This Writing Life

There is an emerging genre of what might be called the minimalist word processor (cf. Scrivener, Write Room). These applications are designed to cut away visual distraction and leave the screen looking somewhat like a plain sheet of paper in a typewriter (or, if that’s too far back for you, then looking like an old pre-GUI text editor).

Ommwriter – for that is its name of one such – is available as a beta from here. You just need to provide a valid email address to obtain the download link.

Text is entered into a small window that floats above a background. By default, this background is a snowy scene with two black trees off to one side. Otherwise you see nothing but the blinking cursor and the text you type.

That’s about it.

I’m impressed. If there’s anything difficult about writing on a computer – which, let’s face it, makes it easy in a mind-bogglingly large number of ways – it is distraction.