Essentially, these kinds of text editors strip away all of the distractions on your desktop by making them temporarily invisible. When you fire up one of these programs, it’s just you and the words on the screen. There are minimal formatting options also, so you won’t get lost in trying to typeset your piece as you write.

Of course you could just do your writing in vi for Unix/Linux. That’s probably out of reach for most people, so I’ve included a few more accessible apps below. There are two editors for Windows, one for Mac, one that runs on Java (and so can be used on any OS), and one online version. Try one out and see if it helps.

Windows

Q10
http://www.baara.com/q10/

Dark Room
http://they.misled.us/dark-room

Mac

Write Room
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

BONUS: Make Your Mac Sound Like A Typewriter!
http://alphaomega.software.free.fr/typewriterkeyboard/Typewriter%20Keyboard.html

Java

Typewriter
http://www.lifehackingmovie.com/2009/05/18/typewriter-minimal-text-editor-freeware/

Online

Writer
http://writer.bighugelabs.com/

UPDATE: I just used this to write an article for Taylor Journals. It’s pretty nice…you can wipe out the rest of your desktop by hitting F11 for full screen mode.

On A Related Note…

With Simple Text you can store all your writing, to do lists, etc in one place online and sync them between devices. You can even install this on your own web server so you’re not tied down to someone else’s service.

http://www.simpletext.ws/

Find A Topic

Consider your reader for a moment. What is he looking for? What’s bugging him? Go to his favorite online hang outs and look for questions. Fire up keyword tool and find out what he’s been typing into search engines. Make a short list of your findings.

Look over your list and see if there’s one idea that you know about. If you can answer questions about that subject without doing too much research, then you’ve found your article topic.

Now, you may find that you’d rather write about other ideas because they seem more interesting. But maybe with these subjects, you don’t have much experience. That’s not too big of a problem; you’ll just have to do a bit of research.

Brainstorming

Take out a sheet of paper and a pen and write down anything that comes to mind about your article…ideas, concepts, words, symbols, doodles and phrases. You’re not writing the article at this point, so don’t worry about making sense or being neat. Be sloppy and scribble if you’d like.

Three Point Outline

Once you’ve dumped a bunch of insights and thoughts onto your paper, take a look at the mess you’ve made. Remember, all these scribbles should be directly related to your article idea. Look for three points that you’d like to cover in your writing. These should be closely related ideas that are simple and that look easy to explain to your reader.

Words, Sentences, Questions

Write these three ideas in a simple outline; just one to three words each. Don’t make it complicated…no more than three words for each element of the outline.

Now expand on each phrase in your outline. Flesh out the idea behind the word or phrase and write a complete sentence.

After you’ve turned each phrase into a complete sentence, change those sentences into questions.

Answer Each Question

Once you’ve completed your questions, answer them.

This preparation takes a bit more time than just jumping into an article and writing free form. But, after the prep work is finished, your article will be far easier to write. All you have to do is react to the questions as you would were someone to ask them in an interview or on a forum.

Using this method, you may find that you’re able to produce more writing in a shorter period of time. You may also find that you have fewer problems with writer’s block.

Write Headline, Intro, And Summary

All that remains is to write the introduction and summary.

I’ve saved the intro and headline until this last step because it’s easier writing them at this stage, since you know exactly what your article is about.

To write the headline, read your article once more and think about the central idea. Connect this idea to your reader. What’s he really going to get by reading what you’ve written? Turn this idea into a reader centered statement or question and you’ll have your headline.

For the introduction and summary, simply state in a few brief sentences the subject matter the article covers. In the introduction, you will use future tense language…”This article is about so and so.” (Just be a bit more creative than that.) And for the summary, you’ll use past tense…”This article covered so and so.”

Include in the intro and summary exactly why your reader should care about your main idea…how this information impacts him or benefits him.

So for your next article, pick three points on a topic you’re familiar with, turn those three points into questions and then answer them. Give the article a simple introduction and summary and move on to the next article. How much easier can this get?

A good article length is between 600 to 900 words. In this article, you should focus on one keyword instead of dumping a ton of keywords together. Focus makes it easy for Google to figure out the subject of your article. If you try to saturate your writing with a grab bag of loosely related keywords, your ranking will suffer because the search engines won’t be able to determine the main niche idea.

To stand the best chance at ranking well in the search engines, your article should be original content. Rich talks about the perils of duplicate content and even says to avoid material from Ezine Articles. I disagree with him here. Duplicate content is a problem if the duplication is happening on your own site.

There doesn’t appear to be a duplicate content penalty between sites. In other words, there could be an identical article that is posted on two or three sites and all three could be indexed and ranked on page one of Google. I’ve seen it happen over and over. But if you post identical articles on your own site, then one of those pages will probably be penalized within Google.

Having said that, original content should be your first choice. Use syndicated content to supplement your original work.

Also, as you’re doing research and synthesizing a new article from other people’s work, be sure to give proper credit when including direct quotes. And run your article through Copyscape to check on possible duplication. (This concern for duplication is different from worrying about the duplicate content penalty. Here, you’re writing your own original content. When you do that, you want to avoid accusations of plagiarism.)

Your mission isn’t accomplished until they click your link!

Positioning the resource box under a short article is just part of your task…the other part is to write an effective resource box. One that will get response and clicks. You can do that by doing the opposite of what nearly all the other writers do.

Everyone else writes a mini resume and tries to establish some kind of authority, as if this is supposed to impress their readers.

Here’s a little hint…your reader doesn’t care about you or your accomplishments. They’re looking for their next info fix…they want to click a link that will take them to the next piece of information that will finally fill that void that’s driving them to look for info online in the first place.

So here’s what you need to do…stop telling them about you and just write a simple, one line, benefit filled call to action that includes your link. That’s it, nothing else is needed.

Here’s an example…

Acne Gone can clear your skin within one week…click this link to solve your acne problems.

Make it impossible for them to avoid clicking your link! Forget long, boring, self-indulgent resume style resource boxes and sell them on your link.

Short articles with short resource boxes. If you post your articles on Ezine Articles…or anywhere else, for that matter…you’ll see a dramatic change in your click through rate when you put into action these two simple ideas.

Keep in mind that your goal in writing an article is to get your reader to your site as quickly as possible. To do this, they need to see your author’s resource box so they can click your link. And the best way to make sure this happens is to write a short article…the shortest article possible. Which, on Ezine Articles, is 250 words. Writing a 250 to 300 word article will put your resource box within easy reach of your reader.

Articles that are much longer bury the resource box far below the fold…though some people won’t think twice about scrolling down to the bottom of a long page, most people give up if it’s too long.

One thing to keep in mind is they don’t care about they same things you care about. You want them to find your link, click on it, go to your website and commit to something further, such as signing up on your list or making a purchase. But they’re not thinking about you or your link.

So, if you write terribly long articles, you shouldn’t think they’ll take the time to scroll all the way down the page just to read your resource box and click your link.

They will click your link, if it’s easy to find. So make it easy on them. Write short articles so there’s less chance of them abandoning you before you get a click.