Tag Archives: winter haiku

Boosting your creativity with free apps: OmmWriter

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Back in the glorious days of an Austin winter (glorious mainly because of the dead landscape, whose lack of pollen didn’t inherently tip off my allergies and require heavy OTC medication), I mentioned a free app that had inspired a few of my winter haiku. The freebie in question? OmmWriter, a Zen-like writing application that will help get a writer’s creative juices flowing and the words flying across the page like they were meant to be typed: freestyle and frenzied.

Ommwriter from herraizsoto&co on Vimeo.

The biggest pro regarding this app is, naturally, its free-ness. I can’t pass up a freebie, as those who read my Shoestring Austin blog might know, and when it comes to free software, I feel it’s worth downloading and giving a go. In the case of OmmWriter, it’s worth the five minutes it’ll take to download, and that’s not me damning with faint praise. (Sometimes, after all, you get what you pay for with free apps. But not here.)

I am also a big fan of any software that reduces a writer’s tendency to flit back and forth between applications, as I know that I am a huge procrastinator, as well as one of those types who are totally unable to just “block out” the rest of the stuff on a flickering screen. Why not check my email for the 477th time today? It’ll only take a second! Annnnnnd I’ll see you about three hours later, dazed and confused about what the heck I was originally going to do with those three precious hours. Oh, writing maybe? Whoops.

The fact that OmmWriter will go full-screen and help you escape from the desktop’s shiny, flickering enticements (not to mention three-bazillion windows) is excellent, but the way it also incorporates music and repetitive sounds that are linked with the tapping of your keys on the keyboard is truly genius. I am a distracted sort, and one who always pines for some type of music to engage and inspire, but I hate having to set up new “lyric-free” playlists on iTunes every time I’m in a writing mood. No worries! OmmWriter offers wordless repeating sound patterns that will keep you going on loop, without taking you out of your creative mode. Perfect!

OmmWriter reminds me of a computerized version of a device my husband has been doting on for years, the Buddha Machine (also available in iPod app format for $2.99, but “it’s the crusty little speaker and analogue output that gives it James Brown-level soul,” according to him; there’s also a Version 2.0, and you can play them together for maximum tranquillity), which plays a variety of repeating musical patterns on loop in order to help Buddhists (or, actually, the controversial devotees of Falun Gong) in their meditations. It cuts through the chatter of the mind with peaceful, harmony-inducing musical snatches, allowing you to more fully concentrate on writing. And really, anything that can still the “monkey mind” is hot shit in my books.

Try it out, for free, at OmmWriter.com.

Winter haiku

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I haven’t written any of my haiku-a-day in a while, and since I’ve got a few Basho books out of the library right now, I thought I’d give it a go. It’s the end of January, and I’m feeling a bit unmoored. I’m used to ice and snow at this time of the year, and while it’s certainly cold here in Texas (apparently it’s 34 degrees outside right now) and rather a desolate landscape (as evidenced by my recent visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center), the lack of a standard Winter Wonderland is making me feel kind of spooked.

Add on top of that the fact that I just read The Road by Cormac McCarthy (which I wrote up briefly on CrackBooks), where the two protagonists are shivering with cold virtually all of the time and the post-apocalyptic landscape is described as “cold enough to split rocks,” and you’ve got a bit of a paranoid writer on your hands. Am I dying, or is it just cold in here? (To paraphrase a Sarah Silverman song lyric.)

So, here are three of my winter haiku:

“texas winter landscape (with poodles)” by Flickr user greg westfall

Silent winter snow
missing from Texas landscape
Strange chill without ice
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“texas in winter #4″ by Flickr user greg westfall

Do I miss freezing?
Strapping boots to venture forth?
Not at all! (a bit)
–

“Real winter in Texas” by Flickr user CameliaTWU

Montréal Winter

Icicles question,
breath hanging in air shatters.
Cold, clean fear of death.

I should note that I wrote all of those haiku in a great (free!) Zen-style writing program called OmmWriter. If you’ve got a Mac, you should definitely check it out (it’s not currently available for you [suckafool] PCs), as it’s quite a neat way to approach your creative writing. It takes you out of the clutter of your desktop and allows you to choose your background, a repeating pattern of music that resembles my husband’s Buddha Machine (another great little gizmo if you want to clear your mind), and another ambient noise associated with tapping the buttons of your keyboard. You’re focused on the words on the page, and the repeating musical patterns are meant to keep your thoughts flowing, rather than snagging on the words to a familiar tune or even the hook to some classical music. I really like it, especially for things like my haiku writing project—and did I mention it’s free?

Seriously, try it. You’ll convert.

Finally, I am announcing a crazy (but attainable) goal, inspired by my recent reading of Jeremy Mercer’s Time Was Soft There. Apparently George Whitman, the owner of the illustrious Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, allows writers to stay at the bookstore so long as they read one book per day to earn their keep, so to speak. This is an amazing idea, both because it will help any writer improve his or her craft, but also because it immerses you in the world of literature and ideas. It allows you to see the connections, to see yourself as one in a long line of writers, to broaden your horizons and deepen your interests. It sounds time-consuming in our rush-rush world of corporate consumption and pointless motion, but really, what have you got to lose when you sit down and read a book?

I always have a book or two on hand anyway, and regularly read about a book a week. I’m already the type of person that puts library books on hold so I can have good books delivered (almost) to my doorstep, and since the Austin library nearest my house has a drive-thru, well, I’ve been going a bit nuts with my holds (despite their threat that you’ll have to pay $1 per book if you don’t pick them up within 10 days of your request being fulfilled). I am, in a word, voracious. Always have been. I was the kid who checked out stacks of books, and once a little girl saw me with my pile and whispered to her mother, “Look at all the books she has, mommy!” The mother whispered back, “She’s not going to read them all.” I turned to face them and said, “Yes I am!”

That child was undoubtedly scarred for life, but you get my point. I’m an unstoppable reading machine. So now it’s time to step it up a notch and really get serious. Thus, I pledge to join the ranks of the Shakespeare and Company writers, from afar. Tonight I’ve got a few hours left to kill Under the Tuscan Sun. Let’s do this thing!

Who’s with me?