Filed under: Software, Reviews
Writer's tools: WriteRoom wreally wrocks
As you've probably gathered by now, I'm on a search for the perfect writing tool. I did a short blurb about Ulysses 2.0 a few weeks ago, I read Megan Lavey's Friday Favorite review of Scrivener with interest, and I'll have a detailed review of Storyist v2 soon -- if I can get over the writer's block I seem to have picked up with regards to that post. There are two main schools of thought when it comes to writing tools. The first type is the do-everything tool, complete with project management and storyboarding, bulletin boards to pin notes on, even places to write up biographies of your characters. Storyist is a perfect example of one of these tools. The second genre, of which Ulysses and WriteRoom are members, is the minimalist school. These type of writing tools pare the user interface down to a minimum and are designed to give authors an environment in which to concentrate on putting words on paper. The analogy is sitting in front of a typewriter and writing.
WriteRoom [US$24.95] was last covered by TUAW back in 2007, and it is has been interesting to see the evolution of this product and its siblings over the past two years. It's currently in version 2.3.7, and there's a free trial download available on the website.
WriteRoom is the brainchild of Jesse Grosjean, the man behind Hog Bay Software. He's also created a free online facsimile of the application (writeroom.ws), as well as an iPhone app called WriteRoom for iPhone [App Store, US$4.99]. You probably won't want to tap out your Great American Novel on an iPhone, although it does have a new sync functionality that automatically saves your work to the online application.
As writing tools go, WriteRoom is about as basic as they get. By default, you get green letters on a black background (see below). I mean a black background -- the entire screen goes black, with just a green flashing cursor awaiting your typing. As you type, the words scroll down until you're about halfway down the screen, at which time the text you've already entered starts scrolling up the screen like the aforementioned typewriter text.
WriteRoom does give you a setting to make your screen background semi-transparent so you can at least see what's going on in the background, but I found I prefer to have it like my coffee -- black and opaque. There are also settings to change the colors if the green text on a black background gives you flashbacks to using a DOS-powered PC in 1983. One of the four preference panes that allow you to obsessively fine-tune WriteRoom to your exact specifications is seen below.
WriteRoom even takes care of saving your content, with the default auto-save setting being every 5 seconds. I would personally like to see WriteRoom integrate with Hog Bay's free web app (writeroom.ws) for collaborative work on documents. I'm very glad that Grosjean understands just how hard it is to write on an iPhone, since he suggests using WriteRoom for iPhone only for the purpose of taking notes. If you purchase the iPhone app, you'll receive a $5 coupon off of the price of the Mac application.
Be sure to check out our previous posts about writing tools, most of which are linked to earlier in this article. My friend John Martellaro writes for a competing Mac website, The Mac Observer, and he's been writing an excellent series about writing tools as well. Remember, you can't be a writer until you put words onto (digital) paper, so whatever tool you choose to help you in your writing, just write as often as you can.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Robb Dawson said 10:18AM on 8-04-2009
Great story. Scrivener does everything I need, but I am open to trying these other systems.
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Leckto said 10:25AM on 8-04-2009
And what about a word processor such as Nisus Writer Pro ? One of the best tool, used daily on my Mac. Highly customizable and powerful.
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Jesse Grosjean said 10:28AM on 8-04-2009
While on the subject of WriteRoom, please also try WriteRoom.iPhone and the website www.writeroom.ws that WriteRoom.iPhone now sync too. Thanks.
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Jesse Grosjean said 10:29AM on 8-04-2009
Dumb me, very sorry, I just read the title and didn't realize these services were mentioned in the article. Admin please feel free to delete my above comment.
Michael Rose said 10:44AM on 8-04-2009
Nope! We are going to leave it there as an object lesson to others. :-)
(Nice work on WR!)
Jesse Grosjean said 10:58AM on 8-04-2009
I'll be better next time I promise :) Also, glad that you find WriteRoom useful.
