A Writer’s Best Tool
October 9th, 2009 // 6:32 pm @ ms
Besides a good mind and clear ideas, what is the writer’s best tool? Would it be lots of paper? Peace and quiet? Coffee? Hmm, coffee is a close first, but no.
I’m referring to distraction. Or rather, the absence of distraction. I don’t know about you, but when I’m trying to concentrate on writing something for either personal or business purposes it’s awfully hard to stay focused these days.
Maybe that comes as the result of reading online too much. I’ve heard from friends who grew up before computers became commonplace that they prefer writing on paper– simply because they can concentrate easier.
Since so many of our finely-crafted sentences appear on the screen first rather than on paper, anything I can do to minimize distractions during this process is a major asset.
Which brings me to today’s subject: Q10. I was so excited to find this little gem of a free program I started using it right away and haven’t looked back to Notepad, Wordpad, MS Word, or even my mainstay, OpenOffice, to do any initial writing or brainstorming.
If you value distraction-free typing, you’ll like Q10. It’s a totally free Windows-only program; a personal project that was made public back in 2007. You can download it at the Q10 website. While development has stopped, there’s really nothing more you could add to Q10 to make it any better.
If you like seeing all the toolbars, scrollbars, text formatting, page borders, and your taskbar while you type… well, then good for you. Q10 will only frustrate you.
However, if you hearken back to a simpler writing environment (think old school ribbon typewriters and Finding Forrester), I think you’ll love Q10.
Since the program’s development is inactive, there is limited help available. But there are a couple of old forums, and you might find some good tips on this Flickr discussion. I don’t think you’ll really need any help though because it is so simple.
Now, to be fair there are a few other simplistic text editors out there besides Q10. There’s Typewriter, a cross-platform Java application. Here’s a brief description of this editor which is even more limited than Q10:
Typewriter allows you to type, save to a text file, and print the document. There is no backspace function, no spell check, and no cut or paste functionality. If you want to force yourself to really focus and make every word count, Typewriter is an unyielding tool for forcing your thoughts to take shape before you commit them to the page. (from Lifehacker)
Some of the other apps you’ll find out there include WriteMonkey (Win only), and DarkRoom / WhiteRoom for Win / Mac, respectively.
If you qualify as a perfectionist (like me) who tends to get hung up on details such as perfect formatting while in the throes of making coherent sense of your scattered thoughts, these little apps will force you to keep moving ahead, yet thoughtfully.
It’s software at its best: excelling at its core function while staying out of your way so you can get your work done.
Keep typing and eschew surplusage.
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