#WriteWithoutDelete

A 7-day writing challenge. No backspace. No undo. Just writing forward.

What happens when you can't delete? When the backspace key strikes through instead of erasing, and every false start stays on the page? You stop editing. You start writing. The inner critic goes quiet—because there's nothing it can do.

The #WriteWithoutDelete challenge is seven days of writing in Purist Mode—a feature in Midcent where backspace doesn't delete, undo is disabled, and you write forward. Each day has a prompt. At the end of your session, you screenshot your page and share it. The struck-through words stay visible. The momentum stays unbroken.

7Days
30Minutes each
0Deletions
The morning was cold and She woke before the light came. The house was quiet, almost too quiet, holding its breath—the way houses do when before anyone else is awake. She put her hands on the keys and started to type began let the first sentence come.

The struck-through words aren't mistakes. They're proof you kept writing through the uncertainty.

The 7 prompts

Day 1
The cold start
Open a blank page. Write the beginning of something new. A story, an essay, a chapter. Don't plan it. Just begin.
Day 2
The letter
Write a letter to someone you'll never send it to. A person from your past. Your younger self. A character you haven't invented yet.
Day 3
The memory
Describe a room from your childhood in as much detail as you can remember. The light. The furniture. What was on the walls.
Day 4
The argument
Write both sides of an argument you've been having with yourself. The decision you can't make. Give each side its best case.
Day 5
The scene
Two people in a room. No backstory. Start in the middle of a conversation. Let the dialogue figure out who they are.
Day 6
The honest page
Write about something you've been avoiding writing about. You don't have to share this one. But write it.
Day 7
The unfinished thing
Return to something you abandoned. The draft you stopped. The chapter that got too hard. Pick up exactly where you left off.

How to join

1Download Midcent—$14.99 on the Mac App Store for macOS (Windows coming soon) at midcent.app
2Turn on Purist Mode: Cmd+Shift+P on Mac, Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows
3Write for 30 minutes using the daily prompt
4Screenshot your page when you're done
5Share it with #WriteWithoutDelete on Twitter, Instagram, or wherever you write in public

Get the daily prompt by email

One email per day for seven days. Each morning's prompt, delivered quietly.

Why no deleting?

Every writer has an inner editor. It's the voice that says go back, fix that, start over. On a normal day, that voice is useful. But during a first draft, it's the enemy. It interrupts momentum, destroys flow, and turns a writing session into an editing session.

Purist Mode silences it—not by willpower, but by physics. When backspace strikes through instead of deleting, there's no point in going back. The only direction is forward. The struck-through words stay on the page as evidence of the thinking you did, the choices you reconsidered, the sentences you outgrew mid-thought.

It looks messy. It feels freeing.

Get Midcent

$14.99 on the Mac App Store. macOS. Windows coming soon.

Midcent — a quiet place to write.