My working day hasn’t grown less complicated over the decades. I used to openly mock techniques invoked in the service of productivity, but because of the temptations and interruptions of our connected lives, I now embrace them.
That includes my writing tools – a subject that remains at the core of writer geekhood.
One of the losses I experienced in my switch from Windows to Linux was the Q10 “clean screen” text editor (Windows only). It offered not only the dark, “no distractions” screen, but also a target word count and yes, a typewriter noise on every key click.
After testing the Linux-ready jdarkroom editor (which I didn’t like), I found Pyroom, which lacks the panache of Q10, but not its basic usability.
The Pyroom Clean Screen editor: Not many choices, but zero distractions.
Once I customized the colors to reflect an orange-on-black “Halloween” color palette that I found very easy on my eyes, I was off and running.
Even Old Writers Can Learn New Tricks
In my less tolerant moments, I’d tell you real writers don’t need gimmicks to put words on paper.
Today – in my more realistic moments – you’ll find me writing with distraction-free writing tools. (Hypocrisy, it seems, isn’t wholly the province of politicians and Wall Street.)
It wasn’t that many years ago that I wrote everything in MS Word, switching to OpenOffice after yet another expensive MS Office upgrade disappointed.
Today, 80% of my copy is written in a programmer’s editor or something equally simple (like Pyroom, which sadly lacks a spell checker).
I could go on and on about the reasons for using distraction-free writing tools, but the best is the simplest; I get more words written in Pyroom than in a word processor.
Words are the writer’s equivalent of a home builder’s pine two-by-four, and the more you get nailed together in worthwhile fashion, the happier you’ll be.
Those who haven’t headed off into the unknown with Linux benefit from a lot of choices surrounding distraction-free editors, some of which you’ll find profiled at the Bad Language blog, here at the Linux & Friends blog, or this at the Loose Wires blog.
Keep writing (any way you can), Tom Chandler.
UPDATE: For the hardcore among my readers, there now exists a computerized typewriter analog – with no ability to backspace or edit what you’ve written. Thanks, but no thanks.
