First Thought Best Thought
A writing app built on spontaneity. Random prompt, running clock, no delete key.
Allen Ginsberg’s phrase “first thought, best thought” names a discipline rather than a slogan. The mind’s initial movement toward a subject is usually more alive than the revised, self-monitored version that follows it. The difficulty is that almost no writing situation lets you stay there. Editing begins before the sentence has ended.
This app removes the option. It gives you a prompt drawn at random, starts a timer, and disables the backspace key until the timer stops. What you have at the end is not a finished piece. It is unmediated material — the thing you actually thought, before you began managing it.
The prompts draw on the Beats, on Surrealist automatic writing, on Fluxus event scores, on Oulipo constraints, and on Augusto Boal’s exercises for groups. Seventy are for solo practice. Thirty are built for two or more people, in the same room or apart.
It runs in any browser and installs to an iPhone home screen. Nothing you write leaves your device.
Free. No account. Works offline once loaded.
- Solo promptsSeventy exercises for individual practice.
- Group promptsThirty exercises for two or more, together or apart.
- Voice inputDictate instead of typing.
- StorageSessions are kept in your own browser. Nothing is uploaded.
- InstallAdd to an iPhone home screen from Safari; runs offline afterwards.
- LineageGinsberg and Kerouac; Surrealist automatism; Fluxus; Oulipo; Boal.