, and I usually correct them when I type them anyways, but it's nice to not have something look like it's on a printed page already with the margins, etc.

j2kun• 12 years ago

I think the intended audience is people who want to practice finishing as opposed to perfecting. I often struggle to finish bits of writing I start because I go back and read and re-read and tweak and then before I know it the afternoon I allocated is over.

I certainly wouldn't view it as a substitute for a regular editor, but a tool for a different job.

medell• 12 years ago

For your use case, try Byword (Mac only). Minimalizes distractions, many of the same features.

krek• 12 years ago

Wouldn't an offline desktop version of this be better?

PhasmaFelis• 12 years ago

Reminds me of this: http://wondermark.com/519/

donnieclapp• 12 years ago

Draft (http://draftin.com) has had a similar "Hemingway Mode" feature for a few months now.

It's potentially more useful, though, because when you're done "no backspace" writing, you can switch to normal mode and get all the features of a full collaborative piece of software.

elwell• 12 years ago

Earnest automatically saves you writing every 10 seconds
There's no need to name you text
Earnest will auto-save you work

your* writing, your* text, your* work

Was the value proposition written in Earnest?

I like the concept though.

rhubarbcustard6• 12 years ago

Heh, I just knew I would put a typo on the landing page somewhere - I checked and double-checked it...

But, yeah, it was written using Earnest and the first draft of it looked much worse.

jopela• 12 years ago

This is reminiscent of author George R. R. Martin writing GoT on is DOS machine.

chipotle_coyote• 12 years ago

Except that WordStar 4 has a delete key. Actually, WordStar has a lot more editing capability than a lot of the "minimal" text editors that have been the rage the last few years.

I don't advocate that we should all follow GRRM's lead for our writing, but I'm wondering whether the race to introduce text editors with ever-decreasing functionality is actually taking us somewhere particularly useful. In 1994, I could run a DOS word processor called Nota Bene that supported movement, selection, deletion and transposition by word, sentence, line, paragraph and phrase, and could near-instantly index and do Google-esque boolean searches on entire project folders, showing you search terms in context. (And of course it had its own multiple file, window and clipboard support, IIRC with multiple clipboards.) While the editors are surely a lot prettier twenty years later, could we stop dicking around with ways to prevent me from editing and start coming up with ways to help me edit better?

fellowniusmonk• 12 years ago

Combine with http://www.hemingwayapp.com/? I wonder what that would do to a persons writing?

dmerfield• 12 years ago

As it seems many have done, I also made a text editor for first drafts called Typewriter.

http://llllll.li/typewriter/

It's a little more restrictive since you can't move the caret. However, you can 'delete' mistakes by striking them out. Also, when you save your draft, text you've struck-out is excluded.

I turned it into a desktop app for mac since I wanted something which would work offline and save/read files nicely but you can preview the basic writing experience in browser (http://llllll.li/typewriter/app/). The code is also on Github: https://github.com/davidmerfield/Typewriter

lygaret• 12 years ago

I really like this, thanks!

maxmem• 12 years ago

I normally just write in a basic text editor and then do all of my formatting and editing later.

The auto save would be nice though.

tptacek• 12 years ago

For this problem, I am a little bit irrationally in love with Draftin --- https://draftin.com.

One problem I have writing is that I've spent ~25 years conditioning myself not to write first drafts, by doing so much writing on BBSs, then Usenet, then mailing lists, then (briefly) blogs and finally on boards (the new Usenet). As a result, I lack the discipline to get my thoughts on a page and then walk away.

Draftin solves this for me by making it so easy to collect reviews (by sharing links to drafts with friends or interested people) that I feel compelled to do that every time I write something.

I'm also surprised at how little I miss emacs (my normal writing environment) when writing on Draft. I almost prefer Draft's interface.

aufreak32• 12 years ago

Thanks for the link to draftin. Looks very useful. Fwiw, the op's work seems equivalent to draftin's "Hemingway mode" .. which (if I understand it right) doesn't permit any edits at all.

