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Writing Tools..
17 years ago
So, not so long ago, I discovered some really, really handy tools for helping me focus on writing when the time is there. In the spirit of making life better for my fellow human-type analogues, I just thought I'd plug for them:
How many times have you sat down to write, and found yourself distracted by the FA, the web, the internets, the chat, the.. you know. Stuff. Probably frequently. The solution? Concentration!
I obtain this concentration using JDarkRoom.
http://www.codealchemists.com/jdarkroom/
JDarkRoom isolates you from the pesky things that distract, and gives you naught but yourself, the text, and open space, just like a typewriter page. No silly menu cruft, no silly spellcheck or grammar check.. no nothing. Just you and the words. Face it: When you write, if you're the least bit OCD like I am, you'll get hung up on the mistakes, the awkwardness, and get discouraged, and boom. No writing happens. An evening is wasted.
With JDarkRoom? Purity of word. Editing can come later (and should)... it's important to edit, but it's -way- more important to just get something done.
The program runs multiplatform, anywhere you have a solid JVM, so it's dandy on Windows, OS X, and the Linux flavor of your choice, including the ASUS EEE's implementation. For completeness' sake, and to give credit where it's due, it's based on the concept of WriteRoom for OS X. The authors of the original certainly deserve plenty of support- if you're a Mac user, give WriteRoom a try. That being said, massive love to the fellow who implemented JDarkRoom. I figure the poor bloke would be a little mortified at some of the things I've been working on, and that hopefully you will work on, using his software, but a great developer needs praise ever how it comes. :)
How many times have you sat down to write, and found yourself distracted by the FA, the web, the internets, the chat, the.. you know. Stuff. Probably frequently. The solution? Concentration!
I obtain this concentration using JDarkRoom.
http://www.codealchemists.com/jdarkroom/
JDarkRoom isolates you from the pesky things that distract, and gives you naught but yourself, the text, and open space, just like a typewriter page. No silly menu cruft, no silly spellcheck or grammar check.. no nothing. Just you and the words. Face it: When you write, if you're the least bit OCD like I am, you'll get hung up on the mistakes, the awkwardness, and get discouraged, and boom. No writing happens. An evening is wasted.
With JDarkRoom? Purity of word. Editing can come later (and should)... it's important to edit, but it's -way- more important to just get something done.
The program runs multiplatform, anywhere you have a solid JVM, so it's dandy on Windows, OS X, and the Linux flavor of your choice, including the ASUS EEE's implementation. For completeness' sake, and to give credit where it's due, it's based on the concept of WriteRoom for OS X. The authors of the original certainly deserve plenty of support- if you're a Mac user, give WriteRoom a try. That being said, massive love to the fellow who implemented JDarkRoom. I figure the poor bloke would be a little mortified at some of the things I've been working on, and that hopefully you will work on, using his software, but a great developer needs praise ever how it comes. :)
Plus, on my Mac, I often have terrible times getting text into a universally-understood format. Everything I try to write with tries to make Unicode text, so when I go and make a regular text file in ISO-Latin or whatever, people can't read it. I haven't figured that one out yet.
I had similiar problems with Scrivener. The program would save text files, but they were encoded with some weird encoding that no one else could read.
Oh well.
I don't have internet at home so I rely on the thesaurus that comes with win2000 but sometimes its a bit limited.
:)
Then again, google Docs says most of my writing is 5th grade level, so perhaps I should start using words like 'magnanimous' and 'unrepentant'.
I have a hate-on the side of a horsedick for the word \"ebon\".
your testicles do not swell with semen. The semen is stored inside your body. :P