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I am a (web) programmer by day, writer by night. I've written a couple novels, unpublished so far. A few weeks ago I sat down to sharpen the saw and after struggling to come up with something to write about, I realized I could use a tool to give me random writing exercises so I can focus on the writing itself. Something like a writing prompt, but more compelling and interactive. Inspired by the practice of coding katas, I decided to create WriterKata. It has a hundred or so exercises so far, a social aspect, and some slight gamification features. Any writers in the HN sphere are invited to check it out, give feedback, etc. It is 100% free.

Of technical interest, this is my first Node/Express site, coming from the Rails world. I enjoyed the low-level nature of it but did miss a lot of the built-in features Rails gives you. Don't know what you got til its gone, I guess. :-)

12 comments

This is an excellent idea, very cool, very nice (although, why Courier New?? ;-)

What happens to the exercises once they're completed? Is there some sort of social review, advice from mentors or the like?

Edit1: after using it for a (very short) while, some thoughts.

1/ It would be cool to be able to compare what others have written for the same "katas".

2/ Some katas are uninspiring/difficult. A button to change it would be nice ("try another").

(3/ Maybe it's just me and I need more practice, but for some stories I find it hard/impossible to fit everything in just one sentence.)

Edit2: Okay, so from the "board" we can access "public cycles" of users. This is nice, but it would be interesting to access the work of others not from their usernames but from the katas themselves: group all answers to a given kata (possibly limited to the katas one has already completed, as to not be influenced by the work of others).

It could also be nice to be able to continue a story -- although I'm not sure how this would work.

Great advice, thanks for those ideas. They are now on my list of things to do.

yeah, +1 for the 2nd. I'd use it if it had that. Otherwise I'd just write on Quora, Reddit, etc. More social validation.

"advice from mentors"

.. did you read what the guy said?

It's a cool idea. It reminds me of a writing exercise we used to do in a journalism class in high school. The teacher gave us an assortment of facts about a story, and from those facts, we'd compile ledes (opening sentences and/or paragraphs).[1] As many strong ledes as we could muster from the same pool of information.

A strong lede is compelling, informative, and brief. Those goals are tough to reconcile. You'd spend 5-10 minutes nailing the "perfect" lede. Then you'd go through it carefully, cutting out anything extraneous or sloppy. Then you'd toss it out and start again, approaching the story differently.

Despite the nature of the exercise, it never felt boring or repetitive. It was great practice, too.

[1] Don't ask me why journalists spell it "lede," when "lead" is perfectly fine. It's a quirk of the trade, sort of like the journalistic use of "graf" for "paragraph."

"Lede" is supposedly a holdover from the time when news was printed using actual metal lead type, and "lead" was accordingly shorthand for type itself. The alternate spelling avoids a potentially confusing homograph.

Hmm. Makes sense, I guess. Served a useful purpose. Thanks for the info. :) Also, shame on my high school journalism teacher for not having pointed that out.

It looks great and I'll play with it a little more later.

Suggestions:

- Host your scripts instead of using googleapis.com. Don't feed Google data about your visitors.

- Autofocus the new textareas.

- Support Ctrl+Enter (or Cmd+Enter).

> - Host your scripts instead of using googleapis.com. Don't feed Google data about your visitors.

What is wrong with giving google the data, in exchange for the free bandwidth and api's?

I think it's okay to let google host scripts. You get the benefit of a CDN for free.

I agree with your other suggestions though.

Thanks, good tips for usability.

Why are your novels unpublished? Why not go the Amazon self-publishing route?

Your comment brought to mind "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs. I believe he used to suffer badly from writer's block (and morphine addiction). Burroughs had no recollection of writing the novel, apparently it's just his habit notes strung together.

If you were to read the pages of Naked Lunch in a random order, it would make just as much sense as if read in the order they were printed.

> Inspired by the practice of coding katas, I decided to create WriterKata.

Would you be thinking of one in particular? I'm always up for more practise.

Very cool.

One question – I noticed that you're doing some validation of the inputs (i.e., I can't seem to submit a sentence without a period) – could you explain the reasoning for this?

On the one hand, it seems fairly constraining (and probably comes with a few unfortunate edge cases). On the other, perhaps that's the benefit of the kata philosophy.

Thanks. Right now the only validation is that you put in at least 10 characters. It might change in the future though.

Got it. Apparently I tried with a very short sentence! Thanks!

You might find the SailsJS project interesting ( http://sailsjs.org/ )--it brings some very Rails-y things to a Node application. One of the best features is Waterline, which is somewhat like ActiveRecord and all that good stuff.

Hey, nice idea! Can't comment on functionality or usability, (I only loaded the initial page) but I'm guessing this has some appeal, since out of a small sample of two here in this room, one is interested enough to take a go at it later, and the other is wavering.. Thanks! :)

It would be interesting to put the code on something like GitHub if you are willing to do so. We may then propose commits and tell you the bugs we encounter.

I will definitely consider opening it up, a bit ashamed of the code at the moment.

I think this is great. I love the idea that you just wrote this for yourself and then wanted to share it with others for free.

Look I am not a writer and I think this is excellent idea. You applied martial arts transdfer on coding to writing.

Thank you for this. I'm a hobby writer as well, and this seems very helpful. Kudos!