After a lovely but somewhat short Holiday break in Virginia, USA. I’m back in front of the machine again. I was hoping to write a couple of posts on the plane to keep things updated, but after unpacking my laptop when the no seatbelt sign finally illuminated, I decided against it – But hey let’s move on.
If you’re like me and find yourself easily distracted while writing, I’d like to share with you a neat lightweight text editor that I discovered yesterday. Even though I now exclusively blog using Windows Live Writer, Q10 is an entirely different beast which serves a completely different purpose altogether. (1)
Q10’s primary goal is to totally immerse and focus your attention on text. Upon launching the program your screen will turn entirely black. No Windows task bar, no desktop, no nothing – just you and your text. It’s a different experience but I’ve found writing this way has boosted my productivity somewhat.
The program is shortcut driven, so if you’re not comfortable with using shortcuts on a regular you may struggle. But in all honestly, it’s not at all complicated and you’ll be up and running in no time at all.
Although the program has no toolbars, there is a small but non intrusive statistics bar at the bottom of the screen. Which gives you information on word count, pages and the number of characters in your document. It also comes with a handy spellchecker which other similar programs such as Darkroom do not provide. (2)
Q10 is available to download free of charge. (3)
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