After years of dreaming and months of tweaking on Friday 12 September 2014 Write-Track was unveiled for beta testing. We emailed the patient writerly types on our launch list and kept our fingers tightly crossed. Here are a few snippets of how the first week went – it involved missing robots, some superstar goal-achieving writers - and the occasional vortex.

Hurrah indeed

Bec dreamt up Write-Track while working at a writers’ retreat centre. She had a hunch that the main thing stopping writers writing is not a lack of inspiration but problems buckling down and developing a writing practice. As an obsessive iPhone user and writer-procrastinator herself she looked to apps to solve her problem. There was nothing out there, so the idea to develop something herself was formed.

After a year or so of research into the creative habits of writers and some dabbling in the murky world behaviour change theory, she hooked up with technical wizards Faelix and creative stars at Creative Concern. The many months that followed shall be henceforth be summarised as ‘development’.

Fast forward to last week when she pressed send on a batch of emails. Here’s what happened next.

Some of our robots are lost in space

Before you can enter into the world of Write-Track you need to join. Everyone who has used the interweb is familiar with the process - you get an email verifying your email address, click on the link and set up a profile. We’re rather proud of our sign up email:

Unfortunately for the users who signed up between midnight on Sunday and 4.30am Monday BST their emails went astray. Some of our robots were missing in space! A tip off from the States alerted us and new batch of robots was dispatched promptly, all arrived safely in inboxes around the world. Phew!

It’s a goal

Over 300 users were busily setting goals and committing to dreams of finishing novels and poetry collections, sharing the desire to enter competitions, and pledging many hours to the muse.

An added bonus for us behind the scenes was seeing the fabulously inventive names. Some favourite public goals include:

• Daily word slog
• Front-facing in Barnes and Noble
• Mess Manifesto ebook
• Radio ga-ga
• Finishing my post-apocalyptic m/m novella before my head explodes
• Operation Maybelle
• Just write…

Woo-hoo – achievements

We had five goals achieved this week which was very exciting. Here are two that appeared on the leader board.

Francesca is a writer and illustrator based in Torino Italy. This week she finished her project ‘Elliot’s Artic Sunrise’. When she clicked the achievements button she said “Tonight celebration!! Lots of wine :-) YEAH!!!” Congratulations Francesca – we’re raising a glass of vino rosso to you too!

It was also brilliant to find out Justine had achieved her goal of reading her poetry in public. Justine was one of the original testers from January and set herself a few goals. She joined again last week when we opened up the website and it must have felt amazing to see how much she’d achieved this year. She shared the blog she wrote about her reading.

Staring into the vortex

In addition to the fantastic typo Bec sent out in an email to a few hundred people (‘persoanlised’ anyone?) we had a few technical hiccups – nothing major thankfully, just some rough edges to smooth out. We rely on our beta testers to point these out to us so we can fix them sharpish.

This was best illustrated by the vortex – the infinite spinner or throbber as we have affectionately called it from time to time. We’ve all been there, you click for something to happen and the page starts spinning. Back in the olden days it was an egg timer, but in these mobile-first times it looks more like a snake chasing its tail.

We couldn’t face a video re-enactment so here’s a static recreation of our very own vortex.

Up and down, up and down

Launching a website is much like the writing rollercoaster Katya mentioned on her timeline:

Here’s to week two!

Write-Track is a supportive goal setting community and writing productivity tool for writers who want to write more. Helping you find your writing habit and finish what you start.