Thread: A possible cure for distraction

Like many writers, I suffer terribly from the plague of distraction. Distraction not so much at the hands of the 'real-world environment' (thank my small and quiet Midwestern town for that blessing) which used to be so detrimental when i lived in the city, but instead from the rather more insidious distractions of cyberspace. If there's anything that brings my productivity down it's the constant temptation to 'take breaks' to read news articles, watch some bullshit video stream, etc. I don't know how many people share this issue, but it was driving me crazy for ages. And it wasn't just the internet either. Maybe it's just down to the fact I had something of a late immersion into technology, but I personally find that even using more 'complex' WP programs like Microsoft Word caused me to suffer. If I wasn't being distracted by viral videos on youtube, I was wasting time screwing around with different fonts, changing colors, margin sizes, etc.


There's this program i've started using lately called Q10. I don't know how well-known it is, but if any of the above sounds vaguely familiar I'd really recommend you check it out. It's a free download through the link below. What it does it essentially 'black out' your full screen, so nothing is visible except your writing and a simplified 'toolbar' at the bottom that displays only your word/page/character counts and the time (you can even remove these if you want to). the rest of your computer continues to function as normal, so you can play music or whatever while you're working, it simply black everything else but your work out.



you can easily modify this 'word processor' through changing the code on the included program document. so, for instance, you can change the 'page color' to whatever you find most visually stimulating. you can change the font color, size and font (to any standard serif or sans serif face). i generally choose courier new for my draft font, with a red font color on a black background (what can i say? i'm a horror writer) but all that is changeable. you can also add stuff like a 'progress monitor', where you put in the target word count for the piece, say if you were aiming for 80,000 words and then it displays your progress towards that target count as a percentage by the word count. pretty cool. i personally don't choose to use that since i have no set target length for my work, but if you do, say for a dissertation or something, then it would be damn useful.

one word of caution with the program though. the 'save' function sucks. there's a few bugs like that. nothing horrendous, but i wouldn't rely on it, so you should absolutely 'copy' your work into a word document as you go and back it up that way. also, since the program only ever saves your manuscript as a .txt document it's not suitable for 'the finished product'.

so yeah, kind of a big old plug for whoever created it (it wasn't me, but it was a writer) but definitely check it out!

http://www.baara.com/q10/

Reminds me a little of the write or die application...

Nice find lucky. There is one problem that I have with it though. Is it possible to turn off the typewriter sound?

Originally Posted by Raptor980

Nice find lucky. There is one problem that I have with it though. Is it possible to turn off the typewriter sound?

i think if you go onto the script (where you set the other options) and under 'misc' change where it says SoundsEnabled=True to say False it should turn it off. alternatively, you can turn the typewriter sound all the way down to zero by changing the SoundsVolume=XXXX underneat it to 0. let me know if that works

Amen to that, brother. I'm the same as yourself with insidious actions, both in the real and the cyber. It's definitely a pain.

I personally use Wordpad or a very basic writing program, in order to avoid any shiny or attractive potential distraction details or properties. That program sounds interesting. Nice find. This isn't my computer, so I can't use it on here; and I unfortunately don't own a PC (dreadful, isn't it?). I'll have a look into it when I get a computer.

Thanks very much.

+Rep

This is wonderful, I definitely think I will get some great use out of this. Great find!

I have what they call in PC nomenclature a 'dumb terminal'. It's an old laptop with no network or wireless card, only two programs (Microsoft Word and a music player called XRat), and a collection of around 200 songs. I do all my writing on it. With no Internet or distracting programs, when I sit down to write there is only one thing I can do.

Any research or Internet-related tasks are conducted on my good laptop after I've finished my word-count goal for the day.