Last week I wrote about different full screen text editors to choose from and (sort of) promised that I’ll expand on why writing in full screen is at least worth trying.

Well, there is no better time for it than now.

So, what are the advantages of writing in a full screen editor with no formatting options at all, when we have all kinds of word processors with the latest bells and whistles at our command?

The question would be only fair if you were writing a formal application for a new job. But here, we are talking about creative writing, and this beast is not easy to tame.

Most writing is creative writing as it requires you to choose your words and arrange your sentences creatively (not in poetic sense, mind you). And we all know, it is impossible to be creative without being fully focussed on our thoughts.

What’s great about a full screen editor is that it instantly removes distracting thoughts from your mind and connects you to your most important thoughts by clearing the writing field of visual distractions.

When typing in other editors with all other windows and toolbars and icons peeping into your peripheral vision, it’s all too easy to lose your train of thought and waste your brain’s energy processing other annoying matters such as why was your girl friend behaving so strangely last night!

You see, our mind is a whiny little baby. It uses up most of its energy worrying about frivolous things that need least of your attention right now. And ignores any demands of concentrating on the task at hand.

When there’s a lot of stuff going on around you when you need to concentrate on a creative task, it mucks around for something to interrupt your concentration, and as soon as it’s found something, all that has gone wrong in your life seems to run like a film before your eyes.

This, or something similar is bound to happen to you if you write in a noisy, distracting environment. A screen full of colors, toolbars, and windows is the sort of visual noise you can’t afford to have around when writing.

Writing on a black screen with only your thoughts materializing on it is truly a blissful experience.

But what about formatting?

I know the kind of perfectionists we all have become. If we don’t write perfect content with words bolded out and lists nicely bulleted right as we put them down, we consider ourselves to be lousy and incapable writers.

If you write with this approach in mind, I seriously ask you to reconsider your approach.

If you want to change your approach and become a really efficient writer, take some time to read this post that I wrote earlier.

Stephen King, a famous fiction writer, puts it more beautifully than I ever can:

Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. You think you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right – and breaking your train of thought and the writer’s trance in the bargain – or just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere? And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and you find you don’t have it in your head, why not write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it … but later. When you sit down to write, write. Don’t do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

Customizing your full screen editor for best results

Here’s a screenshot of my customized Dark Room.

• The page is 600px wide, centered, and with margins set to 10px. This gives the page a more ‘roomy’ feeling which is helpful for concentration.
• The general background is black which is least distracting of all colors.
• The page background is a dark gray with white text on it so it doesn’t pierce my eyes.
• The font is Times New Roman because I’m still used to reading Serif fonts in print. The more familiarity = the less distraction.

But this is not the end of all configurations. Do what suits you best.

If you have used a full screen editor for writing before, please share your experience in comments.

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

Full screen text editor is probably the best thing I’ve discovered since I started blogging.

When I open up my full screen text editor, my creativity quadruples and ideas seem to flow from every inch of my brain.

A few days ago, Maki wrote about a full screen text editor called Dark Room and explained how it helped him concentrate better and come up with great content. Well, I needed no convincing. On some subconscious level, I badly wanted a writing app like this. I was sold.

Since then, I’ve been writing everything that needs concentration in a full screen text editor. And the results are amazing.

How to write best in full screen is a subject for another post. For now, here’s a list of 13 full screen text editors that’ll help you stay focused on writing. Take your pick.

Recommended

1. Dark Room – Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text.

2. Q10 – Q10 will clean your kitchen, walk your dog and make excellent coffee. Well, not really. But it’s really good as a full-screen text editor.

3. JDarkRoom – JDarkRoom is a popular, simple full-screen text file editor with none of the usual bells and whistles that might distract you from the job in hand. If you are writing a novel, essay, thesis or just need to be able to concentrate on your writing, then JDarkRoom may help you.

Others

4. WriteMonkey – Zenware for full screen distraction free creative writing. No whistles and bells, just empty screen, you and your words. WriteMonkey is light, fast, and perfectly handy for those who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter but live in modern times.

5. WestEdit – WestEdit is a full screen, old-school text editor and typewriter. No fuss, no distractions – just you and your text.

6. Jer’s Novel Writer (Mac only – a word processor with full screen mode) – Jer’s Novel Writer is a relatively simple word processor with extra features to support large creative writing projects.

