I rikey this software very much

[TVC15]

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

Very useful for undistracted writing.  It's completely psychosomatic, but when the rest of the desktop is blotted out and out of the reach of your senses, it's so much easier to do writing, even though you could lift the veil very easily with a simple escape or alt-tab.  There's also an OSX version.

http://hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

Also, a black screen is so much easier on the eyes.  When I re-enter my (usually) much much brighter desktop, it goddamned hurts my goddamned eyes for a minute.

These are both old programs, but what the heck, I never hear people mention them.

[Mupepe]

I'll check out dark room.  See if it makes a difference.  My eyes begin to water after writing for a long time

[Rman]

Dark room is great.  I know some writers who swear by it. 

[CajoleJuice]

Downloaded. This is great. Thanks.

[Pharmacy]

i was thinking about this the other day, thanks for reminding me

[TVC15]

Dark room is great.  I know some writers who swear by it. 

Yeah, I had heard about this like a year or two ago, and I was like "pfffffft, it doesn't really change anything.  The distractions are still there." but when I tried it, I did a complete 180.  I was surprised how one ultimately tiny environmental change made writing so much easier.  Makes me wonder how good GUI actually is for productivity.

[Tauntaun]

Is this a screen writing program?

[TVC15]

Is this a screen writing program?

No.  It's an extremely basic (think Notepad) text editor.

[Tauntaun]

Is this a screen writing program?

No.  It's an extremely basic (think Notepad) text editor.

Ah, ok.  I'll DL it at home.

[Reb]

I used this, now everything is select is green, in all programs.

I went in the darkroom, now my computer has a STD...

[Crushed]

Holy shit this is awesome.

I think it helped respark my writing. I haven't done any in years, even though I love it. I tried doing something for one of those GAF writing threads and the result was just pure shit. A big pile of unconnected threads which hadn't gone anywhere because I was too distracted to keep them all together and cohesive.

[Human Snorenado]

I will give this a go, I've been fucking around with a few ideas for stories lately and I always get sidetracked by my evil laptop.

[Great Rumbler]

A version of Word where you could alter the background and page color or a version of Dark Room with more formatting options would be perfect.

[Darunia]

Fuck, I wanted to try this since I have a couple of days of intense writing ahead of me, but it just doesn't work. I get an error window (xp)

[TVC15]

A version of Word where you could alter the background and page color or a version of Dark Room with more formatting options would be perfect.

Part of the reason I like it so much is the lack of format options.  Again, when you get right down to it, they are just distractions.  If I am working on something I like, I can add that stuff in later in Word or something.

But hey, I'm TVC, I'll oblige.  MS Word for DOS 5.5 is free from MS.  You could probably use it similarly, since running it full screen would be similar to using something like these apps:

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2005/11/25/free-file/

[TVC15]

Actually, I can't get that ancient version of Word to work.  It is 16 years old, lol.

[Ecrofirt]

There's also edit, which comes free with Windows.

Just fire up a command prompt and type edit. Make it fullscreen, and you can edit the colors as you see fit.