It’s that time of year again, when I follow my yearly ritual and write an article of exactly x words on x. That implies, for the year 2022, fitting everything that happened that year into exactly 2,022 words. That’s a substantial amount, as you’d expect. In order to meet my word limit, I often write between five thousand and six thousand words before cutting it down. The difficulty is in being able to reflect on the year’s highlights and bad points without becoming emotionally exhausted. It’s important to keep your fingers moving constantly. And I just downloaded an app that does just that, and I thought I’d tell you about it. It is, after all, the holiday season.

One of the most used buttons in a writer’s toolbar is the save button. After all, you can’t survive without it. The results of your efforts might be completely nullified by anything as simple as a momentary power outage or a technical glitch in the computer system. Now imagine there wasn’t a way to save your work. What if there was no time to look out the window and draw creativity, no breaks to let your mind wander, and no opportunity to jot down a clever turn of phrase? Imagine if you were on a bus instead of a boat in the movie Speed 2. When you decelerate, it may explode. Well. The world of extreme writing is yours to explore.

That’s the thinking behind “The Most Risky Writing Program.” If you put down your pen for more than a few seconds, your words will disappear. And that’s it if you’re really sluggish about it. Your words vanish into the void of cyberspace, never to be recovered. Putting down the phone is the best option. Avoid responding to alerts. Even if the FedEx man showed up with the package you’ve been expecting, you can’t stop for even a second.

The Most Dangerous Writing App is brilliant because it helps you maintain concentration and enter and maintain your flow state. When you have to write something down every few seconds, the blank page becomes less intimidating, and you are more likely to keep going.

The app’s goal of getting you to write 50,000 words in a month is reminiscent of NaNoWriMo, the annual challenge to write a book in a month. Also, if that’s not the case. I just don’t recall it. Normally I would Google it to double check my word count, but I can’t stop since I’ll lose everything I’ve written in this piece if I go to a new tab. Argh! The goal is that it will inspire you to write and motivate you to see a work through to the end. For the simple reason that unfinished business always ends in failure. Also, I’d like not have it happen. Absolutely no one wants it to happen.

It’s not the most sophisticated tool out there, but it’s a novel and entertaining method to get and stay in the habit of writing. It prompted some serious reevaluation of my writing methods. It’s a great thing to be able to offer yourself, and it also indicates that I can write continuously for five minutes.

I’m certain that the editors at TechCrunch will appreciate my quick turnaround; I wrote the whole piece in under five minutes, stopping just to add links and a featured picture, without giving anybody the chance to amend my errors. I’m sorry, Henry.