I’m giving WriteRoom a try as a writing environment. I don’t write as much as I used to, but I will have more writing to do in my new job than I have in the past couple of years. I’ve always preferred more minimalist writing tools anyway; it’s been years since I’ve used Word to do any writing in, generally preferring text documents. A friend of mine remarks that I seem to reject nearly everything a computer is supposed to do for me. I prefer to think that I use tools that have the right feature set for what I’m doing at the time, and reject those that tempt me to with attractive but distracting features. When I need font and layout tools I’m perfectly happy to use software that provides those tools - but those tools are non-essential distractions when the task at hand is writing.
I’m writing this in WriteRoom, and I can honestly tell a difference. I was skeptical about all of the hype about how it can improve your writing by providing a distraction-free environment, but I’m beginning to see the point. I haven’t written as much this effortlessly, this enjoyably, in a few years. There’s nothing in front of me except my prose, nothing tugging my attention elsewhere. The ability to focus is impressive; I find myself thinking about what and how I’m writing at a level I didn’t really realize I’d abandoned. I can understand how this can become addictive for people. This is the same sort of phenomenon that made the Tandy TRS-80 Model 100 portable and WordPerfect 5.1 such wonderful writing environments, responsible for so much well-crafted writing before the advent of feature-laden word processors.
If I genuinely thought I had the creativity and discipline to write longer works I’d be very tempted to investigate Scrivener. It too can do full-screen editing but provides a wealth of tools for the writer of longer works. Alas, I suspect the short stories and novels I once thought I might write will never see the light of day. It may be that more and longer blog posts may make it though, thanks to WriteRoom.
