A collaboration piece by in-house writers Gordon Chia and Rebecca Ho.
Normally, our go-to for an essay or document would be a word processor like Microsoft Word or its equivalent. However, they tend to be really distracting, particularly if all you are trying to do is getting the job done in as little time as possible. Rather than simply just writing what you set out to write, you may get veered off course by the font, size, and all the other frills that word processors offer. Not to say that these frills are bad in any way, but they do get distracting.
This is where distraction-free writing apps come into the picture. Distraction-free writing apps take away all those frills, or at the very least, hide them from view, allowing you to do the task which is most important – writing.
We narrowed our scope to feature-filled, free-of-charge writing apps and tried out BigHugeLab’s Writer and Gottcode’s FocusWriter. Check them out!
Rebecca: I was introduced to this delightful website by a fellow writer a few days ago. I’d been facing a huge writers’ block for the past few weeks, constantly being unable to raise my fingers high enough to bang out a coherent article.
When I first entered the website, I was quite happy to see the clean, minimalist interface that consisted of only two colors, green words on a black background.
I was also pleasantly surprised when I found that you could customize the text and background colors to your liking. I took to my usual favorite, black and orange. Apart from that, there were also different functions which allowed you to change the size of the text, what kind of line spacing you wanted, the type of font and even the typing sounds that each key would make. (The tactile and auditory satisfaction from hearing the clickity-clack of keys….)
On the top left hand corner of the text box, there is even a small button that allows you to add ‘session’ or ‘document’ goals. This could be to hit your personal daily writing target or help you reach a certain word count for submission.
Documents were saved on the server itself. So as long as you logged into your account, you could retrieve them from any computer. Apart from that, there were features which allowed you to easily export, download or print your typed documents. The website is pretty much idiot-proof, since it had a ‘help’ button with most questions or queries one may have.
However, the one gripe that I had with the website was that the functions were really the most, MOST basic of what you could get. Typically I am used to bolding, italicizing or underlining my texts, or adding hyperlinks and sometimes, pictures. However, Writer does not support any of these functions, so I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who needs more visual stimulation in order to get inspiration for their writing assignments.
Overall, I enjoyed using Writer because of the swift account setup and the immediacy you can begin typing with. It really boils down a writing application to its core functions so that there’d be no distractions. The typewriter sounds seemed to have some sort of hypnotic effect on me, making me want to type and continue typing fast just so I can hear the consistent sound of clicking keys. It’s quite a simple but nifty application but I would only recommend it for writers who like a no-frills kind of environment for their work.
I suggest pairing this app with ‘Rainy Mood’ and turning the rain sounds down so they don’t drown out the typing. Perfect atmosphere for writing!
Unlike the app mentioned above, FocusWriter is an actual, downloadable program which resides on your computer. One particularly unique feature about this app, unlike the one above, is that it allows you to set themes for the background, not just boring text on black. Although I feel that the download is a little big (25MB) for the functions it provides, it’s most probably due to the coding.
Another unique thing about this app is that it actually contains most basic features of a word processor, but instead of removing them, hides them away at the edges of the screen. They can be brought into view simply by moving your cursor to the edges of the screen.
The complete list of features, as found on their website, are as follows:
All in all, FocusWriter is a good app if you want the distraction-free writing interface, but still require your word processor and formatting frills. Do keep in mind however, that the sudden change of colour when you flick your cursor to the ends of the screen can get rather distracting (for me, at least).
Both BigHugeLabs Writer and FocusWriter are great apps in their own right for distraction-free writing, but they do have certain differences that cater to different people. If you are someone who has near-constant access to the internet and does not mind utter no-frills, BigHugeLabs Writer is good enough to go. However, if you’re like me and suffer from sporadic internet (having to tether data sometimes), FocusWriter might be a better choice as it allows you to save documents locally, eliminating the need for constant internet. Whatever your choice is, we hope that this article has given you an insight to the underestimated power of distraction-free writing apps!
