You get a few bells and whistles, such as a toggle for typewriter sound effects (surprisingly satisfying), timers, wordcount goals, autosave, spell-check, and customizable themes. You have a background texture covering the entire screen, including the taskbar, and you have your words. Where FocusWriter shines, though, is in eliminating distraction. odt (the last one making FocusWriter a good pairing with OpenOffice).
If you want a more streamlined experience or don’t want to download an entire software suite, FocusWriter is a simple, capable little word processor. I’ve exchanged files back and forth with beta readers using Word multiple times without incident. Compatibility with Word documents is pretty damn good. Those running Linux-based systems may already have this program suite preinstalled with your distro. LibreOffice is another great open-source MS Office alternative I’ve used extensively over the years. LibreOffice Writer (Win, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android) It also includes a spreadsheet program, useful for outlines and note-taking. I relied on this suite of programs for years when I was running a computer without MS Word. Maybe someone will find them handy.Īpache OpenOffice is an open-source alternative to Microsoft Office. By no means have I tried all of them, but I’ve used a handful.
There are plenty of alternatives that offer a decent-to-great experience that don’t cost a penny. Scrivener is a very reasonable $40, but that may still be $40 you don’t have (been there), and it’s aimed at a few specific types of writing. Microsoft Office is expensive (unless you get your copy from your alma mater, like yours truly).
So, these days I do most of my stuff on Word or Scrivener, but such wasn’t always the case.