Category: Distraction-free Writing

Add Tables to Your Medium Posts with Inspire

Medium has its fair share of the user base. Many bloggers choose it as one of the platforms to increase their brand awareness and drive more traffic to their sites.

That being said, it’s still hard to imagine that Medium doesn’t support the table feature, which is very common and basic in HTML, and also enjoys a wider user base.

For instance, a table like this can’t be easily added to Medium:

ID Name Age
1 Mike 19
2 Annie 17
3 Tom 18

Which is why so many writers choose to replace the tables in their writing with more creative ways of expression. For instance:

Some may use a list instead of a table:

  • Mike, 19
  • Annie, 17
  • Tom, 18

Some would choose to use an image like this:

A table image

But the downside with the image is, if you don’t make it search engine friendly enough, it’s very likely that Google won’t be able to ‘find’ it, which could cost you potential clients or users.

But that’s the history now.

If you write on Inspire Writer, publish your work containing tables in it to Medium won’t be a problem anymore. This is because Inspire allows you to create a table with the (table) markdown syntax. In this case, when you publish your writing to Medium, the table will show automatically, without you having to adjust its presentation or capture a screenshot of the table.

This is a post on how  the table on Medium will look like.

Of course, Inspire Writer is not without its restriction: it now can handle a table whose width is less than 68 characters, but we do believe that it can be improved in future versions.

Over to you

So what do you think? Do you want to keep your writing well-organized and make a good impression for your readers? If so, would you have a go at Inspire Writer, the markdown editor? Why and why not? Please feel free to let us know your thoughts in the comment section, or what more you’d like to hear from us.

Happy writing!

Posted on by Inspire Writer

Why Distraction-free Writing Is More Important Than Ever?

As a writer, it can’t be a surprise to you, really, considering the number of distractions and disturbance to your writing workflow. The buzzes and bling from your phones, the pop-up notifications on the corner of your desktop from your clients, coworkers chatting nearby, kids in the house screaming for “MUM!” or “DAD!” if you’re a stay-at-home freelancer… the list goes on and on!

It seems that everything is vying for your attention, but we only have 24 hours a day. So it’s important that you do more in less time. One simple way to get you there is to stay focus.

And to do that, removing the distractions around you could be step one. In other words, you need to create yourself a distraction-free writing environment first. But how exactly can you do that?

How to stay focused when writing?

It’d be incredibly frustrating and stressful when you have to remind yourself to stay focused constantly. But it’s actually not that bad. Just as the (made-up) saying goes:” To get distracted is human, to maintain 100% focus, divine.”

The important message here is that we can sharpen our focus, and keep moving closer to the divine end. And rest assured – your way to being distraction-free won’t be as hard as you may think.

Let’s start from some of the easiest things you can do, one step at a time until you reach the distraction-free state of mind:

  1. Prioritize your writing order. Ask yourself this:”What is more urgent and more important now?”
  2. Don’t multi-task. You have very limited attention, so save it for what’s more important, especially when it comes to writing.
  3. Set your writing goal and keep track of your writing progress.
  4. Remove all distractions. Mute notifications from your email, browser, and social media, go full-screen with your editor, and if possible, choose the theme you love for your editor to help you stay undistributed.
  5. Choose a distraction-free writing app that equips with all the necessary features for such a writing environment.

You may find ticking the first 4 boxes quite easy, since they’re pretty much what you do every day, and you just have to do them well enough. But what about choosing the distraction-free writing app?

Before you start Googling the above-mentioned keywords, I suggest that you keep in mind some of the most important features for a distraction-free editor.

What features do a distraction-free editor need to have?

To create yourself a distraction-free writing environment, the text editor or writing app needs to be equipped with the at least following key elements:

  1. The mouse is used as little as possible and there is no need for you to lift your fingers from the keyboard – It keeps you from distractions such as adjusting the text format.
  2. Defines text with simple markups rather than formats – This is how you won’t be distributed by deciding what format to choose for your content.
  3. Content is the only thing on the screen – No windows, no tabs, no menus, no status bar….. If it’s not content-related, it shouldn’t be there.
  4. Saves automatically & instantly and there better be no files or folders – You don’t deserve to start your writing by creating a file name first, nor witness your work going down the drain just because you forget to hit save every 5 minutes.
  5. Supports dark mode theme – So you can immerse yourself in writing at night without fatiguing your eyes.

These features are what make an editor be able to boost your productivity. You wouldn’t say no to higher efficiency, would ya?

That said, it is not strange that writing apps or editors such as Ulysses are getting more popular than ever. But it’s such a pity that developers for Ulysses haven’t created Ulysses for Windows, and they even claimed that they will never consider a Windows version of Ulysses. Too bad for its die-hard fans.

Luckily, Inspire Writer fills the blank. It creates a distraction-free writing environment on Windows, just so you can write elegant. Everything you want to see in a distraction-free editor, you can find it on Inspire.

Inspire now offers a 10-day free trial period, feel free to download Inspire Writer from here, then give it a try and see if it works out great for you in creating a distraction-free writing environment, like how it does for me.

Inspire Writer, distraction free editor for writing of all kinds

Over to you…

What’s your story about staying focused on your writing? Please feel free to let me know in the comments section. Also, if there are something that I’ve missed, or if you have a question that’s not covered here, pop it into the comments and I’ll be sure to answer it.

Happy writing! 🙂

Posted on by Inspire Writer