The Greatest Thing Since...well, the greatest thing ever. WRITE OR DIE!

For those of you not as deeply ingrained in NaNoWriMo culture, Write or Die (http://writeordie.drwicked.com/) is a way to force yourself into writing. You set a goal and a time limit, and then, depending on the mode you choose, it forces you to write by turning the background a very angry red, blasting an annoying noise, or - in the mode I have yet to attempt - begins to erase your writing every time you stop typing.

I come to you fresh out of a Write or Die session, in which I wrote 400 words in the ten-minute time limit. I set my goal for 200, since I was currently at 25,810 and enjoy seeing my little blue progress bar above the purple graph after so many days of being behind.

Need I tell you of my overjoyed-ness? I wrote DOUBLE what I intended. Considering that there have been 15-minute word wars where I've only managed 300 words, Write or Die is my new best friend. I used it a few times last year, during my first NaNoWriMo, at times when I couldn't find the motivation to write and needed something to keep me going. And I liked it. But now, I know I couldn't live without it. In my 2010 NaNo, I'm fighting to resist the sophomore slump, and Write or Die is keeping me out of it.

Plus, I wrote a hundred more words than I average in a fifteen minute word war. In less time.

The only thing I have left to do is to get my typing speed of something like 60/70 words a minute aligned with my brain-functioning-and-thinking-all-the-things-I-want-to-say-in-my-novel speed. If I did that, then ten minutes could mean 700 words, and I could get my daily wordcount requirement out in less than a half hour.

Well, I'll work on that. For now, I encourage all of you Wrimos out there to try write or die if you haven't already. Don't be fooled by the name - truly, it's a lifesaver.

~blackandwhitedreamer