A new distraction-free writing platform has emerged. Can QuietWrite unseat WriteRoom as the best tool for internet-enabled authors?
Distraction-Free Writing Platforms
Filming in the Fourth Dimension
Guillermo del Toro’s next film will bring us to Tralfamadore. He is adapting Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five with Charlie Kaufman writing the script. “I love the idea of the Tralfamadorians to be ‘unstuck in time,’ where everything is happening at the same time. And that’s what I want to do,” del Toro told The Daily Telegraph.
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Geoff Dyer on Garry Winogrand
Year in Reading alum Geoff Dyer takes a fascinating look at two photographers – Garry Winogrand and Tod Papageorge – who happened to photograph the same thing at the same time, but wound up producing wildly different images.
The Particular Pleasures of Literature
At 3 Quarks Daily, Akeel Bilgrami’s essay on the pleasures of literature: “To understand what is special about literature is not to delegate the emotions to literature while retaining thought for philosophy and science. The idea is to find in the distinctly expressive function of literature, a refusal of that tired dualism.” (via Book Bench)
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Quick Links
A teacher’s charming poem in which he winds the imaginative grammar and spelling of his students into a feast of clever words. (via)A cornucopia of palindromes. “Rot can rob a born actor” and many, many more. And don’t miss the Palindrome Drama at the end of the page.Stephen Schenkenberg looks at how people find his blog… “how+do+you+construct+buried+alive+escape+tunnel” ???The 13-number ISBN is the book industry’s Y2K. For more details, see my post from 2004.Ed plumbs bad Amazon reviews, a never-ending ending font of humor.
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To Have or Have Not
Read our own Edan Lepucki’s great review of Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids? Then you might want to read Vivian Gornick’s complementary take on the book. In Bookforum, she reads Meghan Daum’s anthology as well as Kate Bolick’s Spinster, placing the two in a broader feminist context.
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Green Girl and Zipper Mouth Release Party
If you like leading ladies so blazing they burn a hole in your head, make way to the East Village on Tuesday evening to hear Kate Zambreno and Laurie Weeks read at Dixon Place. Their latest novels, Green Girl and Zipper Mouth, depict intense, edgy women with razor-sharp prose. And befitting both protagonists, there will be an after-party with DJs and projections that will go on till…?
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Digital Tolstoy
“Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s entire body of work – all 90 volumes – along with comprehensive biographical materials has been posted online and will be available for free, a descendant said.”
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A Writer’s Writer
Amber Sparks investigates why short stories are overlooked. She writes, “Most people really don’t like short stories. And that includes lots of critics, who often seem to regard short story collections as a warm-up for the real thing.” Pair with Paul Vidich’s Millions piece about the future of the short story.
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My own favorite distraction-free writing software is OmmWriter–it runs full screen and creates a sort of zen experience with neutral sound (or music) in the background, as well as satisfying tones as you press the keys. It’s sort of tough to describe, but it’s a peaceful experience and has worked well each time I’ve used it (and God knows I need to use it to get anything done!)
Scrivener is by far the best:
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
Not only for it’s distraction-free full-screen mode, but for all of its great organizational features.
Here’s a second nomination for Scrivener. I hardly ever use the full screen mode, but when I do, it’s marvelous. When I need to check how I spelled a character’s name or how a dragon says “castle”, I can quickly jump out of full screen, get what I need, and then pop back into full screen. Excellent software.