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Thanks to Scrivener I’ve learnt a new way to up my proofing game. I have great difficulty proofing my own work. A written piece is never finished and there is always something that could be changed. To turn of the part of my brain that wants to re-write the whole thing and keep the part of my brain that proof-reads seems to be impossible.

It’s so much easier to proof-read someone else’s work but even then the brain is very tricky.  For instance, it’s often pointed out that as long as you keep the first and second letter of a word the same you can swap the middle ones around and people still get the message. When I’m in auto-pilot I breeze through these kinds of errors.

And then if a word is missing the mind is quite happy to fill in the blank without even asking for credit. It’s also fine with skipping over the double words as as well (see what I did there?). I have a theory it stores those double words for the instances when the word is missing. There is a special part of the brain that holds these reserves and you only notice the mistake if your reserves are low. I guess that means if the reserves are full then you do you notice the double words.

Either way my brain had great trouble trying to find the mistake in this little poser:

I actually googled the question to find the answer. Yes, I’m ashamed. When proofing my own work I’ve found Scrivener an invaluable piece of kit. Within the edit menu there is an option called speech which will read out the text for me. For some reason my ears aren’t connected to the same inner editor my eyes are which means I spot far more mistakes. Misspelled words may look fine but they sound awful. That goes for bad grammar and redundant words too. It’s really helped shape my work.

Just another fantastic feature of Scrivener I wanted to share.

Writing can be a right pain in the bum sometimes. At these moments you have to make yourself get on with it. The best way for me is to run the Freedom app which blocks the internet, turn on iTunes and get writing.

When I’m not blocking the internet I’ve noticed there is a growing crop of online writing aids, some are cute, some are evil.

CUTE: Written? Kitten!

Written? Kitten! is a website featuring a text box for you to write in. It rewards your growing word count with a picture of a kitten. You set a word count goal, starting at 100, and then it will celebrate you reaching each unit of words with a fresh cute kitten picture. It’s that simple. Luckily, if you computer battery dies or you accidentally click away to another page, the website uses cookie to remember what you wrote so you don’t lose your work.

As attributed on the site, the kitten picture is from: غمض عيونك by ● Łéł†Āķ Mă3ý ● (under CC-BY)

SCARY: Write or Die

Write or Die actually inspired Written Kitten, instead of positive reinforcement of tiny cats this site’s modus operandi is to terrorise you into submission. You pick your word count and allot the time you want it written in. Then you write in the text box. If you can’t keep up with the pace, or you take too long a break you get punished.

You can choose to have a number of horrors including annoying sounds, alarm bells, dangling spiders or creepy crawlies. The most terrorising of the lot is kamikaze mode. You take too long and the text box deletes words off your screen. To be honest, it deletes random letters from words so it’s easy to work out what you meant and fix later. It seems psychologically effective. If you buy the app then you can reward yourself too with puppy pictures, similar to Written Kitten.

Personally, I’ll be sticking to Freedom, I need to be locked out of the world-wide web and have a set playlist to stay focused. I’ve also found working at the same time in the same location helps build the habit. The rest is a gimmick, but they are fun gimmicks.