Just in time for NaNoWriMo, I’ve put together a simple but effective writing tool. Inspired by WriteRoom for the Mac, this little guy is as bare-bones as it gets. This is for people who do not want distractions on their computer, just the words and nothing but the words.

At first I wasn’t sure if this was what I wanted. After trying it out a few times though, I found my test sessions were turning into writing sessions. Having just the words and you on the screen without having to worry about spelling or formatting is another level of liberation that goes with the spirit of NaNoWriMo: write it to finish it first, then go back and edit it later.

In addition, my statistics-hungry brain wanted something that would track my progress in real time, so I put in the NanoMeter, shown in the screenshot. The word counting algorithm is similar to the one that NaNoWriMo uses, so you can check your progress with immediate results. It’s even date-aware so it can tell you how far behind or ahead you are.

The only other edict I had about making this was that it had to be extremely small and work from a USB thumb drive so you could take everything with you.

Things It Does

• Operates in fullscreen mode using plain text. No clutter, no myriad toolbars.
• Change the color of the text and background if you like.

Things It Doesn’t Do

• Fancy formatting or spell checking. That’s not the point of NaNoWriMo. If you want those, a full word processor would be a better option.
• E-mail copies to people
• Save/Open in Word, RTF, ODT/ODF. It’s plain text here folks. Just you and the words. There’s nothing standing in your way.

NanWrite with NanoMeter

If anyone else is interested in this let me know by leaving a comment below. If there’s other people out there that want something like this I’ll put it up.