Seen a couple posts on the dashboard lately about writing with ADHD. So, for the ADHD and neurodivergent folks who like writing but struggle sometimes... check out StimuWrite.
You can set it to make little sounds as you type (or leave them off), and emojis pop up in the corner. You can change the background, dark and light themes, set your word goal, and it gives you a percentage and total word count at the bottom. Though it’s more meant for getting a draft written up, so it doesn’t have spell check or anything like that. You’re meant to just copy and past what you write here into Google Docs or Word or Scrivener or whatever else you use and go from there. Honestly love it when I'm struggling to get words down, though. And apparently there’s an update now for StimuWrite 2?👀
Anyways, give it a try if it looks like it may help. It’s currently name-your-own-price.
Hundreds of you have told me how much StimuWrite has helped you, and for months I've been working hard to find a way I can continue to develop it to be the best writing app for neurodivergent people and keep it free for everyone. Yesterday, that culminated in hitting publish on the new Patreon page!
With patreon support, I'll be able to regularly release themes, add-ons, content, and free updates to StimuWrite. This month, I've released two new themes for patrons, and have an exciting addon ready for next months rewards.
For just $5/month you'll get 1 or 2 new themes and/or addons each month
If you have the extra cash & want to contribute more, there are 2 other membership levels that will give you all of the pre-patreon content & a more prominent place in the credits. If you can't afford it, that's totally okay! The base app is free forever and I'll continue to add features for you.
have SO much cool stuff lined up and planned, and if you can afford it, I hope you'll go on this journey with me. I'm endlessly grateful for the kind words and donations in the past, and humbled by how many words this little app has helped people write. Long live StimuWrite!
i reblogged a whole post about this a while back but basically it's a really straightforward software that lets you set a word count and it gives you a progress bar and it can cheer you on with emojis and you can make it make funny sounds when you type (or not) and it's got cute themes and it's free and very cool and swag
Every time you type, the screen fills with confetti.
It's a great app and so beautiful.
Give the author a chance, he is indie and very kind, always responding quickly to any question or suggestion.
Here are the things I've learned from this experience:
1: Stimuwrite 2 is awesome (no I will never stop singing its praises)
2: Learning to "Yes and" myself. Pregame worldbuilding just doesn't seem to work for me as well as I thought it did. For this nano, I would come up with ideas that I would just throw in for the sake of continuing the story. Normally when I'm writing from a heavily world-built setting, I would have to stop and think: "Wait, does this make sense? Can I do this? What would I have to explain to make this work? Do I have to retcon something now? Rework my world from the ground up?" Instead I would just be like, "Well, now this exists. What else can I do with it?" And I think that's more fun for me.
3: Instead of worldbuilding, I started with a concept I wanted to fulfill. In this case, the premise was a previous set of heroes beating the bad guy by falling to the dark side and giving in to their negative emotions. Thus, they become villains themselves for another generations of heroes to overcome. The emotional core of the story is how you deal with your mistakes and shortcomings not by doubling down, but being open about your weaknesses and striving to do better. Nothing too original about that concept, but it helped me shape the characters and the world. There are still a lot of things that need to be ironed out if I continue the story, but I'm going to start worrying about the bugs during the revision process.
(Just to be transparent, I was writing Animon fanfiction, so I did not by any means build this world from scratch. However, the Animon Story rulesbook is pretty lenient on what sort of lore the GM wants for their game, so there was still a lot of world for me to build.)
4: Keeping up with the habit of writing. When the story stays in my head, it's harder to conceptualize all the happenings and events that need to logistically be there. Even if I don't use most of what I write, the process of writing helps me organize my thoughts better. I'm going to try to write 800 words a day for a while.
