But Those Distractions Are So...Shiny...

Focus, focus, focus!

While writing, it's so easy to pop open your web browser to "look up a word" or "do some fact-checking" and then, hours later, you find yourself still reading your Twitter feed, 'Like'ing things on Facebook, or lost in an endless maze of Wikipedia entries (darn them for linking to so many other enticing entries!)...where did the time go?

I'm not even going to get into the research on distraction.

Okay, fine, I will.  Just one article -- read this study on how checking Facebook even just once within a 15-minute period was enough to derail student productivity.

I'm easily distracted.  Even Microsoft Word is too distracting for me!  All those things to click on across the top?  Writing with my text surrounded by those huge margins, or trying to read anything that's double-spaced?  I can't do it!  Something about the empty space makes me lose my focus.

I used to do all my writing in Notepad, but it came with the added danger of no auto-save feature.  I could lose whatever I was working on if the power went out or if my computer froze.

All the advances of the modern world, and I can't even control my Internet-checking impulses, right?  (It's called addiction.)  Finally, I looked into distraction-free writing tools and tested out a few.  I wanted one that I could carry around on my USB drive to move from computer to computer, and I wanted it to be plain and easy on the eyes.  Naturally, as a starving writer, I also wanted it to be free.

There are many similar applications out there, so be sure to research on your own.  FocusWriter is the one I currently use.  It allows for some formatting (like bold and italics), so that I don't have to search through my text later to add it in.  It also auto-saves as long as I've saved the file under a name already.  I can even set it to make clacky typewriter sounds for writing days when I feel particularly old-fashioned.

Got suggestions for me or other writers?  Let me know in the Comments field!

Ren D.