Draft

Launched the new site about a week and half ago and I'm up over 20 subscribers who are interested in when the product will launch! I haven't posted it in too many places yet, so I'm pretty excited with that result so far. I'm thinking through strategies now for how I can get the marketing engine sustainably going over the next few months as I put the final touches on the first version of the app.

I've been working on sending the Draft app in a new direction after my experience in NaNoWriMo last November. I started Draft as a desktop only app. I didn't think it would work in a browser. But, I realized going in to the competition that I needed to be able to write on my phone as well to have any hope of hitting the 50k words in one month. So I scrambled and threw together a web version I could use.

It worked incredibly well! Way better than I expected. I hit my writing goal and surpassed it by a few thousand words.

Since then I've been rethinking and reworking the app to start as web based and then build off of that to desktop and mobile apps. I've also been hard at work on the marketing side of things, getting my content together for why I went down this route and why I built Draft the way I did.

Today I launched the new site! https://write-draft.com

After spending several mornings setting up an update server and debugging why it was not working, I have successfully setup autoupdating for Draft! Now, the app will notify users when a new update is available and give the option to update and restart.

You can download v0.6.5 here: https://gum.co/draft. Use the coupon code freeforbeta for a free copy!

I posted a promo code on my twitter feed targeted at participants in the NaNoWriMo monthly writing competition and got my first download of the app from someone that I do not know. She gave me some great feedback after using it for a few days that I am working on adding into the product.

After 4 weeks of development in the mornings before I started work, I had the first version uploaded to Gumroad!

I announced it on my Twitter account and added an entry on Product Hunt. Within a few days I had my first purchase from a friend who had been following the project. It was out there, but it still needed a lot of work to get where I wanted it.

I have learned that the key to any project is maintaining forward momentum. This is what trips me up in most editors. They don't encourage forward momentum. They don't allow me to work on one thing at a time. Every time I open on them, I am confronted with the entirety of the project and I have to then choose again what I'm going to work on. I wanted something different for Draft.

In my other work, breaking things down into small bite size pieces is what helps me to keep moving forward. How could I replicate this in a writing app? How could I simplify the process without placing frustrating limits on users?

I considered not allowing any editing at all - as soon as you type, you can't go back. That felt frustrating to me. Not being able to fix a typo as I typed, or rework the sentence I was on felt more frustrating than beneficial. I broadened it.

One paragraph at a time.

Had I seen this anywhere before? Yes, this is the prevalent method of communication right now. It's the way texting works. It's the way Slack works.

I landed on a layout where the block of written text is displayed above a text input box. The writer focuses on the sentence or paragraph they are crafted. They press enter and it is added to their draft. I tried it. It felt incredible.

Writing is hard, especially if it something you care about. I spent a lot of time thinking through the writing process, how it feels to write, the obstacles I face when I sit down and even before I sit down. I came across this quote by Anne Lamott:

"Write badly! Write me an awful 1st draft, bit by bit"

This summed up my thinking perfectly. I crafted Draft around the concept that during the rough draft phase, writers need to allowed and even encouraged to write badly.

All of these apps that advertise advancements in grammar checking, improving writing style, and catching cliches are amazing. But that mentality is detrimental in the rough draft process. The last thing a writer needs while rough drafting is critique.

I didn't want to dive in to development without setting a scope for the initial version. So I drew up some rough sketches and planned out the features that I wanted and the ones that I did not.

Things I don't want: spellcheck, grammar check, in browser experience.

I wasn't sure exactly what the best user flow would be so I built a single screen that I could play around with. Eventually, I narrowed things down to exactly what I wanted.

I have been writing a novel for the past 6 months. I had a steady rhythm of finishing a chapter every week for the several months, but I had slowed down. Every time I opened up my editor to start writing, I felt overwhelmed. There was so much to do. And was anything I had written so far even good?

I kept thinking, wouldn't it be nice to have a writing experience where I would not be distracted by all of this, where I could just write and worry about everything else later? I went on a hunt. I found nothing. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great apps out there, but not of them did what I wanted. So I decided to build it myself.