Morning Mill
Focus on writing 1000 words per day without distraction
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Morning Mill - Focus on writing 1000 words per day without distraction

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What? No media player? No "Call Uber" button? No grammar recombobulator? I'm curious what other people think of this "morning pages" thing. As a writer, there is no "free writing" for me. Only writing and then fixing. I've always thought that the idea of free writing as an excuse not to concentrate and tune-in to the work, and then be happy that you have anything to show for yourself. Like a toddler who has covered the kitchen in cookie dough. But is free writing useful for other professions? And are there any duties on its usefulness? Am just curious.
Maker
The Uber button is coming in a future release, don't you worry. Do you edit *while* you're writing? I find it a lot easier to get a few pages going, even if it's crap, and then edit afterwards -- I won't be sure what I want to say until I actually start, so I start, get it down, and then cut.
Free writing is great for creativity, be it in-depth thinking on a topic or writing fiction. Like HIIT sprints to train for a marathon. That said, it's not the way to write cookie cutter blog posts or, really, anything that's well defined in scope/structure/purpose.
Maker
Hey everyone! I made Morning Mill because I wanted a very, very lightweight tool to help me focus on writing 1000 words per day. I use Ulysses and Medium drafts, but neither is as fast or as lightweight as I wanted for just making the first pass of my writing. So I built this. :-) It's also my first OSX app -- I used Electron. I wrote a Medium post about it here:
Error:
Maker
You'll need to go into your settings and allow apps from unidentified developers.
Or you can right click to icon and choose "Open"
hey! I can't find Morning Mill anywhere and want to download it again after deleting it to make space on my machine. Do you have a link?
love the concept! I've been trying several apps with the same concept and so far this is the best one. Suggestion: it would be cool if you made the 1000 words/day limit to be unlimited. I get the idea behind the 1000 words/day, but I would love to use your platform to write more than 1000 words/day.
Maker
You're not limited once you hit 1000 words. :-) All that happens is the progress bar turns green and the menubar icon becomes a full sun. You can keep going foreeeevvaaa. Or...until midnight, because you lose your text after that.
Can you auto save text to the computer, even if free writing is usually pretty average to read, it's good for reflection.
or maybe send to a google doc
Maker
Not yet, though I plan it for a future release. Right now, my assumption is that you have a preferred place to store your writing for long-term and you can just copy/paste -- maybe it's Ulysses, or Notes, or Day One, or WordPress, or plain text files.
Awesome effort. The world needs more concentration and focus like this app enables. And great medium article on your site:
Awesome concept and probably one of the most relaxing writing platforms I've ever used in my life. Are you guys planning to include a counter or would that be too distracting? I feel extra comfortable not caring for how many words I wrote but also want to know what kind of notification/prompt is being shown when I write 1000+ words.
Maker
Hmm I didn't put a counter because it seemed to stress me out -- I kept looking at the counter instead of just writing. Also, a counter is kind of duplicating the progress bar at the bottom. I wanted to keep it as simple and visual as possible. As you progress (20%, 40%, 60%, 80%) the menubar icon adds little sun rays. And when you hit 1000 words, the progress bar turns green. That's it. I considered showing a cat video when you hit 1000 words...
I was really excited to download it but when I opened, it didn't really create a motive for me to write. It's a great to focus but somehow it is missing one ingredient.