7. CopyWrite (Mac only – has full-screen mode) – CopyWrite is a project manager for writers of all kinds. Rather than focus on formatting and layout, CopyWrite stands apart in its project-oriented approach.

8. PyRoom – Writeroom is a full-screen text editor, without buttons, menu, formatting, so you can focus on writing, and only writing. It’s only for Mac, and costs USD 24.95. PyRoom is its clone, written in Python + GTK, Free and free.

9. RubyRoom – Rubyroom is a full-screen text editor. Full screen gives you a complete workspace for your text, and nothing else. No IM windows popping up, no more “you got mail” small animations on the background that take away your concentration.

Web-based

10. DarkCopy – DarkCopy is a simple, full-screen text editor for distraction free writing.

11. Writer – The internet typewriter. Has an option to switch to full screen mode.

12. WordPress 2.5 – WordPress 2.5 has an option to expand the write area to full screen. Very handy if you prefer to write in the familiar WordPress post editor.

And finally, the one that started it all!

13. WriteRoom (Mac only – commercial) – For people who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter, but live in the digital world. WriteRoom is a full-screen writing environment. Unlike the cluttered word processors you’re used to, WriteRoom is just about you and your text.

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

I keep six honest serving men. They taught me all I knew; Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who. Rudyard Kipling

Write what you want to read. The person you know best in this world is you. Listen to yourself. If you are excited by what you are writing, you have a much better chance of putting that excitement over to a reader. Robin McKinley

You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work. William Gibson

If you think you’re boring your audience, go slower not faster. Gustav Mahler

To grow in craft is to increase the bredth of what I can do, but art is the depth, the passion, the desire, the courage to be myself and myself alone. Pat Schneider

If you don’t know it, don’t write it. Darrell Schweitzer

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Oscar Wilde

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. Scott Adams

It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly. C. J. Cherryh

Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, toss it. Toss it even if you love it. Stephen King

You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned to do it. Ursula K. LeGuin

Only self-educated is educated. Others are merely taught. Erno Paasilinna

If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing. Kingsley Amis

Your favorite quotes from top writers?

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Any blog, on today’s web, should create quality linkbait in order to be seen by more than a handful of visitors. The web is unlike all other media. Here, the success awaits those who understand the web regardless of how influential or rich they are in real life.

You must have seen, for example, that blogs run by individuals outrank multi-million dollar companies in SERP’s, and naturally get more traffic, and can potentially earn more money from the Internet than their rich and influential competitors.

Considering the diversity of niches present in the blogosphere, it’s hard to pin down exact topics that always serve as quality linkbait, but there are certain general topics that seem to have a penchant for going viral.

I’ve been looking closely at the trends on social media sites to see what kinds of topics are often voted up and appear again and again on the popular lists. And there are some topics that are clearly more popular from the rest among general geeks. Below are five of those topics that, if used wisely, make for great linkbaits.

Sex

Who doesn’t like sex? It’s the best thing that has happened to human beings during their evolution! No wonder people, especially youth, are attracted to sexual references.

Some tips on creating sex-related content:

• Make a list of sexy wears for geeks
• Highlight top x sexy woman in a specific field
• Criticize the unhealthiness of certain sexual practices
• Cover a news story that involves sex abuse
• List interesting laws regarding sex in some countries.

Blasphemy

In other words, spark controversy. Say bad things about what a major group of people love or respect. OK.. don’t say outrageously bad things, but it doesn’t hurt to play a devil’s advocate once in a while!

Whichever niche you may be in, there is bound to be a figure, an ideology, or a company that has a major fan following. What you have to do is peek under the hood, find the shortcomings of figure, ideology, or company in question, and nitpick!

Here are some ideas:

• Criticize a religion
• Find fault with a widely loved product
• Slam a popular company
• Make conspiracy theories
• Condone a despised activity

Warning: Use above techniques at your own risk as they could really harm your brand.

Unusual images

An image is worth a thousand words, or in our case, a thousand blog posts. Because of their quality of conveying even difficult message intuitively, images tend to go viral more rapidly than any other piece of linkbait.

There are plenty of unusual, funny, and grotesque images on the web that stay unnoticed. If you highlight such an image, or collection of images, with a short commentary, you’ll create a fine piece of linkbait with minimal effort.

