For book-length writing, writers need apps like Scrivener that make rearranging sections and storing background information easy.įor instance, if you’re writing a novel in Scrivener, you can place each scene in a chapter and each chapter in a inside Scrivener folder. If you’re having trouble writing, the problem probably isn’t the distractions on the computer screen, but the distractions outside the computer.īy itself, distraction-free writing tools are of limited value for any project beyond a brief article or short story.
HEMINGWAY EDITOR VS INDESIGN FREE
And at prices ranging from free to $45 at the very most, it’s certainly cheap enough to try some of them out. If using one of these word processors works for you, I suppose I shouldn’t call it silly. For that matter, there’s nothing about having all the different formatting tools available to me at the top of an ordinary word processor screen that “distracts” me from putting words down in it.īut writers will have their superstitions just like anybody else. Yet somehow I managed to resist their siren song of distraction and persevere.
HEMINGWAY EDITOR VS INDESIGN WINDOWS
I managed to write this blog entry while having multiple different windows open on my own computer, including chat windows, email, and so on. It’s all rather silly from my point of view. Who knew there were so many different ways to have a blank screen with words in it? And is that really all you need to be able to focus on writing? What about those of us who have multiple monitors on our computers? Are we doomed to be unable to concentrate unless we take the unprecedented step of (gasp!) turning one of them off? I imagine Papa Hemingway probably thought of himself as just another struggling writer and would be very surprised to learn he’s somehow become the patron saint of all struggling writers everywhere. (So, apparently, mountains help you write.)Īnd in shades of the “Hemingwrite” mentioned above, one of them is actually called the “Hemingway Editor,” as if simply using his name can invoke some kind of sympathetic magic. Several of them even use nearly-identical photos of mountainscapes in the background. They all do the best they can to prevent the illusion of a single blank sheet of paper with few or no obnoxious icons and menus bars to distract from the ascetic aesthetic of just having a blank space to put your words. The interesting thing to me about this Gizmodo piece listing nine different minimalist word processors writers can use to avoid distractions is simply how similar they all are. That’s why keyboard-and-screen-only gizmos like the Alphasmart or the Freewrite ( nee Hemingwrite) always get so much play whenever they pop up.īut you can translate that philosophy to your computer screen, too, and many people do. It’s an accepted piece of conventional writerly wisdom that the way to get more writing done is to avoid all possible distractions.
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