Category: Writing Workshop
There’s life beyond Microsoft Word. Among the countless word precessors available, I’d like to introduce you today to the most bucolic of them: OmmWriter.
This curious software is designed to help you relax and focus on what you initially intended to do when you sat in front of the computer, which was not to get distracted reading blogs like this one, but to write. OmmWriter hides your desktop, plays backgroudn music and leaves you alone with your ideas.
There are no distracting options, barely four font types in four sizes and the load and save options. You can’t even use italics. You can, however, choose among a small selection of background music and images, three of each in the free version Dana I, a few more in the full version Dana II, including some backgrounds based on the theories of chromatherapy.
Surreal? Yes.
But it works.
Available for Mac and PC
You won’t put up with so much relaxation for longer than an hour or so, but who has more time to write anyway? Before you realize, and by lack of anything to do in front of that blank landscape where nothing happens, you’ll have initiated a story, sketched a character o portrayed a situation. You won’t write your novel on OmmWriter, but you may plant its seed, or write some microfiction, o a scene that you’ll eventually use somewhere else. If you use it regularly, it’s quite likely that you’ll end up with a folder of unconnected fragments that, six months later, will surprise with real pearls that -you’ll have forgotten- were once in your head.
I recommend, at least, giving the experience a try. And then share it with us.
Sorry, this entry is only available in Español.
This man has just earned a lot of points in my admiration scale thanks to this interview.
On art: You try to go to a producer today and say you want to make a film that hasn’t been made before; they will throw you out because they want the same film that works, that makes money. An essential element of any art is risk. If you don’t take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn’t been seen before?
On screenwriting: A screenplay has to be like a haiku. It has to be very concise and very clear, minimal. When you go to make it as a film, you’re going to listen to the actors and the photographer because they have great ideas, and then you make the decision that you feel is best. Cinema is collaboration.
On money: I have another job. I make films, but I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script. 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. This idea of some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money? So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.”
On this last topic, Neil Gaiman has something important to say:
The times they are a-changin’. The debate goes on.