Before posting an image, see:

• If it’s funny in an unusual way
• If it’s ‘photoshopped’ but realistic
• If it resonates with a particular social media community you are targeting
• If it’s awe-inspiring
• If it’s of something yet largely unseen and undiscovered

Life-hacks

Life-hacks are workarounds, tips, tutorial, and how-to’s, that make certain aspects of life easy. One of the blessings of the internet is that people can share with one another solutions to common problems, step-by-step walk-throughs of complex procedures, and any tips, tricks, and shortcuts that simplify tedious tasks. Therefore, if devised carefully, a particularly useful life-hack can become an instant hit, and get you loads of links.

Some ideas for life-hacks:

• Refute common myths (e.g. Creativity is a gifted quality)
• Write a step by step tutorial that solves a common problem
• Define a procedure that makes dealing with a certain emotional state easy
• Discover multi-functionality of a commonly used device/software (e.g. WordPress as a CMS)
• Start a new life-hacks blog (everyone and their mom has one these days, and they are all popular. Just get yourself a bunch of productivity books from Amazon.com and start copying!)

Resources

Last but not least, the good old resources. I am sure you have seen those top 5 to top 101 lists of resources on almost every blog. These are called resource lists.

Creating a resource list is not difficult. There is nothing you have to write on your own. All you need to do is a bit of research to come up with a medium sized resource list. The bigger the list, however, the more time you have to spend to acquaint yourself with the subject at hand.

Good practices in creating resource lists:

• Format the list in a unique way (e.g. images aligned to left, and descriptions on the right)
• Categorize the list in different sections, and start every section with a descriptive heading
• Use images in the list to mark new section if the list is fairly big
• Keep the descriptions small and links prominent
• If possible, write your own descriptions

There are plenty of other ways to create linkbaits that you’ll know by observing popular social media sites.

Be sure to share your linkbait techniques with us in the comments!

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

Know your whys and hows?

If your blog posts take any amount of thinking to complete, you must do the thinking before you write. This brief ensures that you don’t miss any important points, and that you actually know your subject matter before you can explain it to your readers.

By putting some time aside to answer some basic questions about your articles (very briefly), you’ll create a winner every time you write.

Try answering these questions for your next post idea:

• What is the main point of this article?
• What style should it be written in?
• What does it aim to achieve?
• What problem does it solve, if any?
• What do I already know about this subject?

• Who will read this?
• Who will benefit from this?
• Who will it influence?

• Why will anyone care to read this?
• Why am I writing this?
• Why is it better than other similar articles?
• Why is it different?

• How can I improve this?
• How will this benefit my readers?
• How will readers respond to this article?

Or simply memorize the following gem from Rudyard Kipling:

“I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.”

If you think your time would be better spent on writing the actual thing than fussing over some silly questions, put yourself in your readers pajamas and think again.

You mind will be overflowing with ideas, and your fingers springing into action after you know what you really want to say. The writing will come much more easily because you’ll be clear about the direction you’ll take. And you’ll save more time than if you write unprepared.

Above all, you’ll be in more control and, hence, more motivated to explore the subject.

Take the test yourself. Reflect on the subject next time you write something, and see if it makes the writing a more rewarding experience!

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

And I’ve been in such a miserable condition a few days ago.

When I tried to write after long sickness and a period of two weeks when I didn’t write anything at all, I was stuck for words and ideas. I even thought I may not be able to write at all for the rest of my life (Yes, that’s what happens when pessimism overcomes you).

If you ever go through such a situation, don’t lose hope. You’ll be back to writing and kicking arse after doing a bit of exercise!

Your writing muscles act like your other muscles. They get stiff if you don’t use them for a too long. So you need to do some exercise to warm them up.

But this exercise is not physical, it’s creative.

Creative exercises to loosen up your writing muscles

Make up your mind – Tell yourself that you want to write, and tell the nay-sayer inside your head to shut up.

Read a book – Read a book that is written in plain language and that is about an ordinary topic. Read with the intent of getting motivated and read till you start getting excited.

Read your own posts and other related blogs – To get in the mood of writing about your blog’s topics, read your own posts and some other posts on related blogs.

Leave comments on blogs – Go to blogs in your niche and write some comments. This will help you get your thoughts focused.

Create mind maps – Create mind maps of the ideas that may have occurred to you so far.

Write!

Now you are ready to write again. Don’t worry if you leave a post in the middle, start a new one. This is all an exercise.

And remember, don’t edit yourself.

I’ve taken the same steps, and now I am back into the writing mood. Oh, and if you have been wondering, I laughed away my suggestion of never being able to write again.

