WritePhobia: a writing app that forces you to write

I've had the idea for WritePhobia for a few years now. In fact, the idea first came to me about a decade ago while I was listening to the Radiolab episode "You v. You". That episode featured a woman who was struggling to quit smoking. She ended up making a pact with her friend where, for each cigarette she smoked, her friend would take $5,000 from her and donate it to a hate group. She never smoked again.

That works because smoking has vague, long-term negative effects. Smoking a cigarette today won't kill you. Smoking cigarettes for twenty years might. Her solution was to make the negative effects of smoking immediate, obvious, and painful.

I figured the same approach could be applied to any habit. If you want to write more often, one thing you can do is to make the negative effects of not writing immediate and obvious.

So that's what WritePhobia does: you set writing goals for yourself ("500 words on weekdays"), and for each goal you miss, WritePhobia immediately charges you a dollar and donates it to a writing charity.

So far WritePhobia has a handful of users and it's working great! I plan on building more community features into the app as more people sign up. If you're reading this, and interested in writing more, go sign up for WritePhobia. It's free... if you never miss a goal.