There is a new app, the newspapers report, that helps us keep our focus and concentration while writing. It convinces us to keep our minds on our words because if we don’t type anything for a certain number of seconds, everything written thus far gets deleted.

Apparently, this helps overcome hesitation with words — after a few mishaps, perhaps. The app makers feel that a preloaded timer and sensor work like the proverbial gun to one’s head and get the creative juices flowing and keep them flowing.

I have no doubt that this would work for those who are bubbling with enthusiasm and brimming with ideas, who find no difficulty whatsoever in skimming over the keyboard at the speed of light, churning out a couple of thousand words of prose or poetry in the space of time a person like me takes to get the laptop running and type that first word on the blank screen.

I guess others who write regularly — especially those of the type described above — would enjoy such a challenge. They may even welcome a live group encounter with each one reeling off words faster than most others can read them.

For my part, I think the sheer terror at the prospect of having what I write disappear before my eyes would paralyse my hands and send my grey cells into shut-down mode.

Besides, like others who work from home, I struggle with many minor and major distractions at my workplace. In an average day, I open and shut the door about a dozen times as each member of the household comes and goes, answer the phone for all manner of calls, accept letters from couriers, rush to turn off the stove when the hiss from the pressure cooker penetrates my consciousness or that burning smell becomes unbearable, and so on ...

True, the app is meant to help us ignore those distractions. Let the door bell, the washing machine timer, the microwave reminder keep buzzing. Just concentrate on those words — or we’re going to lose those words, lose our entire train of thought lose the morning’s work!

But, honestly, would I ever get anything written if each time I looked up from the keyboard into space to even dream a bit or dawdle a little (what’s the point in working from the house if I can’t do those, huh?), a sensor somewhere goes 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-0 — wiped off, start again, work on another idea.

Easy to say. Even if I have no trouble getting ideas, don’t I have plenty of trouble working those ideas through to a credible — and readable — conclusion? Doesn’t my flow of words get blocked more and more frequently in recent times between the brain and hand barrier — and don’t I spend an inordinate amount of time staring at the computer screen while searching my memory (or the ever handy thesaurus) for appropriate words or phrases?

Thus, if I’m writing a travelogue, I can’t scramble around searching for the journal in which I recorded each day’s activities — to get my facts right; I can’t fumble while I flip through the photographs of each place, each shrine, each monument — to get the names right. I have to get it right at one shot in my head before I start writing. What’s worse, I cannot suddenly go off at a tangent — as I’m wont to do — and imagine a full scale adventure taking place in one of those places, and look for a handy piece of paper to jot it down on ...

Therefore, like most other tech-aids and apps that keep getting invented and used and praised, I guess I have to forget about this one too. Getting smart enough to apply it so that it actually helps me is beyond my capacity ...

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.