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

Do you keep worrying about how much you suck at writing?

Are you convinced that you can never write well no matter what?

And most importantly, do you spend hours writing a medium sized article and still end up being dissatisfied?

Now, what if I told you there is a way to write more, in less time, and be satisfied with what you write?

I’ve had the same problem of writing less and worrying more, and trust me, after discovering and correcting the mistake I was making, I am one helluva happy guy during and after writing my posts.

So what was the problem and how I overcame it?

I recognized writing and editing to be two different processes, but always succumbed to the old habit of editing-cum-writing against my better judgment.

Writing is a creative process, and considering the fleeting nature of creative ideas, it needs to be put out of your head as soon as it occurs to you, or else it will be lost in the noise of gazillions of other thoughts.

Editing, on the other hand, requires a more logical and analytical approach. It is a process of analyzing your writing rationally and eliminating any errors that may have (they always do!) come through from the creative process of writing.

If you write and edit at the same time, the two sides of your brain clash, and as a result you lose focus; once you lose focus, the creative flow of ideas peter out.

Now tell me if you can relate to this habit:

• You can’t start to write. You stare at screen for 15 or so minutes, get bored, and end up procrastinating. None of the ideas seem to make enough sense (In a sense, you edit yourself even before putting a single word down).
• You come back after an hour, same thing happens.
• You are frustrated but determined and manage to put something down.
• You start writing, and after completing only a few lines, you start finding fault with your writing.
• You start editing and improving upon what you have already written. You correct spelling mistakes, detect and replace words that occurred too many times, and you rearrange the sentences.

So, finally you end up taking more than an hour writing and editing a few paragraphs while constantly fretting over how you could have done better.

What ought to happen is:

• You take off your perfectionist hat and start writing, and write until you empty out your brain.
• You edit the draft, and post it.

Ah! That was remarkably simple!

I have separated writing from editing completely, and boy, there is some positive difference I’ve experienced.

Things not to do while writing

• Don’t spell check
• Don’t find proper words in dictionary or thesaurus
• Don’t readjust sentence structure
• Don’t look up facts on Wikipedia or search on Google amidst writing
• Don’t look back at what you have written so far

Things to do after writing

Do everything listed above, as appropriate.

Separating editing from writing will save you time, make you a better writer, and keep you a satisfied person. What else does a write want?

Next time you sit down to write, remember not to interrupt the creative flow of thoughts until you are finished. You, too, will feel the difference.

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

A great idea wrapped in flimsy writing is a waste of words.

On the other hand, an average but clearly expressed thought enjoys more attention.

Why bother about good writing practices, you ask? You are a blogger, not a would-be author of the next best-seller.

Don’t fool yourself. You are first a writer, then a blogger. And yes, you are a published author. Your blog is the publication of your ideas.

Even though you are doing good with your current writing style, you will do even better with more refined writing habits. Just like a bad design prevents users from getting to the content, a messy writing style limits the potential effectiveness of your ideas.

To utilize the full potential of your ideas, you have to grow a habit of passing your writing through strict quality filters.

I have always been an advocate of good writing practices. Though, my writing is by no means the best example of effective and clear writing, trying to overcome an old habit is no joke.

Here are the top 5 writing practices that I’ve been trying hard to incorporate into my writing, and that you should also learn.

Get rid of doubt

Writing is about sharing your ideas with your readers. If you are not clear enough about your own thoughts, your readers will also hesitate to continue reading you in future.

An example of doubtful sentence:

I think you should go ahead with your plans.

A clearer version would say:

I believe you should go ahead with your plans. OR, You should go ahead with your plans. OR, Go ahead with your plans.

See, doubt is unnecessary. You are giving your opinion anyway, so why create doubt? When you say I should go ahead with my plans, you want me to do so. I am more likely to follow your advice if you tell me clearly. Prefixing the sentence with doubtful "I think" will rob the sentence of its effectiveness.

Here are more doubt-creating words you should avoid:

I think, I guess, sort of, kind of, well, you know, etc.

Use agile verbs

Verbs animate your sentences. Without verbs, your writing is lifeless.

Usually, there are many stronger sub-verbs for every main common verb. Verbs that dig out the meaning from the bottom of your ideas. So why settle for common verbs and end up generalizing?

Example of a common verb:

His RSS subscribers have increased.

A stronger version:

His RSS subscribers have multiplied. OR, His RSS subscribers have doubled/tripled/quadrupled.

