Old School Writing
February 5th, 2007 | Published in Writing | 4 Comments
If you’re a Mac user and you like or need to write without the distractions of IM, Mail or that pesky ever-beckoning browser, I highly recommend using WriteRoom.
It’s basically just an old school wordprocessor, complete with a black screen and green monospace font. And that is the beauty of it, because with all your menus and applications hidden from view, and an unimpressive but eye-friendly text, it suddenly becomes much easier to concentrate. It definitely works for me, at least.
Before, I would be wasting too much energy on little, insignificant things like how many pages I had written, how long my paragraphs were or how a given page might look if printed. With WriteRoom all this is stripped away. I can still check my wordcount if I want to, but I have to move my mouse to the bottom of the screen for it to reveal itself. At the risk of sounding like someone who is being paid to say it (which I am not, in fact I should probably pay the $24.95 and register the thing), I will say that WriteRoom has helped set my writing free.
Sure there is still room for improvement. I would love to see some kind of built-in note-taking function and a timer would be fantastic too, simply because that would go with my way of writing. And the fat cursor took me a while to get used to. but these are little details that don’t change the fact, that writing with green on a black background may be lo-fi, but it’s definitely also cool-fi.
Two thumbs up from this writer.
February 5th, 2007at 6:29 am(#)
Thanks for the writeup. Just wanted to let you know that the fat cursor is an option, you can change back to the default text cursor in the preference panes.
February 5th, 2007at 6:42 am(#)
An option! Ah, if I’d only known when I first started using it. In any case, it really very minor, and I’ve long since gotten used to it. But thanks for enlightening me.
February 6th, 2007at 5:52 pm(#)
I haven’t used it much myself, but I liked the idea behind Scrivener, very well thought out, and it also has a full screen function.
I’ve used WriteRoom too, and yes, it is good.
March 1st, 2007at 9:07 pm(#)
Hi Rasmus! I recently upgraded my Journey Inside My Mind Blog (http://journeyinsidemymind.com) and have been labeling my earlier posts. I found some links back to your Peer-to-Peer Blog Review project and thought I’d catch up with you.
Take care and feel free to get in touch!
Dan
Cincinnati, Ohio USA