I rarely see Cold Turkey Writer in the wild but when I do, I know that person probably goes through similar struggles focusing on writing.
For writing sessions that don’t involve research, Cold Turkey Writer gives you everything you need:
- Nothing
You’re locked into a text editor and get to set (1) a timer or (2) a word count goal.
You get one text file to write in. You get some text settings to restrict a few more things while writing.
Bells & whistles: rain and coffee shop soundtracks.
I love it. Almost as much I love to come up with reasons not to use it.
- I forget it’s there: It’s not quite front and center for me when thinking of tools to write in. Probably because it’s definitely not a quick capture tool. I’ve been using Drafts for that lately after years using Evernote.
- I sometimes don’t end up using the things I write in it: I do have an automation set up with Hazel: when a new file is made from Cold Turkey Writer, copy the text to a new note in Evernote.
- I find “gooood reasons” to use other apps: I’ll need to look something up while writing, I’ll need to add backlinks to other things, I’ll need to create a table, I’ll need rich text for images…
(For all those things: placeholders work fine.)
Anyway, this was written in Cold Turkey Writer (12 minute timer, rain + coffee soundtrack on) and it was a nice reminder that I really don’t need much at all to start writing.