Whenever you write a sentence, look for the mundane verbs and see if you can replace them with stronger and more precise alternatives.

Some more common verbs and their stronger alternatives:

Dull: He ran. Stronger: He sprinted. Dull: He walked past me quickly. Stronger: He hurried past me. Dull: He changed his blog’s design. Stronger: He redesigned his blog.

Highlight the doer not the done

This is a common writing advice, yet hardly acted upon by anyone (Yes this is intentional).

Passive voice reverses the action. It’s like watching a movie in reverse mode, where you see the person being shot first, and then follow the bullet back to the pistol and then the shooter himself.

Always highlight the doer first, and guide your readers to his ultimate action.

Example of passive sentence:

His comment was appreciated by the blogger.

Improved version:

The blogger appreciated his comment.

In first instance, your mind is unclear about what is happening until you read the whole sentence. And in the improved version, you see and follow it from the doer’s perspective and reach the conclusion in a natural order.

Prefer smaller words

Bloggers better heed this advice. Your audience comes from different countries and age-groups, and not all of them can match your remarkable language skills.

Use smaller words wherever possible. In fact, search your writing for words that end with "tion" (e.g. initiation) and the likes, and replace them with smaller and less intimidating alternatives.

An example of improper use of dense words:

He exacerbated the situation with his presence.

A  better alternative:

He made matters worse with his presence.

Now, it is better to use strong words instead of run-of-the-mill words, but when the choice is between an ordinary word and a specialized but dense word, I go for the former. It’s your own judgement call really. Use what fits the context best.

Unstuff your sentences

There is nothing worse in a writing than sentences and phrases that are inappropriately ornate with unnecessary and redundant elements and words throughout the whole and entire piece of writing (phew!).

You can express any given idea in fewer words than you currently use, and express yourself with the clarity you only dreamt of.

Words like "there is, it is, want to, need to, anything, etc." serve to distract the reader’s attention. A tighter sentence with no redundant words attracts the eyes like a magnet, and keeps the mind from wandering off.

Take the first sentence of this section for example:

There is nothing worse in a writing than sentences and phrases that are inappropriately ornate with unnecessary and redundant elements and words throughout the whole and entire piece of writing.

An unstuffed version:

Redundant words ruin the beauty of writing.

Which one is clearer and gets the point across?

Remember, trying to write better is a constant fight against our unrefined writing habits. We have been writing without giving any thought to the process of writing itself for so long, that it is rather awkward picking out flaws in our own writing.

You have to make writing better your habit to become a natural writer just like all those guys you envy.

Your thoughts?

How much you care about the way you write? Do you think you are expressing your ideas clearly?

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

If I could describe the whole post in one word, what would be it?

Why would anyone want to read this post?

What would anyone do after reading this post?

It’s every writers’ wish to write in a plain and clear language. After all, writers write so they can communicate with their audience, and they naturally want to be understood.

It’s easy to lose grip of the original subject once you dive headfirst into writing. Ideas that were lurking in the back of your mind jump right in the middle of the action to push you off topic.

To deal with this situation, I’ve come up with three questions to help me stay on track as well as write more engaging posts.

If I could describe the whole post in one word, what would be it?

If you can get to the core of your post idea, you will develop a better understanding of your subject matter. Asking a question like this will force you to think and sort through the mess of jumbled thoughts. When you finally reach the word that you think defines your whole post, you’ll be clear-sighted about the whole thing.

One way to get to that word is to brainstorm. Write as many words as you can think of that even remotely represent the primary idea of your post. Then, making use of Darwin’s survival-of-the-fittest rule, remove the unrelated words one by one until you are left with only one word. If you are still unsure about the final word, combine two or more words together to make a new word. This will not only improve your brainstorming skill, but will also help you answer your first question.

If getting to a single word seems like too much of a restriction, make it a sentence. For this post, my answer is this: Write clear, purposeful, and benefit driven posts.

Why would anyone want to read this post?

People are intrigued to read only the kind of articles that they think will benefit them in some way. I, for one, am attracted to simple and followable advice.

Even if what you write is for entertainment, you readers can still gain something from it. Talking about a celebrity’s latest scandal? You must know that your readers would be dying to learn the inside details. They would be keen for you to add some spice to the story. At the end, they must be satisfied that what they read was indeed worth reading.

You can apply this to virtually any niche. Why would anyone want to read your post? Know the needs of your audience and feed them.

