“Silence is golden.” Or so we’ve heard for cen­turies; a prover­bial say­ing that’s con­sis­tent across cul­tures.

The ques­tion is, in an amped-up, caf­feine-fueled, texting/tweeting world of con­stant dis­trac­tions, is there a place for silence in busi­ness? That is, can a more beau­ti­fully silent space lead to bet­ter writ­ing?

Or is this a ques­tion whose answer varies by age, with time for silence or con­tem­pla­tion a con­cept that appeals more pow­er­fully to peo­ple over 40?

Do peo­ple write bet­ter, think more clearly, if they have the lux­ury of doing so in an envi­ron­ment that screens out noise and dis­trac­tions? Does focus lead to bet­ter writ­ing, con­tent that’s more likely to res­onate with oth­ers? Can a blank can­vas invoke more cre­ativ­ity?

It’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion, one that I think is best answered on an indi­vid­ual basis. It’s also pos­si­ble that indi­vid­ual pref­er­ences are more sit­u­a­tional, linked to time and place, or what you’re think­ing or writ­ing about. Or: who’s pay­ing for your time and why…

A writer’s haven

If you’d like to expe­ri­ence the impact of dis­trac­tion-free silence while writ­ing, there’s a min­i­mal­ist tool for Mac, PC and iPad users called “OmmWriter Dana.” It’s kind of a zen-like, Steve Jobs-inspired approach to the act of writ­ing. Its Barcelona-based cre­ators call it “a writer’s haven.”

OmmWriter Dana

The min­i­mal­ist ver­sion can be down­loaded for free to your Mac; a paid-ver­sion offers a broader selec­tion of color schemes and audio themes designed to cul­ti­vate focus, con­tem­pla­tion and enhance cre­ativ­ity.

I’m using the basic ver­sion of OmmWriter to draft this blog post. OmmWriter enables me write the basic post, hid­ing the rest of my Mac­in­tosh envi­ron­ment (includ­ing turn­ing off my sec­ondary dis­play where I nor­mally scan incom­ing emails, tweets, etc.)

To turn this draft into a blog, I copy my draft, and then paste it into Word­Press where I’ll add the appro­pri­ate HTML tags, cat­e­gory tags and so on. This sep­a­rates the writ­ing process from the markup process.

Whether this two-step approach enhances cre­ativ­ity is too soon to say defin­i­tively. What I do know is that the actual expe­ri­ence of writ­ing with OmmWriter is more delight­ful than when writ­ing a blog inside Word­Press, LiveWriter, NotePad or any of the usual word pro­cess­ing tools.

Try it your­self, and see how it helps your writ­ing.