Remember the old spinach-colored text that appeared on your ancient Mac or TI machine? You may look back on those days as gratefully gone: days without a decent GUI or removable storage that could hold more than a megabyte. But you have to admit, the simplicity of the design and the lack of visual stimuli (not to mention a zillion other applications) sure made you focus on the task at hand. I mean, could you really see Bill Joy writing UNIX when his IM was pinging every few seconds?
Well that’s what DarkRoom is all about – focus and simplicity. DR is an application that acts just like a simple text editor, but meant more with the writer in mind. When you open the tiny, slim program, all you see is a black screen and your cursor upon it (and hopefully thereafter, your words).
There are some key advantages to writing this way:
1. You aren’t consistenly stopped and distracted by spelling errors, formatting issues, etc. While I love OpenOffice, even that tiny little lightbulb icon that pops up at the bottom right can distract me for a moment or two.
2. It makes your computer function as nothing more than a word processor: not a gaming machine, emailer, Internet browser, and porn finder. DR seems to take trump as the topmost window, and if you are true to your writing time, you’ll also disable any background pop-ups for IMing and the like.
3. Getting down core ideas quickly and quietly. For sketching out a story outline, writing only in the few feverish minutes when the mood strikes, and for making the most use of those ten spare minutes you have before heading off to work, simplicity is the key to quantity. Worry about quality later, but some ideas and insights are as fleeting as dreams, so get them down while you can.
The application itself has some pretty sweet bennies, too:
1. It’s free.
2. It takes up no space and runs like butter.
3. It’s customizable. Don’t like spinach green? Just pick a different color for the text or the background. Choose your ideal width and other features, too.
4. Word count, auto-save, and other high-end features obviously made with the writer in mind.
5. Did I mention, it’s free!
I’ve worked more with DarkRoom for Windows, but I’ve been writing this review so far on JDarkRoom for Mac. Some of the shortcuts on JDarkRoom are a little cryptic, and all in all I find the Windows version a little more user-friendly. Both, however, are a must for writers who are easily distracted (that’s gotta be almost all of us), and work well for an application to open up, get that blood from the forehead to the page as quickly as possible for as long as possible, and then worry about formatting and making it look pretty when the dealin’s done.
Who knows, you might even find yourself writing in an entirely different way when that’s all you see and all you do, so give it a try.
