OmmWriter is a word processing program that, among other things, gets rid of the clutter of menus that plague so many writing programs out there. One of the best tools for this (and my personal favorite) is: There are, however, tools out there to help draw you into the zone and sneakily convince you to focus on the work in front of you.

Finding that focus, that headspace you need to occupy within your story, takes quite a bit of effort.

How you convince yourself to focus needs to come from you and not from the unplugged ethernet cord on the ground beside you. Still, some go further – choosing to dig up their old MS-DOS computer and pounding their manuscript out on that! There are hundreds of different ways people recommend you situate yourself to avoid any outside stimulation, but the fact of the matter is it largely comes down to your own discipline. I don’t think unplugging is the best means of staying away from distractions (as I often have to cruise online for bits and pieces of research material), but it’s not a terrible one either. Distractions come in all shapes and sizes, from children and pets to internet addictions and clickbait movies and even the bloody laundry! Most people recommend unplugging from the internet and finding a place where you won’t be tempted to check emails or twitter messages. There is one bit of advice I’ve found out there, however, that seems to ring true regardless of who’s saying it: You’ve really got to be careful as a lot of that advice out there might be well-intentioned, but it might also not fit within style of your project or your voice. Everything from what music to listen to, to the proper use of commas and other punctuation, to the polarizing love/hate relationship the internet seems to have with adverbs can be found spattered across blogs by the thousands. Head off into the depths of the internet for writing advice and chances are you’ll come back with a whole lot of contradicting instructions and a new list of neologisms that make no sense when you really think about them.

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