A long while back I was having a discussion with a fellow photographer about these annoying things called cameras that got in the way of our picture taking. The statement sounds absurd, but bare with me a minute. My friend and I had put in enough time shooting that we had crossed the creative bridge to find ourselves much more concerned with the concept and story of image than the way the image was captured.

I’m waiting for the onslaught from the tech heads who are going to argue that part of executing an image is in the tools a photographer uses, and yes there is some truth to that. But when a camera operates so flawlessly that it feels more like an appendage than a device, your work reflects the freedom you feel.

Similarly, after writing steadily for almost three years for fun and profit, I’ve had the same creative bridge crossing with a piece of software. It seems preposterous to speak about software in this way I know. But writing, like any creative pursuit in which there is an anticipating audience and a paycheck waiting, is a psychotic endeavor in which the process is much more enjoyable as a memory. When you cease to notice the tools, it’s a much nicer way to work.

Such is the case with Nisus Writer Pro. It took me a about an hour to learn and customize it to my liking. Since then I’ve totally forgotten that I put any effort into setting it up at all. It wasn’t until I wrote my fifteenth article with Nisus that I noticed that I never notice the software. It has never crashed, it’s features are easy to find and it saves files in the RTF format so I have yet to have a compatibility problem with any of my magazine editors.

Now before you go off half cocked that this is some sort of shill for Nisus Writer Pro, it is. I was so damned pleased with how good this word processor is, I was inspired to send them a thank you email. They were very kind, and responded by sending a gorgeous call girl and a kilo of cocaine to my office. Okay I’m kidding about the call girl.

I went through a phase of purchasing licenses for almost every writing software available. It is bizarre how much of a learning curve there is to the electronic equivalent of putting pen to paper. I just can’t imagine Hemingway dividing his writing surface into three panes. It would leave little room for his cocktail.

Nisus is as simple or powerful as you need it to be with a leaning curve that makes sharpening a pencil seem complicated. Not that I have a pencil sharpener or anything.

Apparently I’m in good company in my passion for Nisus’ word processor. I read somewhere that Michael Chabon gave Nisus a mention in the acknowledgments of his latest book. Since I’m not nearly as famous as that dude, I decided to write a little more than a mention. It’s a brilliant product, developed and maintained by good people who have been around with their company since the genesis of MACs.