Putting pen to paper – or rather, cursor to screen – can be derailed by distractions. Cut out the noise with iA Writer, a dedicated writing toolkit that’s designed to help you to concentrate on crafting your words.
The interface is unfussy: simply a blank document with a flashing cursor. There are two chief modes: Focus Mode and Syntax Highlight Mode.
In the former, sentences fade to grey once you’ve closed them with a full stop, which helps you to zone-in on the sentence at hand. If you’re finessing a paragraph, tweak Focus Mode so that it greys out each paragraph instead.
Syntax Highlight Mode is designed for eagle-eyed editing. It colour-codes different styles of speech - verbs, nouns, proper nouns, adjectives – in order to help you identify if you’re over- or under-using any linguistic devices. It’s for the language nerds out there.
There’s also a library tab that can pull up all your iA Writer documents, and if you do your best work in the witching hour, activate Night Mode.
Formatting is, literally, a second thought: iA Writer is designed so that you do the nuts and bolts of perfecting your prose before you start tinkering with fonts, block quotes or spacing. And there’s a word count that pops up in the bottom right-hand corner to keep you on target.
Write on – without the distractions.