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.

Let’s consider:

Pros:
1. It’s easy. If you really want to meet a daily goal of writing, say, 1,000 words, then the average person should have no shortage of things to write about regarding himself. It’s our favority subject, be honest.
2. It’s free. Gone are the days when you needed a leather-bound, gilded-page journal to safely collect your meanderings; now, with programs such as LiveJournal, you can write until your eyes are crossed and not only change it, share it, or add to it any time you want, but any where you want.
3. It’s better than not writing at all. You never know what gems might come out of writing a journal, but then again you always know that nothing will come out of not writing a word.

Cons:
1. It can be time-consuming. And not just any old time, but time that – by its very nature – could have been spent writing something publishable or sellable.
2. Largely, the complexity of journal entries is not very high, so one could argue that by journaling instead of writing something more structured or complex, you’re not nurturing your growth as a writer as much as you could be.
3. Journals are uber-personal. While I’m far from one to nay-say electronic writing media, without a proper understanding of security, it’s possible that a writer could unwittingly expose very personal aspects of his life, and with many employers using everything from Google searches to Facebook to determine the character of a potential employee, a very personal journal could do far more harm than another, less revealing piece of writing.

Personally, I’m fairly ambivalent on the issue: I journal sometimes to catch and chronicle a certain, personal insight I might have had or to write down an occasion I found profoundly good or bad, to remember it later. But it’s nothing to return to my journal and find that I haven’t written in it for weeks.
I don’t publish my journal, but – even still – I don’t belive that it is as secure as it could be (there are no physical security measures on the file, for instance). But keep in mind, as writers, it is often only our most personal views of things that draw in readers. Consider David Sedaris, who’s work is really just a collection of journal entries – especially in the beginning of his career. He has put himself on paper with such absoluteness that his character is very vulnerable, but do you think that Me Talk Pretty One Day would have been so great a book if he hadn’t?

Let me explain. While trying to write in WordPad back in the mid-’90s (before I really knew what word processing was), when Word finally came along, it was a Godsend. It counted your words, it formatted, it corrected spelling. Almost everyone could read it, even if they didn’t have MS Office. There was little I every used for my writing but Word. Every now and then I would try another word processor, perhaps give one a one-month demo based on the soaring accolades on its Web site. But it was always the same thing: linear text on a page; no more than a few open at a time; built as much with the memo in mind as the novel.

What I will continually write about here is not mearly the alternatives to Word: that’s a misnomer. They are the evolutions of Word as a tool for writers. They have broken off into their own niches and form their own specialities, these programs, but to our benefit, not our deteriment.

In future blogs, I will expand upon these ideas further, but fornow, consider these few facets of Word that could spell doom for the modern writer.

1. No efficient autosave feature.

I am not saying that someone must save in real-time (though when programs do – oh, the beauty of it). And I’m well aware that the auto-save feature can be tuned down from its default ten minute “recovery” save to do so every minute, if desired. But – foremost – in a world of imperfect operating systems (let’s be honest), writers cannot afford loss. Any loss. I have endured heavy losses of blood from my forehead that will never be regained, whether because of faulty hardware, inadaquate programs, or operator error. It is never a hard-learned lesson that turns out better in the end – at least not in my experiences.

2. Poor simultaneous document capacity

Modern writers are as or more scatterbrained than past writers, so working on one project until its completetion is virtually unheard of. A writer needs the ability to open many documents at once without his taskbar filling to oblivion, without risking a crash, and all while knowing that whatever changes he makes will be saved without incessant commands to do so.

3. Linear design

I have written an entire 90,000 word novel in Word and the only term that fits is “bulky.” I drew in a breath every time it opened, waiting for Word to seize up. I made so many backups, fearful of a complete system crash (this being before I knew how rare they really are) only to bear continual confusion as to which was the latest, which bore such and such changes, and the like. Scrolling down hundreds of pages to a destination is insipid and a waste of time.

These things and more have convinced me that – as a writer – Word is simply no longer the tool for the job. Keep reading and I’ll cover some of these wonderful “evolutions” for PC and or Mac (I run both). And in the mean time, let Word down easy. It’s worked hard and should be able to enjoy its retirement.

It wasn’t until I bought my first computer back in 1995 that I discovered the wonder that is word processing. While there are critics of modern writing that say it’s too easy to write now – that lesser and more difficult technologies have long weeded out the “real” writers from the amateurs, but I don’t agree. I enjoy all levels of writing in completely different ways, and the ubiquitous nature of amateur writing has done nothing to dilute great writing in any age.

However, I also think that – with so many technologies to assist writers – we have even moved past conventional word processing, and this is the subject of my blog: where do we go from here, and what’s the best tool for the ride?

I want this blog to be as much a discussion forum as a place to post my opinion on the programs, tactics, and practices of better writing through technology, so please chime in when he have the notion, and thanks for reading.