Since I returned from my brief holiday hiatus, I put some thought into what would be the first post in Twenty Ten. I decided to go with a tool that's been around for a while, and one that has a great many applications outside of poetry. However its implications for creative work are what makes it particularly compelling to me.

Google Docs is a web-based document-processing product that's been around in some form since late 2006, but I'm routinely shocked by the number of people who've never heard of it or think it has no use to them. Docs is Google's ace in the whole when it comes to dealing with Microsoft's juggernaut Office product. And for those of you who regularly use Microsoft Office, Google Docs will look almost eerily familiar to you:

This image looks nearly identical to a Microsoft Word window, and the same goes for Google Spreadsheets and Presentations, which are basic analogs to Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint. Google does this because the interfaces Microsoft has created are so widely used that they are considered standard. It helps users like you and I to switch seamlessly between Word and Docs without really noticing the difference.

But if the products are so similar, what is the point in switching? That much is simple: Google Docs is entirely web-based. The image above appears as a tab within your normal browser window. The files created in Google Docs are saved to your Google account online, just like your e-mails.

The web-based approach to documents, as opposed to the traditional desktop-based Microsoft Office approach, allows for a flexibility in document creation that has never been seen before. At the surface, there's the general convenience of it: your documents are always online, accessible on any computer behind your secure Gmail password. This eliminates the need for the flash drives full of documents that college students and young professionals have held close to their chests for the past several years. This is the basic argument for cloud computing: that everything can be accessible from everywhere in a secure way.

However, the true usefulness of Google Docs goes beyond basic cloud accessibility. Google Docs allows users to share any document that you choose. You can allow anyone to see a shared document, even if they are not users of Google Docs. And you can even allow other users to edit those documents if you choose. This is where Docs burgeons into true usefulness for creative writers.

Think about collaboration with other writers using Microsoft Word. You create a document, and e-mail it as an attachment to another writer, who edits the document and returns it to you. Now you've got two versions of the same document on your computer: the original and the edited copy. You then make the changes to the original, including some more of your own changes. When you e-mail this version to the other writer, he or she now has two versions of the document on his or her computer. The cycle goes on this way, spawning more and more copies of the same document on both computers until the collaboration is done. And that's if only two collaborators are involved.

Google Docs allows a virtually infinite number of collaborators to edit the original document, eliminating the need to make any duplicates. This kind of seamless collaboration allows poets and writers to work together with an ease they've never had before. All the editors can enter the document as many times as they like, making as many changes as they need to until the document meets the needs of all involved. All e-mails and files sent back and forth are completely cut out of the equation.

What's shocking is that this technology has been around for about four years, and only a small portion of people are using it. In part I blame academic, editorial, and professional organizations, who require documents be submitted in Microsoft's proprietary '.doc' file format. It's been a daunting challenge to get around this requirement, but Google has developed a feature where, with one click, you can e-mail a Google Doc as a .doc attachment. The conversion is not perfect as far as formatting, but it's a quick and easy way to get around these ridiculous requirements.

There's so much useful technology out there, literally at our fingertips, and we're not using it for oftentimes petty reasons. Over the past couple years, Google Docs has changed how I deal with my daily professional and creative workflow. It's allowed a level of sharing and collaboration that has greatly simplified my poetic life, and I think it can do the same for you. All you've got to do is reach out and grab it.

For all writers, and poets in particular, composition is as much an act of concentration as it is one of creativity. Many poets often talk about needing "time to write," but what most of them mean is "time alone." Poetry is both reflexive and reflective: solitude and concentration are usually just as important, if not more important, than the creative spark.

It's for this reason that most poets I know prefer hand-writing their work in a notebook [usually a Moleskine] to typing it into a word processor. One of the main reasons for writing this way, beyond the tactile pleasure of it, is the effortless concentration it provides. In a notebook, it is you and the page. If you've managed to find a solitary spot, there's nothing to get between you and your writing.

On today's computers, there's really nothing analogous to a blank page. Our operating systems are filled with dings, whistles, and flashing notifications; our browsers are almost always open, luring us to look at what the world is saying; and our word processors are bloated with so-called features.
Anyone who's used Microsoft Word can attest to the bloat of word processing software. All the choices running in bars across the top of the screen can be a little overwhelming: the writer starts thinking less about the words and more about the "processing."

MS Word is an amazing tool for formatting professional documents, and its comprehensive approach is useful when writing for business. But what we creative writers need is not "word processing" software, we need WRITING software. We need a program that shuts out the world, that combines the convenience of writing on a computer with the concentration of writing on a page.

There is at least one developer who understands this need. His name is Jesse Grosjean, and he's built a writing program incredible in its simplicity. Grosjean's WriteRoom is exactly the kind of program I've been talking about. When you start up WriteRoom all you see is a black screen and a blinking green cursor. As you type the words appear on the screen and nothing else: no menus, buttons, or choices to confuse and distract you.

But WriteRoom's simplicity doesn't get in the way of your productivity. The word count and name of the document appear if you mouse to the bottom of the screen, and the menu bar appears if you mouse to the top. The typical hotkey commands still function as usual, and other programs remain running in the background in case you really need them. And if you find the green-on-black style jarring, you can customize the colors to your liking.

The key is that you have these options, but you don't see them. Unlike with a notebook, all the functionality of a computer is at your fingertips, just without the distracting user interfaces we've all become accustomed to. I've written this entire post on WriteRoom, and I can tell you that the experience is superior even to a simple program like TextEdit. Grosjean has removed the distracting parts of the operating system that most of us don't even think about anymore.

The result is a program unparalleled in its ability to help writers concentrate. For poets, this is a priceless advantage, so the asking price of $24.95 doesn't seem so bad. If you're unsure, you can try to the product free for 30 days. WriteRoom itself is Mac only, but there's a free Windows clone application called Dark Room that Grosjean himself has endorsed.

Now, if someone could just find a way to deal with playful cats and street noise, all my concentration needs would be met.