Writing in a Distraction Free Environment

Who or what is your worst enemy when it comes to blogging or writing in general? Two of my worst enemies are my instant messenger and my feed reader. These two makes me lose my concentration at least a couple of times every time I'm writing something, wether it's on my blog or in class. Every time someone interesting logs in on MSN or whichever instant messaging service I might be using at the moment, I'll take a break from writing. The same goes for the feed reader, when something interesting pops up, I want to read it right away. And that's why it can take me several hours to write a very short entry.

The simple solution to this problem is an application called WriteRoom. Simply put, WriteRoom is a word processor in a full-screen environment which keeps you away from all distractions you usually have to fight with when writing on your computer. It's looks are simple, by default you're in a black room with a little green ticking bar that just wants you to get started. It reminds me of the good old DOS times, but the green text with the retro font makes you feel like one of those hackers from the not so cool hacker movies. However, WriteRoom is fully customizable, you can keep using the green-on-black, or you can change the colors, fonts and page layout to your liking. I myself don't think that the green-on-black with the retro font is suited for the stuff I write about, and it feels weird to write in an environment like that. So I've customized my WriteRoom to use an orange color with a smoother font that is easy on the eyes (Arial, 12pt with anti-aliasing). You can use a white background, or you can even write in a BSOD environment if you like. But to me, black is the best color since it's not too bright, which is good because you don't want your eyes to be all tired when you're trying to focus.

WriteRoom has all the essential features you can possibly need, it won't generate table of contents or headers and it won't put borders around your documents, it's just you and your plain text in an environment that keeps you focused on your task. Style your document afterwards and keep your focus on what's actually important, this application will help you do it. When blogging you usually write in the web-based word processor that the blogging service provides for you, it lets you add images, lists, links and everything you might need for styling your text. The problems with those web-based word processors are that they have too many features keeping you out of focus. For example when referring to someone else's blog post you'll want to add that URL right away, so you leave your word processor to go and find the URL. Another example is adding images, you'll add them when you get to the point where they should be in the text, it might be before you actually start writing, in the end or in the middle of everything. Do it afterwards! All these features keeps you out of focus, you don't have to upload that image right away, you don't need it to be able to continue on your post. With WriteRoom you don't have to think about anything but the text that you're writing, WriteRoom will by default auto save your document every 5 seconds and it'll keep you on track by showing the word count when moving your cursor to the lower left corner.

You can try WriteRoom for 30 days, which I'm currently doing. When your 30 days are over you'll have to buy it for $24.95, which is a good price for such a great program. I'm 100% sure that I'll buy WriteRoom when my trial period is over. WriteRoom is a Mac program and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. However, there is a Windows version available called Dark Room which is (correct me if I'm wrong) freeware. I haven't had the time to try Dark Room yet though, so I don't know how good it is compared to WriteRoom, but I bet it's just as good.

For more information and to download these programs, visit WriteRoom or Dark Room. If there's a Linux version of this available, please let me know.