Category Archives: My Writng Toolbox

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” –Jane Austen, in “Pride and Prejudice.”

“It is also a truth universally acknowledged, that a lonely writer in possession of all of her faculties, must be in want of the perfect writing tool.” –Robyn Jane Sheppard, in “This Blog Post.”

Finally, it is also a truth universally acknowledged, that there ain’t no such animal.

So what’s a poor starving writer, sitting day after day in her Lonely Writer’s Garrett,™ to do? Well, in my case, my memory is good enough to remember my high school science class, where we learned the Scientific Method. (I guess Mr. Wantshouse was right: he said there’d come a time when I’d use these lessons.)

For those of you who have forgotten–or never learned the Scientific Method, it’s really quite simple: try something. If it doesn’t work, try something else.

“Wait a minute, Robyn,” I hear you say. “Isn’t that just trial and error?”

“Ah, yes, Young Grasshopper. But the difference is with the Scientific Method, you make notes and keep detailed records so you know why it did or didn’t work.”

Yet Another New Writing Tool

Wow! Two new tools in as many days. How special! Look, in at least one way, authors are like computer programmers: programmers are always looking for a quicker or easier or more elegant way of solving a problem. And why? Because they’re essentially lazy!

And so are writers. While we may love our craft, there are days when we absolutely hate the work involved. “If only I had a better plot/character/story-line.” Sometimes I’ll even find a misspelled word and instead of correcting it manually, I’ll just click on it and let spell check fix it for me.

On Word Processors and Text Editors

What do you write with? Microsoft Word© is the industry heavyweight. It’s a powerful writing tool, but for many people, it’s too powerful. Not to mention expensive.

LibreOffice is an excellent replacement for Microsoft Office©, and it comes with a fine word processor. Still many people just don’t like the idea of having an entire suite of programs taking up disk space on the off chance that one of them might come in handy one day.

Text editors are stripped-down versions of word processors. They don’t do any fancy formatting, and they save their files as simple .txt files which can be read by any other text editor or word processor. But they usually don’t do any kind of spell checking, unless you install an additional program for that, so why not stick with a word processor?

Enter FocusWriter

My latest discovery is FocusWriter, a free word processor. I mean “free” in the same sense as “free beer,” as well as “free software:” it’s yours to use at no cost, and you’re free to give it away to anyone who wants a copy. If you download a copy, there’s an option to send its creator a $5 tip, but it’s not required. But hey! It’s worth it!

What’s so special about it? Consider the following, taken from the program’s “About” file:

FocusWriter is a simple, distraction-free word processor. It utilizes a
hide-away interface that you access by moving your mouse to the edges of
the screen, allowing the program to have a familiar look and feel to it
while still getting out of the way so that you can immerse yourself in
your work.

FocusWriter allows you to customize your environment by creating themes
that control the font, colors, and background image to add ambiance. It
also features on-the-fly updating statistics, daily goals, multiple open
documents, spell-checking, and much more.

Additionally, when you open the program your current work in progress will
automatically load and position you where you last left off so that you
can immediately jump back in.

And the writing surface itself? This is a screenshot of the main editing screen:

The toolbar at the top is only visible if you mouse over it. Otherwise, you never see it.

When you’re ready to save your work, the default file format is OpenDocument Text (*.odt), but you can also choose from a list:

1. OpenDocument Flat XML (*.fodt)
2. Office Open XML (*.docx)
3. Rich Text Format (*.rtf)

Summing Up

FocusWriter isn’t for everyone – it’s not the right tool for going back through and editing your work – but it’s a lovely little app with a very modest footprint that stops you keeping an eye on Twitter all day.