Freewriter 4+

I like this app, though I have a couple of suggestions for making it better.

What I like: The falling text encourages you to keep writing. If the words hit the bottom of the screen, nothing dire happens (like the words disappearing completely). The fullscreen mode blocks out other distractions. It tells you at the end (in a percentage) what your focus was.

What would make it better: Ability to adjust the timer—it doesn’t do any more or less than 5 minutes at a time. Sometimes, I like to free write for 10 or even 20 minutes at a time. You can hit “continue writing” once the time is up, but it interrupts the flow of the free write.

Also, I’d prefer if no backspaces were allowed. I don’t often backspace while free writing, but occasionally automatic instinct kicks in, and I backspace. You can train yourself to not backspace, but for those who are working towards it, no backspacing would make it even better.

I like the concept of Freewritr, but I'm not understanding completely how it works. I haven't discovered how to save a text. Once I put only the pieces of the texts I wanted to change on the right hand side and then, thought that those parts would be put into the text on the left hand side. So I hit save and all that was saved was the pieces of texts that I selected to work on the right hand side. If I can't see the whole writing how can I possibly change anything in its context. I can't work on the whole text I wrote. And as far as I can see, the app has no support or help page and when I go on the website, all I get is a rather sparse website with no contact details. So far this program has been a frustration for me and yet, I like the concept of writing as a game. It's too bad that one can't really use this for any serious writing at all. Your texts just vanish into thin air.

Freewriter in a nutshell: it’s a game where you try to keep your line of words from sinking to the bottom of a screen by not editing.

Did you miss-hit some keys? Keep typing. Did the last thing you wrote sound dumb to you? Keep typing.

This is good and bad. It’s the kind of writing you can decide to do with a pen and paper in a cafe somewhere, but here you’re doing it at your computer. With your computer, you get a text file so you don’t have to transcribe from handwriting later. You can edit out the bad stuff and neaten up the niceties, and your writer’s journey continues, huzzah!

That’s the good part.

The bad part is that it’s a one-trick-pony of a program with the completion and nuance of a highschool programming project.

Freewriter has next to no controls, nearly no parameters or preferences to set. Want to scream along for one minute? Too bad. Want to grit your teeth and play it for ten uninterrupted minutes? Tough luck, buddy. You signed up for a one-size-fits all minds solution, and that means limits and sometimes the limits are galling.

I understand the use of the thing, and I think I will continue to use it, but I’d be a lot happier if it were a little better. It would be a fine thing if it offered you a little more freedom.

This review was written using only freewriter.