Comments on: Writeroom

By: OSX apps to discipline your desktop « spongefile

OSX apps to discipline your desktop « spongefile — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:20:05 +0000

[...] screen, including the menu, black, and leaves you with nothing but a blinking cursor. Criticized by Niko for cashing in on retro nostalgia, but, well, it twangs the right heartstrings for [...]

By: SpaziDigitali | The Typer

SpaziDigitali | The Typer — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 16:21:55 +0000

[...] I was planning to start development after I completed Tiber (a web feed reader I’m working on) but then the spreading of the “no frills editor” meme around the blogsphere (see here, here and here) made me change my plans and I suspended Tiber, while working on this writer tool. [...]

By: ryrivard

ryrivard — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 21:35:35 +0000

Yeah - these are helpful solutions (I’ve tried most of them: I have a blank desktop, with a plain charcol wallpaper and no icons of any kind), some of them haven’t worked (on the Word I have for OS X “full screen” mode includes a large “Close” button that won’t go away). The real solution is the sort of unbearable one: get off the damn computer. Even when they had typewritters, writers went into the woods, rented apartments in strange cities and showed up in small hotels in out of the way places. The problem, I guess isn’t the computer, it’s us.

By: Niko

Niko — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 14:11:51 +0000

I fully and respectully agree with the need for avoiding distraction. I still do think though Writeroom and Blockwrite are not even close to being the solution.

Actually, I have more of a problem with hailing Writeroom and Blockwrite as solutions to the distraction problem, than the programs themselves. Whipping out a plain text editor is ok if you need to jot down a few notes. But writing a novel or a scientific paper, both tasks that would actually benefit from a distraction free environment, on a plain text editor..? No. Silly retro-geek-love looks don't help when I need an automatic index of my 150 page document.

That's why I called Writeroom a gimmick.

Having said that, I repeat that I fully agree a visually distraction-free full screen mode is useful. Myself I use a combination of Backdrop (a dark grey 'layer' between windows) and Spirited Away (which automatically hides inactive applications).

And you don't necessarily need any special tools to achieve that. You can handle the visual distraction in other ways, too:

make your MS Word window the size of the screen and depending on your settings you will automatically have a distraction free white, grey or (for the slightly more recent retro wannabes) blue background
remove all toolbars and learn the keyboard shortcuts
remove or shut off all visual "helper" notifications etc.
set your desktop to a dark colour and hide other apps
use a silly full screen plain text editor like Writeroom ;)

To avoid other distractions from the computer:

close your email
close your IM application
in fact, close all communication channels you have made available to you: mobile, TV, door...

By: ryrivard

ryrivard — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 13:21:27 +0000

I just surfed in - I think from the Long Tail listserv - and I've been following the full-screen text editor movement. I respectfully disagree.

Besides Hog Bay, Khoi Vihn has a similar editor which The Guardian reported this way: "When we write, we have to devise strategies to thwart these [distractions] and to ensure concentration, such as headphones, soothing music, sequestering ourselves away in rooms away from the office hubbub or even joining "writing centres' where quietude is guaranteed for a monthly fee. By and large, these strategies fail to address the very source of most distractions that fill a modern working day: computers. "

Computers have largely taken over so we are now at point of continuous partial attention - these programs, Writeroom and Vihn's Blockwrite, are steps backwards from a situation very serious and somewhat ignored, save bySteve Talbott and several other progressive technocrats and anyone's who tried to write a novel lately, which is the permanent loss of our thinking minds for the sake of transient information.