A Room of One's Own: WriteRoom Makes Writing Distraction-Free

For all writers, and poets in particular, composition is as much an act of concentration as it is one of creativity. Many poets often talk about needing "time to write," but what most of them mean is "time alone." Poetry is both reflexive and reflective: solitude and concentration are usually just as important, if not more important, than the creative spark.

It's for this reason that most poets I know prefer hand-writing their work in a notebook [usually a Moleskine] to typing it into a word processor. One of the main reasons for writing this way, beyond the tactile pleasure of it, is the effortless concentration it provides. In a notebook, it is you and the page. If you've managed to find a solitary spot, there's nothing to get between you and your writing.

On today's computers, there's really nothing analogous to a blank page. Our operating systems are filled with dings, whistles, and flashing notifications; our browsers are almost always open, luring us to look at what the world is saying; and our word processors are bloated with so-called features.
Anyone who's used Microsoft Word can attest to the bloat of word processing software. All the choices running in bars across the top of the screen can be a little overwhelming: the writer starts thinking less about the words and more about the "processing."

MS Word is an amazing tool for formatting professional documents, and its comprehensive approach is useful when writing for business. But what we creative writers need is not "word processing" software, we need WRITING software. We need a program that shuts out the world, that combines the convenience of writing on a computer with the concentration of writing on a page.

There is at least one developer who understands this need. His name is Jesse Grosjean, and he's built a writing program incredible in its simplicity. Grosjean's WriteRoom is exactly the kind of program I've been talking about. When you start up WriteRoom all you see is a black screen and a blinking green cursor. As you type the words appear on the screen and nothing else: no menus, buttons, or choices to confuse and distract you.

But WriteRoom's simplicity doesn't get in the way of your productivity. The word count and name of the document appear if you mouse to the bottom of the screen, and the menu bar appears if you mouse to the top. The typical hotkey commands still function as usual, and other programs remain running in the background in case you really need them. And if you find the green-on-black style jarring, you can customize the colors to your liking.

The key is that you have these options, but you don't see them. Unlike with a notebook, all the functionality of a computer is at your fingertips, just without the distracting user interfaces we've all become accustomed to. I've written this entire post on WriteRoom, and I can tell you that the experience is superior even to a simple program like TextEdit. Grosjean has removed the distracting parts of the operating system that most of us don't even think about anymore.

The result is a program unparalleled in its ability to help writers concentrate. For poets, this is a priceless advantage, so the asking price of $24.95 doesn't seem so bad. If you're unsure, you can try to the product free for 30 days. WriteRoom itself is Mac only, but there's a free Windows clone application called Dark Room that Grosjean himself has endorsed.

Now, if someone could just find a way to deal with playful cats and street noise, all my concentration needs would be met.