Q10
As a writer, I found that not many of my fellows actually know about this amazing little tool. I myself only discovered it last year, during the frenzy of NaNoWriMo. And I tell you, it helped a whole lot. If you haven’t stumbled across it yet, I highly suggest you go check it out.
Q10 is a word-processing software for Windows, sort of like Notepad but packed with just the right features that every writer needs. Q10 blacks out your entire screen, getting rid of distractions and letting you concentrate on the writing task at hand. It even hides your task bar. Instead, you get a useful little info bar that displays your running word count, page count, character count, and the current time — details that matter to a writer. Additionally, you have the option to toggle this info bar on and off, and you can set which particular counts you want to display. You can choose to show only the details that are important to you. Nifty, eh?
The creators of Q10 has taken the barebones simplicity of Notepad and thrown in the more significant aspects of MS Word, giving writers a light yet powerful software companion. It’s a text-only tool, yet it doesn’t feel that way because of the amount of control it gives you. Q10′s visual layout is customizable, so you can change background color, text font and color, spacing, and margins to whatever tickles your fancy. Me? I’m partial to light text on an uncluttered, beautifully dark background. Yes, even if your quirky tastes lean more towards squiggly green text on a hot pink background, Q10 will let you have your way.
All navigation is by way of easy-to-remember hotkeys, which you can find in a neat list by hitting the F1 key. No annoying menus and toolbars containing commands you don’t really need (or understand, for that matter). The goal of Q10 is to simply let you write, to have you record those germs of ideas tucked away inside your head and finally make headway on that novel.
Oh, and did I mention that Q10 is free? Heck, yes, I’m not kidding!
Some of the other features of Q10 include:
1. Assigning target count
2. Setting up a timer alarm (writers do tend to forget the time when “in the zone”)
3. Language selection
4. Notes list
5. Timestamps
But you know what has really made me fall in love with Q10? It’s an extra feature that doesn’t seem to have any particular use, but most Q10 users agree that this takes the cake. Typewriter sound effects! It gives you that old-school feel, that you’re not just typing any kind of text, but that you are, in fact, writing.
You can check out Q10 here.
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