Cold Turkey For Writers

Go Cold Turkey And Write Like A Maniac

Are you constantly in a state of distraction? Do you “intend” to write 500, 1000 or even more words everyday, but never even get started?

Does your day look like this?

Email inbox, a dozen times a day
Apps — weight loss, exercise, new and exciting stuff
Games
Push messages
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest
Medium articles that just NEED to be read
Internet surfing

If you get caught up in any of the activities above, your writing production is probably suffering, the Cold Turkey app for writers will help you take control.

Even though I have the best of “intentions,” I am constantly sucked into the BLACK HOLE called the Internet.

I’ll be in the middle of an article, need a fact or a quote or a bit more information. I Google it and then I’m off like a freaking rabbit. Something that should have taken a minute, engages me for hours.

An article that should have been finished in one or two hours, takes a whole day or simply doesn’t get done.

Ever plan on reading ONE Medium article and end up reading ten? Yep, me too!

Chewing up valuable time when you “should” be writing is not just frustrating, it can impact your goals, your earning capacity and even your dreams of being a full-time freelancer.

Not only that, being in a constant state of distraction can end up affecting your mental health. You may “beat yourself up,” feeling like crap not only because you just beat yourself up, but because you’ve broken promises to yourself and squandered your day(s). Finding yourself constantly out of control may lead to depression and misplaced anger.

How My Writing Production Increased Exponentially, Stopping My Black Hole Surfing In Its Tracks.

I was writing an article on the term “cold turkey.” The article was just supposed to be about what cold turkey means and the origins of the phrase.

So I googled “cold turkey” and my article ended up being MORE than just the definition.

I found a cold turkey song by John Lennon, a Cold Turkey movie, and found …

The Cold Turkey BLOCKING app for writers.
https://getcoldturkey.com/writer/

This discovery turned my surfing black hole into NIRVANA and has improved my productivity exponentially.

The Cold Turkey Writers app, “turns your computer into a typewriter.”

If you’ve ever USED a typewriter, all you have is a blank piece of paper and a SIMPLE keyboard.

NO fancy stuff like bold, italics, headers or any other kind of formatting. All you can do is type.

When you activate Cold Turkey for Writers, you get to choose:

*The number of words you will type OR
*The length of time you will work for.

You can still bail out if you change your mind …

Then the magic happens:

You are locked out of EVERYTHING except for your “typewriter.”

The creator of Cold Turkey is proud of the fact that you simply can’t get around the appl You can’t turn it off, you can’t circumvent it.

If you committed to 1000 words, you HAVE to type 1000 words before the app turns itself off. If you committed to one hour, you are locked out of everything for an hour. NO peeking at your email. You can either type, look at a blank screen or walk away from your computer for an hour.

One hour after I completed and posted my Cold Turkey article, I downloaded and started testing the app.

Since I often write in 100-word sprints, that’s where I started.

I activated Cold Turkey and chose 100 words. I already had an article topic in mind, so I just got started.

I simply flew through the opening paragraph and in less than three minutes I had written 100 words and the DONE message popped up.

I activated it again and again, three times in a row before I ran into a snag.

OH Dear …

I needed a couple of links. SHEESH–I had 76 words left to go before the app would unlock.

My quick and easy solution was to put a string of asterisks where I had missing information. I kept on going for another two 100-word sprints.

Six hundred words later, my article was done, with three missing pieces.

To complete the article, I pasted the text into a WordPress draft and spent the next hour filling in the holes, formatting, adding images and doing a final edit.

WOW. WOW. WOW!

Because the article already had a beginning, middle and ending, when I surfed for some facts and links, I didn’t dive into the black hole looking for more and more information, I knew exactly what I needed and I stopped as soon as I found it.

The next day, I did it again. I seriously considered upping the word target to 200 or even 300 words so there were not as many STOPS … BUT I decided that doing the 100-word sprints and completing them fast, was extremely motivating.

My Mom is in a hospital and my life is extremely disrupted right now. I can fit my 100-word sprints into the left over bits in my day. Seeing my word count add up encourages me to keep on going. The Cold Turkey Writer’s app, is helping to keep me focused on writing.

Yes, when I am filling in information “holes” I still need the Internet to get information and links. I still get engaged and still start down a surfing black hole, BUT, SO FAR I am finding myself to be far more focused and purposeful than several weeks ago. I am much more aware of the black hole and find myself NOT getting caught up for hours.

I decided to get the “pro” version of the writer’s app because it has a few enhancements that “might” result in even faster writing. I’m in the habit of editing as I go. Over the weeks to come, I’ll see if locking myself out of backspacing and editing will actually have me writing faster or not.

The pro version for the writers app was $9 CND and even if I don’t end up using the extras, my purchase will help support the app developers.

I suspect that down the line, I MIGHT no longer need Cold Turkey for Writers, but for now, it is the perfect solution for me. It spurs me on. It cuts out the distractions. It helps me focus JUST on writing. And …