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/