Banishing the dreaded blank page
Is Ali Abdaal’s new ghostwriting app any good? [Spoiler Alert: It is, but for a very specific reason.]
Whether it’s a magazine or newspaper article, a blog post, a press release or the script for a YouTube video, the greatest obstacle for a writer to overcome is that dreaded blank page.
But productivity guru and YouTuber Ali Abdaal has unveiled a new app that claims to help you banish that blank screen.
But does it?
Before we get into that, I think it’s worth noting a few things.
The first is that I am a professional writer. I have been a journalist and author for more than 35 years. And in all that time, I have never once suffered from writer’s block. There have been times when it has been harder to summon the corrects words and phrases from the dark recesses of my brain. But, in truth, when I sit down to write, much of the writing has already been done in my head.
The other thing you need to know is that I have a complicated relationship with Ali Abdaal and his content. I am a huge fan of his YouTube channel and I find myself returning to his channel regularly, often consuming two, three or four videos at a time. However, I also read his book — Feel Good Productivity — and I was completely underwhelmed.
With hindsight, maybe that was my own fault. Having consumed so many of his videos, I found nothing particularly new or insightful in his book.
So, with all that being said, I came to his new app — Voicepal — with a degree of baggage.
Now, at the time of writing this, I have used the app just once. So what I am about to tell you is straight off-the-cuff and in the moment.
So what is the app and how does it work?
At the very top level, it is a place to record your thoughts; a repository for ideas. You can type those ideas into the app but, as I do most of my best thinking while I am out and about, I used the voice-to-text version to first transcribe and then make sense of my idle ramblings.
First off, the transcription is excellent. But, in itself, that is nothing I couldn’t accomplish just as easily with something very basic like Apple Notes.
Where Voicepal begins to rise above the crowd, however, is in its ability to convert a collection of disjointed ideas, notions, phrases and sentences into something more cohesive. It very quickly took a random collection of my own thoughts and rewrote them, parsing them into a more organised and considered format.
Once again, this is nothing particularly new or revolutionary. I have been using ChatGPT 4 omni since it cane out and it does much the same job; especially when you learn to input your random ideas in the form of prompts.
However, Ali Abdaal’s Voicepal app has an ace up its sleeve. And it’s an ace that needs talking about.
Before I get into that part, allow me to give you a quick peek behind the journalistic curtain as someone who has been both a magazine reporter and a magazine editor.
As a writer, my job was to tell a story or report the news in the most engaging way possible. I came up with headlines that would grab the attention of readers and then the article would hopefully deliver on the promise of that headline.
As an editor, my role was to take articles like this and to pull them apart: to question the facts and the sources; to ask the questions the reporter may not have considered; to look for implications and connections beyond the core story.
As I can see now, this approach is hardly the most efficient. In fact, it is wildly inefficient.
Some poor reporter spends hours pouring their heart and soul into an article, only for someone to pick it to pieces; to point out all all the gaps; to raise the questions that went unasked.
This is the Voicepal app’s trump card; the feature that sets it apart.
So I wanted to give the app a real-life test using real-life thoughts ahead of penning a real-life article.
The article I had in mind was very specialised; partly because I work in a specialised industry; but also because I wanted to truly test the app’s capability.
The article I had in mind was about competence cards and training within the demolition and construction industry. (I told you it was obscure).
I started by speaking my thoughts and ideas into my phone. I added a few phrases and sentences that I specifically wanted to remember. The app then transcribed them effortlessly and perfectly.
And then it started to really perform its magic.
Rather than just storing those ideas for me to return to at some point in the future, it began to interrogate them through a series of highly intelligent questions.
It looked at my proposed article from pretty much every conceivable angle, asking the kinds of questions that an editor or a reader might also ask.
During my journalistic career, the article was written first and the possible connotations and conclusions were drawn afterwards.
The Voicepal app is a pre-emptive editor.
It asked all of the relevant questions before the process of writing the article had even begun. And it raised questions I hadn’t even considered. As a direct result, the finished article was both broader and had greater depth. It was more considered, more complete.
(You can read the finished article here — The article will probably mean nothing at all; but you will see just how thorough it proved to be.)
So, would I recommend Ali Abdaal’s Voicemail app?
I have to admit that my reaction to new apps is very much knee-jerk. Unless it grabs me, unless it performs a specific function well and at the first time of asking, it is immediately removed from my phone.
But Voicemail is staying precisely where it is.
In fact, I am already thinking about the next challenge I intend to throw at it.
I will go even further than that.
Even though it was probably my own fault, Ali Abdaal’s book left me feeling underwhelmed and disappointed.
With just a single outing of his new app, I am now back in his fan club.
