Paper is the Best Tool for Writing

Why We Built Rough Draft, And How It’ll Help You Stop Second-Guessing Your Ideas

Nothing feels better than when you’ve locked in on an idea. It’s a complex, indescribable emotion: the feeling that you know something that others don’t, that you’ve discovered something — about yourself, about the world around you — that you want to share with everyone. It’s thrilling.

Have you ever started tapping that idea out on your keyboard, only to start doubting yourself halfway through? “What if I say it this way?” leads to “No, that’s not the right word” leads to “No one will read this s*** anyways.”

You’re not alone.

You Must Get Your Ideas Out

In 2014, my friend Ben got tired of second-guessing his writing, of immediate self-criticism, and of killing his ideas before they had the time to hatch. Frustrated, he took a vacation, determined to hit the reset button on his writing. He left his computer behind, opting for a pen and notebook. And over the course of a few days on the beach, Ben authored a book by hand.

He had done it. He was able to let go and just write. But what was it that created such a stark difference between writing by hand and typing?

There’s a permanence to ink on paper. When you write an idea down, you commit it to the paper. Editing is impossible. On paper, the only way to question the worth of your words — to second-guess your ideas — is to cross them off, to strike them out. On paper, the only way to make progress is to just write. On paper, you realize — as Ben had — that there’s no purpose in perfecting at this stage; it’s just a rough draft.

Writing without self-doubt; forgetting about editing; letting go and just getting your ideas out. This is flow. This is the idea behind Rough Draft.

As of this day, Ben’s book remains un-published. What’s important however is that the idea lives today. There will always be time to revise and refine. The only thing that can’t be fixed tomorrow, is not having started today.

How Rough Draft Works

Pen and paper inspired us, but only a keyboard could keep up with the speed of our ideas. So we created the best rough draft writing app.

Rough Draft recreates in software the feeling of writing by hand. When you attempt to delete a word, Rough Draft strikes it out. When you misspell a word, Rough Draft doesn’t distract you by pointing out mistakes. When you want to add pictures, videos, or the perfect quote for your piece, Rough Draft gives you rough placeholders for now so you can focus on perfecting the details later.

With Rough Draft, your writing gets rougher with each edit, reminding you it’s still just a rough draft.

Rough Draft also does a few other things well:

• It separates writing from editing, giving you perspective on your writing, like it did for Snippets:

The “rough draft” of Rough Draft’s name was First Draft 😉

• It helps you get into flow, and doesn’t try to replace the editing tools in your current flow:

“I’ve experimented with a bunch of flows: Rough Draft → Hemingway; Rough Draft → Medium; Rough Draft → Simple Note; Rough Draft → Google Docs. All of them are useful for different functions, but they all start with Rough Draft” — Andrew McLaughlin on Product Hunt

• It helps you flex your creative muscle — whether for your daily Morning Pages or just whenever you need an original idea—with prompts straight from the best writing prompts community on the web.
• It lets you take your writing to the next step with seamless integrations with your favorite text-editors and publishing platforms, starting with Medium:

Thanks for the bear hug of a tweet, Micah!

• It helps you get feedback on your rough ideas, giving you the confidence to publish more and often.

Getting Your Ideas Out in Rough Draft is Free

This is the end of Rough Draft’s story, but your story in Rough Draft could begin today. Don’t second-guess your ideas. Get them out in the only writing app that is terrible at editing, but is a great place to start writing. All you need to do is:

1. Download Rough Draft on iTunes for free;
2. Just write; and
3. See number 2.
4. (Optional) If you find you like Rough Draft, support further development by purchasing the full version 🙏

The rough draft of this story was written in Rough Draft.