Focused practice sessions that eliminate hesitations and develop writing skills

We created Prescription Drills specifically to develop the ability to write quickly and well. It's important to get ideas down while they are fresh, or else they tend to get lost on the way to the screen. Adequate typing speed is essential, but it is not the deciding factor in being able to use email and word processing programs effectively.

What kills creativity and makes writing hard for many people is often a simple distraction at the wrong time. Looking down at the keyboard while in the middle of expressing an idea, for example, can be the event that causes the "just right" wording in your head to vanish before it's made visible.

Writing is writing

Professional writers solve this problem by simply typing a lot. Eventually, after a book or two, most writers reach the point where the keyboard seems to disappear. It's like having a direct pipeline from your head to the computer screen. You can actually see and express your ideas as fast as you think, and without effort.

Prescription Drills is the mechanism by which we teach beginning typists the same skills that many experienced writers have. In the time it would normally take for a keyboarding class to master the basics, we can also teach these same students to think on screen and to be able to write without effort. Our software can take the executive who "already types" and quickly give him or her the added training to be able to work smarter and write better.

There's no magic secret to being a good writer. It takes work to express ideas well, and often more work to generate those ideas in the first place. But the process of writing doesn't have to be in the way. Instead, the computer can become a conduit for visualizing and sharing ideas. And this is a blessing whether you are writing the Great American Novel or just dashing off that important email or document.

Mistakes are mistakes

You might think that an effective drill and practice session that focuses on correcting the keys you hit wrong would be a good way to stop hitting the wrong keys. While that seems like a good idea -- and it's actually quite easy to do in a computer program -- just catching errors and repeating these keys more often in a drill is not the answer to developing writing skills. Keys that cause the interruptions are not the ones you miss. The real problem keys are the ones you never miss because you visualize their location every time they crop up.

Our breakthrough was developing the software technology to detect keys you visualize while typing. This is actually a complex process using advanced artificial intelligence and cognitive modeling techniques. With that perspective, our software can create a continuous Prescription Drill session that detects and eliminates these hidden blocks.

Not seeing is believing

If you already type the alphabet keys without looking, you can use the Alphabet Keys section of the Prescription Drill to test our program in just a minute or two. Turn on the Show Keys button so that you can watch the process, and then just type a drill or two. Keys you hesitate on will be quickly detected and emphasized in your drills. Keep this up and you will eliminate typing distractions.

Prescription Drills incorporated as focused drill and practice sessions in a keyboarding class will improve speed and accuracy much faster than other methods. As a warm-up exercise, they will soon make a difference in your personal productivity. This will make all your software run better and faster. But the primary benefit of our software is that you will be developing the technique -- if not the talent -- that experienced writers use every day. And we will have saved you the trouble of having to type a couple of books or so to get there.