I have some screenwriter friends who use a program called Freedom, so I checked it out. Plus, ForceDraft isn’t yet compatible with Mac computers, so that’s a no-go for me. Perfect for people who get distracted by games! This is a good solution if you are straight up drafting prose, but not ideal if you want to write a specially formatted outline in a program like Scrivener or Word because you can’t use those programs while in ForceDraft. It works because you can’t access your browser or any other programs on your PC when you are writing in ForceDraft. In a way, this isn’t so much an Internet blocker as a program blocker.
WEBSITE BLOCKER PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE
A writer friend on Twitter recommended ForceDraft, which is a text editing software that blocks all other programs on your computer, forcing you to write for a set amount of time or words. Make it stop! I needed all Internet access gone. So I blocked those sites too, but still wound up the web, reading the news or researching where to buy new snowpants. Even when I blacklisted Facebook and Twitter, I found myself online perusing Goodreads or the long-range weather forecast (it’s a Canadian thing). This is perfect for writers working on research-heavy projects like historical fiction.
Most of these programs let you choose which sites to block (aka blacklist). Some like AntiSocial block social media sites (the biggest distractors), but allow access to other websites so you can still do research, post to your blog, or send and receive emails. But how? So I researched Internet blockers. Clearly, I needed to get my act together. I was still spending too much time daydreaming (a problem I blogged about here) and flirting with The Internet (despite my attempts at setting boundaries, we’re still seeing way too much of each other). Not me! A few days into 2015, nothing had changed.
And for some people, just setting their minds to this seems to make it happen. Like many writers, my new year’s resolutions revolve around being more productive during my writing time.
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