Has any of you heard of OmmWriter? Some days ago I learned that it was developed by a Catalan independent creative agency, so I wanted to give it a try.
OmmWriter is a text editor created with the purpose that you focus only in writing. When you open it all you see is a large white screen, without any kind of toolbar or option. The idea is that nothing can distract you as you type, no messages, no tweets, no Facebook notifications... just a screen with a soft background and special music for concentration.
OmmWriter has two versions. One of them is completely free, reportedly including everything you need to get you to write. In their website they assure that
they also love writing and that this tool allow us to be at one with ourselves and our ideas. This statement made me think of the rather picky customers that their product is aimed at. Nobel prize laureate Orhan Pamuk, who uses a fountain pen for his writing, once said that
When I’m traveling, and not alone at my desk, after a while I get depressed. I’m happy when I’m alone in a room and inventing. More than a commitment to the art or to the craft, which I am devoted to, it is a commitment to being alone in a room. [...] I need solitary hours at a desk with good paper and a fountain pen like some people need a pill for their health.
A desk, paper, and a fountain pen... I can think of several conjectures. Would OmmWriter have been more useful to Bruce Chatwin, for instance, than his Moleskine notebooks? Maybe yes. I always thought that the things Chatwin noted down in his Moleskine didn't really benefit his books, or at least didn't help him concentrate as he plausibly did when writing the beginning of
In Patagonia, prior to the trip report. But what about the sound of heavy keys of old typewritters like the different Remington models used by William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, or Isak Dinesen's tiny 1918 Corona typewriter? Did the ponderous keystrokes help them focus? As a child, I loved to pound on my sister's typewriter. Although I didn't have much to write about, I felt I was doing something literary by filling the house with that sound. Instead of noisy keys, OmmWriter has pleasant music composed specifically for someone who works as a writer. Would Simone de Beauvoir or Françoise Sagan have changed the atmosphere of the Parisian cafés where they used to sit over a blank sheet of paper for this text editor zen music? "I have to start to write to have ideas", said once Sagan. I suppose that means "who cares, you just write and that's all".
There are OmmWriter versions for Mac, PC and a new one for the iPad. When I was about to download it I learned that my computer does not meet the minimum software requirements for this tool. To tell the truth, this did not bother me. I'm perfectly satisfied with my 10.4 version of Mac OS X and I don't see how could I write any better just by upgrading my computer to version 10.5. I don't think OmmWriter is a bad idea though. Especially because there is a free version of it and it is "a humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away from us today: our capacity to concentrate". And it allowed me to ramble about those authors and their writing tools.
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