Wistar• 12 years ago

Ah. Is this why the both the delete and backspace key appear to be disable in earnest?

moron4hire2• 12 years ago

I am actively researching something I call "emerging writers". An emerging writer is a person who has finally gone beyond just saying they want to be a writer and is actively working on their first manuscript.

It's a lot like learning programming. There is a lot that is unknown, but learning is exciting, and the potential is clear to the budding author. Unfortunately, the available tools and feedback systems for writers are extremely primitive compared to what is available to programmers.

In the cases I've observed, emerging writers often can intuit errors in their writing, but lack the skillset to correct said errors. Lacking tools like spelling- and grammar-check then causes anxiety for the user. And in my own personal development as a writer, I know that my spelling skill only improved with the introduction of ubiquitous spelling-correction indicators in browsers. I would often try to correct the spelling mistake on my own so I wouldn't have to grab the mouse to right-click the broken word.

So, against my initial judgement that spell-check was a detriment to mean-time-to-first-draft, I eventually came to re-enable spelling check in my own writing tool: https://www.justwritedammit.com.

If you're serious about helping writers be more productive, please consider joining me. JWD is open-source, free software. https://www.github.com/capnmidnight/JWD.

aufreak32• 12 years ago

Interesting experiment to forbid editing. Though the delete key doesn't work, cut-copy-paste does. Forbid that too! ... otherwise I'll be tempted to cheat :)

gojomo• 12 years ago

Nifty. Could take it further and prohibit capitalization and punctuation. (Perhaps, allow one sloppy stand-in punctuation placeholder no matter what you type, like ·.)

mcmire• 12 years ago

This makes sense. I don't write a lot, but when I do, I actually use Evernote on my phone or TextEdit on my computer. I find the smaller the space to write in, or the shittier the tool, the better. Basically limitations are actually a good thing. You're not compelled to write anything beautiful, and so there's no pressure, and you just write anything that comes to mind. You can always edit later...

dasmithii• 12 years ago

Interesting how we sometimes prefer restriction to full-fledged freedom. Similarly, many of us find Twitter more pleasant that Facebook, which puts no limitation on post length.

I suppose the minuscule details of life are better left in the hands of others (or software, for that matter). When spell checks, word counts and the like are left outside one's realm of thought, it's easier to focus on what's truly meaningful - in this case, the content itself, rather than grammatical intricacies.

Premature optimization is an enormous problem in both code and prose. This tool's core purpose is to remove that temptation, I guess, though I'm not fanatic about the concept. If modern word processors are too distracting, and their advantages aren't necessary, I'd prefer to write on physical paper instead. It brings the same "don't look back" mentality.

jonp• 12 years ago

It looks like there is a way to delete: select a section of text (using Shift and arrow keys) then press Enter.

dredmorbius• 12 years ago

When I was a callow youth we called this COPY CON

You can achieve a remarkably similar effect with

    cat <<EOF >file

Strictly this allows you to cheat in that you can edit the present line, but as a matter of course, it's pretty fluid.

And I actually use it on occasion. Usually for initializing README files, occasionally longer texts.

xerophtye2• 12 years ago

Personally, since i do a lot of typos, i'd find it rather distracting that i can't go back and fix something even though i know it's wrong. I suppose the idea is to let go of all of that and just spew out words without breaking your flow, and i know going back to correct a typo does break flow, but it's something i think i'd have to train myself to do.

da4c30ff• 12 years ago

Inspired by this I wrote a minor mode for Emacs called draft-mode. It can be found at https://github.com/gaudecker/draft-mode

obeid• 12 years ago

When testing a new writing app, I tend to write a stream of consciousness kind of thing. Here's what I wrote to test the app. "This is an experiemnt with Earnets. I'm not quite sure how this works. This is another sentence. The word count is notn being updatineed ... oh I ejust realized the stupid logic of this application. Cool app, bruh."

Earnest – A writing tool for first drafts

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