Our writing machines are mania-boxes. Sometimes I wish we could go back to the days of the typewriter, or the single-purpose digital word processor. I'd like to thread my sentences on some kind of mechanism that translates keystrokes into letters and nothing more. That way I could unilaterally avoid the incessant temptations of Reddit and Tumblr and Facebook and Gmail and oh God all the internet all of the time.

 

But even if I owned a typewriter, I'd never use it. I'd have to transcribe all my writing from the inked-up pages to the computer anyway. We've gone digital. There's no going back. Our blank pages are embedded in a portal to more distraction than we can take. We type and publish faster than ever, but we also have more noise to silence than we've ever had before. It's the writer's double-edged sword.

 

For those who might not have all the diligence, all of the time, to close out the procrastination tabs and stare directly into the white of an empty .doc, there's a new breed of word processor on the scene. It's less of an office tool and more of a relaxation application, meant to clean your mind of all the bugs and tics that keep it from producing crafted English. It's called OmmWriter and it fills your entire screen with a peaceful background for your writing.

The base version of OmmWriter is completely free, so I gave it a whirl. Gentle background music fills your speakers (or, as recommended, headphones). Each keystroke generates a soft pip. A winter landscape seamlessly surrounds your blank page. It shuts everything out. No more browser windows lurking in the background, no iTunes or email clients or Minesweeper to tempt you. Just you and your words and the landscape.

 

The music and sound effects can be turned on or off, in case you have a more specific tune in mind to accompany your work or just don't like the way they sound. A tally hangs at the bottom of the screen, letting you know your word count as you go along. You can save or export your work at any time. It's a clean interface and a nice idea. It didn't work entirely for me, however. Maybe when I start work on a piece of creative non-fiction or that inevitable but unlikely novel, I'll return to OmmWriter. But I'm necessarily a creature of distraction. I use it to fuel my progress, like rest stops between sprints. I like writing in crowded environments, like busy coffee shops with loud music. I glean the energy of a place. And my scatterbrain prefers to have Chrome at the ready. But if you'd like a virtual sensory deprivation chamber for your own creativity, OmmWriter might be just the thing.