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Posted by: Gareth Branwyn on October 27, 2008 at 2:55 PM

I think the idea is that, in such an interrupt-driven world, any excuse or trick or thing you can tell yourself to get you to write is worth pursuing, so if setting up a nice refurbed manual on a table in a back room gets it done...

Personally, I close down EVERYTHING but OpenOffice, take the phone out of the room, and set a kitchen timer for hour-long writing stints. I turn the timer away from me so I won't see the face. When it goes off, I check/answer my mail, answer the phone, etc. and then go back under for another stint. I am so distracted and fragmented otherwise, I'd never get my actual target-tasks done. Each person is different. This is what works for me.

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"interrupt-driven computer users seek out a writing tool that does just the one thing: allow you to write, undisturbed by pop-up ads, joke emails, and tanking stock tickers"

Are the technophobic writers simply unable to close their email client and browser, while running a word processor?

This takes me back to Jerry Pournelle's complaints years ago re: word processors. All he wanted was a 16x64 ASCII screen, with no highlighting, line numbers, cursor position counter, etc. Well, back to that and far beyond! At least Jerry's dumb terminal text capture device created an editable output!

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