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Comment by rpastuszak | Hacker News Reader

I approach this by separating writing from editing. Just keep writing, ignore the typos, self-censorship or formatting and keep moving.

So, I've build myself an app to make that easier. Essentially, it's just a more stupid version of a text box. It's free, it's private, and it's meant to put you in the state of flow.

I've been using it every day for the past 3 years or so and I know that some people find it useful too, but even if I was the only user, I'd still be quite happy with it, since I suck at sticking with habits :)

Check it out!

https://enso.sonnet.io

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>I approach this by separating writing from editing. Just keep writing, ignore the typos, self-censorship or formatting and keep moving.

You've (re)discovered the old adage: write drunk, edit sober.

Close but, no cigar. Code sober, debug drunk!

https://sonnet.io/posts/code-sober-debug-drunk/

Similar idea I made a few years ago. A text editor with no editing allowed and lets you export to Word/MD/HTML for later editing

https://first-draft.netlify.app

Sweet! If you don't mind sharing, did anyone donate through ko-fi?

I think there's still potential in writing tools with decent UX (iA Writer and such) and I know that some people wanted to pay me for Enso, so I'm trying to figure out the best course of action: either charge premium for a premium native app or let the people chip in. Paid products tend to get more valuable feedback.

I just checked and nobody did. I didn't really promote it. Might have helped if I had said what I might do with the money to improve it?

Here’s my biggest critique of Enso: It’s not very easy to send myself a reminder when I’m back at my computer to use it.

Content: i’m currently on my mobile phone and I absolutely adore the idea of Enso (funny enough I’m currently holding & feeding my infant named Enzo). I would like to write with it and try it when I don’t have an infant on my lap but that requires me remembering it and looking it up when back on my laptop and ready to write something.

I added my email on the mobile sign-up but frankly I don’t really want a mobile app as 60% of my long-form mobile writing is done via voice to text and edited later. What I’d like is a “remind me via email to give Enso a try” signup that says “hey, this is a reminder to try Enso… The flow focused, low editing app for creative writing” or something like that.

> remind me via email to give Enso a try

I like this. Thanks! Email notifications nowadays are a bit of a pain to set up, since they need to contain the physical address of the sender in the footer, so this is a piece of work I _always_ keep postponing. I was even considering dropping that form completely. Maybe I could generate a calendar event with a reminder instead? This way I won't have to store any data about the user and I could probably piggy back on the phone UX when it comes to reminders. Just thinking aloud here.

> as 60% of my long-form mobile writing is done via voice to text and edited later.

Yeah, your description matches my own usage patterns. And, I've reached a similar conclusion. Mobile-first Ensō would probably have two modes: keyboard + dictation.

Go get convertkit. It's bloody awesome, cheap, and they even have an address of their own that you can use if you don’t wqnt to share your physical address.

The sequenced auto responders that they have boost my open and click rates as much as 300% and allow for some truly powerful/complex programmatic features that anyone who's on HN would love.

>they even have an address of their own that you can use if you don’t wqnt to share your physical address.

Cheers, will give it a shot! (or just get the damn PO Box)

You want a sign-up on the site that just sends you an email and tells you to use it?

You could also just send yourself an email, you know.

Or, if you're fancy, use a to-do list that you can access both on your mobile and your computer.

(To be fair, I recall the brain-fog that comes with having an infant.)

It's a user experience thing. Too often product designers (myself especially) think that a user should remember/do an action/etc. However, I believe most failures are design failures VS user errors and that a better designed system could/should strive to fix them.

So, yes, I could use a Todo list or some other solution to remind myself. But that inherently assumes this rises to the level of neurally important... which trying out a new tool rarely is.

That's why I offered a marketing/growth idea to better help passers-by remember to try it out in a super clean UX way that integrates with their workflow.

Fair enough, but I still think the user could benefit from a gentle nudge here:)

There is a small typo on the start page:

"[...] to say istead of how you want to say it."

Instead is missing a "n". :)

Good timing, I took today off to do some (late) spring cleaning. Fixed, thanks.

I just gave this a whirl and I wanted to let you know it's very fun! For anyone else that wants to give the demo a shot, here's the direct link:

https://write.sonnet.io/

I like it!

I totally agree. My approach is to just turn of the monitor.

I made a colorscheme for vim that uses same color for font and background. Use it sometimes when I need to write long confusing thoughts. It's quite a nice experience, the sentences turn out to be similar to the way I would speak, but still with more thought and deepness.

Oh that's awesome, I'm going to try that.

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