Minimalist writing programs edit out distractions

Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Now, while inhaling, close Twitter, shut down iCal, turn off your phone, set iChat to Offline, quit your e-mail program and exhale.

Most of us have too many distractions — too many little productivity and focus killers that each bite a small amount of our time. Multitasking has been revealed as a multidecade myth, but our computer desktops have only offered more and more.

For those of you who have already escaped this karmic wheel, congratulations! But for me and the rest, we need a little space.

That's why there's a growing number of word-processing and thought-organizing programs that try to help you by hiding everything else. The full-screen mode that you're most familiar with when playing back a movie or photos on a computer could be your best friend when you're trying to compose your thoughts for a few lines or a few thousand words.

Let's start with Typewriter, a free Java app that emulates a typewriter (at www.lifehackingmovie.com). Download the program, copy it to Applications, and launch it. There are no menus. Type Command-F to switch between full screen and a resizable window; Command-S to save the file. You can't delete. You can't copy or paste.

It's a typewriter, darn it. And a useful exercise in slowing down and owning the words you type. You can later edit in another word processor. (Command-K shows all the keyboard shortcuts.)

A little too stripped-down? Try Bare Bones TextWrangler next (also free, http://barebones.com/products/textwrangler/). The software is meant as a simple text editor that displays no formatting, although you can choose the font and size. Avoiding rich text can be a way to skip distractions, too. (This article was written in BBEdit, $125, which I use for both writing and programming.)

WriteRoom is a step further up (www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom, $24.95, free trial). The software gives you a green-on-black scheme into which you type; or you can change colors and other parameters. Ultimately, it just shows the words.

If you already own or are considering using Pages, part of Apple's iWork '09 suite of productivity software (www.apple.com/iwork/, $79), launch the program, bring up a blank document, and select Full Screen from the View menu. Pages allows full formatting; try to avoid temptation.

Pop up one more level, and things get a little more baroque, while still keeping it simple. Writers I know swear by Scrivener, whether they write fiction or nonfiction, although it has tools that fiction writers might find most useful (literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html, $39.95, free trial).

Scrivener's approach combines outlining, a virtual corkboard with virtual 3-by-5-inch lined cards, and an emphasis on organization within writing. You can use the visual metaphor to rearrange items in an outline, while also tagging those items for further refinement by stage (rough, final draft, and so on).

Scrivener offers typewriter scrolling, something that should probably seem natural: Wherever you type, that's the middle of the page, and as you type, the page scrolls up around the fixed line. All programs I know that handle text have a single mode, in which as you type or paste, the material scrolls down the page.

For this writer, the ability to note how many words you're aiming at in an article and see both total current words next to how many are required or desired helps keep focus. (The secret of most journalists is that we write too much; pithiness takes longer to write.)

Ulysses has also won many fans for providing a way to assemble many different documents into a single frame (www.blue-tec.com/ulysses/, 79.99 for Ulysses, or 39.99 for Ulysses Core). It's also credited as introducing the full-screen writing approach to modern programs.

The developers' approach is targeted at people writing in the long form, such as books of hundreds of pages. Nonetheless, the features may be useful for reports and far shorter efforts.

Whatever choice you make, the idea of each of these applications isn't to remove useful tools. Rather, it's to get you to tune out and start producing prose. For some of us, a quick walk around the block every hour or so wouldn't hurt in stimulating the creative juices — whether for work, a novel in progress or a blog entry.

Glenn Fleishman writes the Practical Mac column for Personal Technology and about technology in general for The Seattle Times and other publications. Send questions to gfleishman@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/ columnists