ขอบคุณ (03 April 2025)

[matsushima]

What are you thankful for this week?
· Photos are optional but encouraged.
· Check-ins remain open until the following week's post is shared.
· Do feel free to comment on others' check-ins but don't harsh anyone else's squee.

Comments

[catness]

I'm thankful for all the productivity toys helping lazy bums like me out of slumber! My latest catch is 4thewords.com - a gamified writing tool, or more precisely, an RPG where you earn points by writing. Came across it while researching alternatives to NaNoWriMo, which appears to be shutting down.

I'm just starting out, and the game world looks insanely complex! There are tons of locations (including a magical Academy where you can take courses), numerous monsters and quests, weapons, crafting, customization items. There is a daily streak goal (444 words), streak rewards, and streak repair items. The graphics are high quality, with avatars in anime style. (Much better than Habitica. I love pixel art but Habitica's graphics are way too primitive.)

You can write directly in the game's online editor, which automatically counts words (even the deleted ones) and updates your quests' progress. Copy/pasting is allowed, but then you lose this satisfying feeling of seeing your progress in real time. The site has only a few colour schemes, but the editor lets you customize the background and text colours, and choose from several fonts. Otherwise, it's much simpler than professional tools like Scrivener, but 4thewords is not a full-featured writing app, it's a game created to motivate you to write. Files can be exported in a couple of different formats, and used later in other editors.

The free tier is quite limited, and I'm considering buying a subscription if I find the approach really useful. (It's possible for free users to win a lifetime subscription after a few months, but I'm not that patient...) Note that your writing doesn't have to be "creative writing": it can be journaling, book reviews or anything at all. That's how I started, but I'm hoping to get back into creative writing ASAP.

[apachefirecat]

This sounds brilliant! I'm not a gamer, but I may just have to take a look (if I can find the time). Thank you for sharing!