Tell me that doesn’t sound familiar, I’ve literally written two blogs about this instead of actually writing my manuscript, cause literally anything (even scrubbing the toilet) is more compelling than the grind of getting through chapter 6.
I actually started writing a tool in early January 2025. At the time, I was trying to find a way to gamify my writing. I wasn’t really looking to launch a serious writing tool at the time, just find a way to hack my brain into doing the work (and find another excuse to not write).
The result of that was a simple text box with a word counter (0/500 words) that used a little bit of JavaScript to count the words you dumped in the box, deduct any shorter than 3 letters and then let you know if you hit your writing goal for the day (and you even got some fireworks!)
The tool worked, I found myself anticipating pasting my daily writing progress into the box for that dopamine reward, who knew gamification was so effective (I mean aside from Duolingo, chess dot com, and any other major industry player lol).
The problem with me though, is while the tool was strong, my brain's ability to find distraction was stronger, eventually I was back to missing days, enter the reminders. These were nothing too crazy, just a once-a-day email (and eventually SMS) that said “Hey, get back to your desk.” Again, it worked, the reminders came in, I’d have that familiar guilt of not writing, and I’d sit down.
The tool I built basically lived this way for months while I worked through my first draft. I would add new features as I went, reporting, character bios, locations and eventually notes (which I called Loops), all in the service of solving some problem or another.
After about 6 months of hacking together bits and pieces, I showed it to my friend, and he was actually genuinely impressed. Over the time of hacking things together, I had created a handy little novel writing system that was built around getting your book done.
Once I had his blessing, to say I was invested in it was an understatement. I added the ability to write, tag characters, friends' trophies, and even made the reminders way more sassy. It went from that thing I threw some time at into a passion project (my manuscript be damned lol), most of these features landing on a “V2” that I let my buddy see, but didn't launch.
Eventually, it got to the point where my friend badgered me to launch the V2 so he could use it. The basic text box wasn’t cutting it anymore, and he wanted to try the real tool out, so I launched it.
That tool launched April 15th to little fan fare over a Meet between my buddy and I into the late hours of the morning on a work night, I was equal parts nervous and excited (and exhausted the following day)
After that launch, it was down to refinement, polish, and slowly adding new features making it as good as I could as a one man show with a full time job. At some point, I realized I needed real-world perspectives, that were ideally not my friends - folks who didn’t care about my feelings as much, who could try it out and tell me what worked, and what didn’t and who could suggest features.
Long story short, that’s what I am here for. I was hoping to find a few folks that wanted to try the software out, tell me what they like, what they don’t and in exchange, I’d toss em free memberships. The tool is by no means Google Docs; it’s not nearly that polished, it’s simply a passion project that I worked on for the past year that I am equal parts nervous and excited to share.
Anyway, if you’re interested, the website is quillloop.com. I would really appreciate candid feedback.