Jozso said 10:38AM on 8-04-2009
Wdidding wacky wheadline! :)
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Jozso said 10:39AM on 8-04-2009
Dwigging
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emil said 10:54AM on 8-04-2009
I got a license for WR during MacHeist 2, and it has turned out to be one of the best apps the bundle included.
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pListOFF said 12:44PM on 8-04-2009
Without knocking Mr. Grossjean's excellent work…
You could also check out myTexts from MyOwnApp… http://myownapp.com/site/moapp3.0/applications_leo/writing/mytexts/mytexts.html
It's only $12 and supports the same basic functionality as WriteRoom (minus the iPhone app, etc.). It also supports writing OpenMeta Tags when you export files (Ironic Software FTW! XD).
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winkyeah said 11:15AM on 8-04-2009
I used WriteRoom for a while but my needs expanded and I needed some more features to help me plan the story. I ended up using Scrivener which has a Full Screen writing mode that is similar to WriteRoom.
I did compare Writeroom to the myriad of other full-screen text editors, including the free ones and I found WriteRoom to be the best. If all you need is a simple distraction-free writing environment, WriteRoom is the way to go.
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Jasper said 11:20AM on 8-04-2009
You can also try another tool which does almost the same, but let's you use your normal applications; Isolator (http://willmore.eu/software/isolator/).
Works like a charm for me!
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Martin said 11:26AM on 8-04-2009
I have both Scrivener and Writeroom. I don't use Writeroom as much as I thought I would when I first bought it, but it is the perfect, lightweight app for drafting things such as blog posts, for which Scrivener is overkill.
I also use Writeroom for drafting scenes for my novels which I then import into Scrivener. Sometimes, you've just got to get the text down, and Writeroom is perfect for that.
I also intend to buy the iPhone version. When I get an iPhone...
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BigScotty said 12:09PM on 8-04-2009
I jumped on the WR bandwagon over a year ago, but never got the "Edit in WriteRoom" feature to work correctly after ponying up the money. Eventually, I jumped off the bandwagon, and banned WR from my dock.
Maybe 2.3.7 addresses the issue, but the wound still smarts.
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dagaz said 5:37PM on 8-04-2009
Back under Tiger the 'Edit in WriteRoom' plugin worked beautifully, allowing you to edit the text from any Cocoa application (from Safari form fields to TextEdit to Mail, etc). This was a beautiful thing and I quickly paid the shareware fee.
Then Leopard came along, broke the Plug-in, and it has never worked properly since. There have been attempted work-arounds, but it has never worked well. Even though I'm a licensed user I haven't had WR installed in ages.
On a side note. I bought Mori (back then also Hog Bay Software) just before Scrivener came out and have barely used it since.
Daniele Nicolucci said 12:21PM on 8-04-2009
Those not wanting to shell out $25 for WriteRoom might be interested in JDarkRoom, a free java clone. The OS X version is a bit rough (the preference pane doesn't display correctly), but one can edit the files in ~/.jdarkroom should the default settings not be good. Here is the link: http://www.codealchemists.com/jdarkroom/
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Dholcrist said 12:34PM on 8-04-2009
I tried WR, but realized that it's just a full screen writing space. Something Scrivener also does, while allowing you to do a whole host of other things (if you so desire).
Hell, even Pages does that now.
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Charles said 12:51PM on 8-04-2009
I found one absolutely invaluable feature of WriteRoom: it has the ability to output HTML. I can create an RTF document and just select some text and add a link with a simple menu command. It appears as a colored link, just like a web page. Then when I'm done, I export it as HTML, all the links are expanded to HTML code.
Oh man does this make my life easier. I am especially happy that I can write complex articles with tons of links and since I'm not embedding code, my word count is accurate.
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Dave said 1:15PM on 8-04-2009
Apple's Pages '09 has a full-screen view that's very helpful, but WriteRoom's environment can be customized.
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Barry Wiseman said 1:36PM on 8-04-2009
I've used Bean, the free Word Processor with a similar customizable full-screen function. http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html
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