Morning Mill

Focus on writing 1000 words per day without distraction

1 follower

Focus on writing 1000 words per day without distraction

1 follower

Launch tags:Mac•Productivity•Writing

Launch Team

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Promoted

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.

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10yr ago

Maker

@sunoxen 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.

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10yr ago

@sunoxen 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.

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10yr ago

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: https://medium.com/@jackhoge/mor...

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10yr ago

@jackhoge Error:

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10yr ago

Maker

@hunterhart You'll need to go into your settings and allow apps from unidentified developers.

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10yr ago

@hunterhart @jackhoge Or you can right click to icon and choose "Open"

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10yr ago

Foreign Ipsum

@jackhoge 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?

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10yr ago

The Modern Billboard Collective

@jackhoge 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.

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10yr ago

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.

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10yr ago

@jackhoge Can you auto save text to the computer, even if free writing is usually pretty average to read, it's good for reflection.

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10yr ago

@jackhoge or maybe send to a google doc

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10yr ago

Maker

@jamesburton69 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.

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10yr ago

@jackhoge 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.

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10yr ago

Maker

@codemayhem 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...

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10yr ago

Opengeni

Awesome effort. The world needs more concentration and focus like this app enables. And great medium article on your site: https://medium.com/@jackhoge/mor...

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10yr ago

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.

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10yr ago

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