I am trying to get better at writing and the best way of getting better at the thing is to do more of that thing. So I’m trying to form a daily writing habit. Write 300 words every day, no matter what.

Words TUI

To help with this Words TUI was born. Here is a quick demo:

It’s not nearly as impressive as a piano in the terminal, but I enjoy using it, as you can see by my current 13-day streak.

I’ll be actively working on it for the next few weeks, so let me know if you have ideas on how to improve it. If you want to try it out, install it through pipx or pip.

pipx install words-tui

Why?

I know sites like 750words.com that gamify your daily writing, and I’ve had fun using it. But I wanted to build a daily writing tool that’s a little different.

750 words per day always felt a bit much for me. I’m not trying to write a novel, and 300 words is plenty for a blog post. So I wanted a tool where the number of words per day is configurable.

Using a web app also made me uneasy because every word gets written into someone else’s database. I wanted a tool that stores the data locally, where I have complete control over it.

And because I spend a lot of time in my terminal, a TUI app seemed an excellent fit. Also, Textual looks like a fantastic project, and I wanted an excuse to try it out.

Results?

The first post that came out of this was the last one. That was ten days ago, so I’m still not on a weekly cadence, but it’s already a significant improvement from my second to last post, published more than one month ago. 🎉