What would anyone do after reading this post?

Finally, where would a reader go after reading your post? What would he do? Would he head to Google to search for more of similar material, or would he simply move on to read the next blog in his feed reader?

As a blogger, you must control what your readers will be up to after they are done reading your post. I don’t mean controlling in an authoritative sense, but in a way that you care about their needs and want to help them out.

To do this, link to other resources that’ll help explain the vague or difficult areas in your writing. For example, if you use a difficult term, link it to its Wikipedia entry so your readers can quickly learn more about it, as opposed to noting it down and searching about it themselves.

Similarly, listing bunch of related posts at the end of every post will ensure that your readers get to read other angles you covered in the past. I love the way Lorelle does it. She ends her posts with a list of recommended readings from her own and other blogs, and she does it manually. Well, I am too lazy to do this kind of thing, but I use Related Posts WordPress Plugin that automatically selects the related posts from my own blog.

Remember, that you ultimately write for your readers. You write to be read. And if you are clear about the key idea and the benefits of your posts, you’ll write more clearly and will be read more! What else does a blogger want?

Can you think of any more need-to-answer questions before writing a post?

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

Desktop-based blog editors

1. Qumana Blog Editor – Qumana is an easy-to-use desktop blog editor, enabling you to write, edit and post to one or more blogs.

2. Windows Live Writer – Windows Live Writer Beta is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish rich content to your blog.

3. w.bloggar – The w.bloggar is an application that acts as an interface between the user and one or more blog(s); in other words, it is a Post and Template editor, with several features and resources that the browser based blog editors do not offer.

4. BlogMate – BlogMate is a free, graphical plug-in (+ a bundle too) for the popular TextMate editor that enables creating and editing blog posts for MetaWeblog-enabled blogs, Twitter, and Jaiku accounts from a floating palette within TextMate.

5. BlogDesk – BlogDesk is totaly free of charge and optimized for the blog systems WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine as well as the bloghosters Blogg.de and Twoday.net.

6. Bleezer – Bleezer is a powerful blogging client. And it’s free.

7. Post2Blog – Post2Blog 3 is a FREEWARE handy blog editor with live spell-checking support for pro-bloggers.

8. The Zoundry Blog Writer – The Zoundry Blog Writer™ is a full featured editor that makes posting to your blog easier and faster.

9. Thingamablog – Thingamablog is a cross-platform, standalone blogging application that makes authoring and publishing your weblogs almost effortless. Unlike most blogging solutions, Thingamablog does NOT require a third-party blogging host, a cgi/php enabled web host, or a MySQL database. In fact, all you need to setup, and manage, a blog with Thingamablog is FTP, SFTP, or network access to a web server.

10. AIRPress – AIRPress is a rich blog editor based on AIR technology. With AIRPress, you could easily upload media (images, videos, mp3…) without the need of another software or hosting.

Online and browser-based blog editors

11. webpad – webpad is a web-based text editor which gives you access to files from any of the following locations;

• Your own computer (via file upload)
• The server that webpad is installed on (via direct file manipulation)
• Any FTP server (via FTP file operations)
• Any website (via remote file requests)
• Popular blogging tools (Blogger.com, MovableType, TypePad, LiveJournal, blosxom, WordPress)
• Other data sources via a flexible plugin system

12. ScribeFire – ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.

13. Xinha Here! Firefox Extension – Xinha Here! is a Firefox extension wrapper for the Xinha HTML editor. It enables WYSIWYG editing in any textarea and text box on any website. Xinha Here! opens a Xinha HTML editor in your browser allowing you to edit the data in a WYSIWYG on any website without copying and pasting to secondary HTML editor.

14. Flock – Flock is a social web browser based on Firefox. It lets you easily post anything on your blog with its Blog Editor.

15. WriteToMyBlog – WriteToMyBlog is a free web based word processor for your Blog. Create Post Entries for your Blog from right here, completely free, no membership required, can Post to multiple Blogs simultaneously, manage your Posts, works with all major Blog programs, and is easy-peasy!

16. Google Docs – Free web-based word processor and spreadsheet, which allow you share and collaborate online.

18. WYSIWYG Plugin For Wordpress – This plugin replaces the default Wordpress wysiwyg(what you see is what you get) editor with a more advanced version.

17. FCKEditor for WordPress plugin – This plugin Replaces the default Wordpress editor with FCKeditor.

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