Word Processors: One Writer's Retreat

Charlie Dickinson writes "Writers get attached to the implement that puts words from head and heart on paper. Hemingway favored carpenter pencils for his drafts. Possibly only a blunt pencil lead would bear the vitality of words flowing from his fingertips. More recently, amid PCs on Everyperson's desktop, Northwest novelist David James Duncan noted his lengthy The Brother's K was lovingly crafted on a typewriter. Often individualistic, writers must feel free to accept or refuse new writing technology and answer only to their muse." Dickinson walks through some of the choices writers face (or have faced) in their choice of tools, and champions his own favorite -- which isn't a fancy "word processor" at all. Read on below.

Personally, when the PC revolution got underway, I bought an Apple IIe soon after its introduction. VisiCalc caught my eye. As did Flight Simulator, and going online with a 300-baud modem to local computer bulletin boards. But when it came to writing -- in those days, three drafts of a first novel -- I would not abandon my trusty Hermes portable typewriter. The Apple would not tempt me to some writing Eden. The complexity of computers, I sensed, could only sap the creative process.

This reluctance to mix computers with writing ended abruptly in 1988: I began writing professionally. At different writing jobs, I made use of whatever hardware/software combo the employer had. I fashioned text with PCs, Macs, Sun workstations, and still deemed any personal writing project at night better suited to the beloved Hermes.

I soon realized storing words on electronic media meant the professional wordsmith also did "desktop publishing." I had to worry about font selection, repagination, stylesheets. I wondered when I'd have time to find the right word, the original phrase. Once, while "writing" a software manual, I commented that I'd spent far more time formatting than actually writing. That comment went unanswered. I had a sure sense I needed to make an adjustment to new priorities.

Still, I couldn't shake the idea something was being lost when writers got embroiled in desktop publishing. After five years, I gave up the software manuals, the marketing newsletters, to refocus on personal writing. And for the first time, I thought about moving my writing to that Apple IIe. I hesitated. The monitor was filled with text glowing green on a black background. Would those green emissions overwhelm my inner eye of imagination, unlike a piece of paper sitting in a typewriter? I decided to take the plunge and see.

Maybe I looked sideways when I visualized a story scene. I soon found the Apple IIe gave efficiency analogous to replacing handwriting with typewriting. I only retyped what I needed in successive drafts. Counting words was a snap. And, thankfully, Apple IIe word processing was primitive: more a typewriter with memory, not a desktop publishing system. On balance, a good tool. Before long, I was publishing short stories to the World Wide Web.

But by 1999, living with an Apple IIe was Neanderthal. So despite 15+ years of service, I upgraded to an IBM ThinkPad laptop. I was attracted by portability, the renowned IBM keyboard touch, and a promised multimedia experience of the World Wide Web. As for writing, I would use the full-bodied word processor that came with the ThinkPad. This I accepted as a tradeoff for new PC technology. I gave it a go and lived with a plethora of pull-down menus within pull-down menus. I endured help balloons that appeared without bidding. To keep writing, I resisted becoming expert with all my word processor could do.

This strategy of limits on learning worked but briefly. In months, I was driven to maddening distraction with features I thought I'd accidentally turned on and wouldn't, in a blue moon, set right. Gems like capitalization on autopilot. But what really called for a decision was discovery of quotation marks in the wrong font spread randomly throughout a book-length file (and a pair of left quotation marks at that!).

Moreover, the ThinkPad's operating system, Windows 98, caused me to yearn for the stability of an Apple IIe (if not a Sun workstation). I thought about Linux--the alternative to Windows (unless one buys a new computer and goes Macintosh). But in a serendipitous experiment, I installed the very alternative BeOS on the ThinkPad. As operating systems go, it was a vision of loveliness. Scot Hacker, author of THE BEOS BIBLE, aptly described BeOS as combining "the grace of a Mac and the power of Unix."

The productivity suite I bought for BeOS had a "less is more" flavor and the word processor, in particular, worked well. I wrote a novel without struggle. But too often I tackled the day's writing deciding such issues as a font for the day's draft. The point being, I still had too many choices, compared to my beloved Apple IIe. When I finished the 76,000-word manuscript, I found a disconcerting bug in my otherwise dependable word processor. It repeated words, on occasion, in the text. Admittedly, a dozen "doubles" among tens of thousands of words isn't a big deal, but I wondered if my writing might benefit from even less computer functionality. Did those font choices have a price?

With a new novel to write, the time seemed ripe to switch software. I'd like to say I scoured about for word processors, but I didn't. In my novel, one character would write computer programs. The story question was, What software would he use? It had to be vi. Vi, a Unix editor for plain text files created in 1976 by Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. I'd remembered working with a software engineer, who saw no advantage to word processors and dismissed the "prettiness" of desktop publishing. He did everything in vi. Could I write a novel in vi? I decided, Why not?

Vi fast became -- and remains, 100,000 words later -- my writing implement of choice. Most of all, what I like about vi is something that is, well, aesthetic. I like vi's keyboard-only operation. Vi doesn't assault with helpful balloons or racks of toolbar icons. No, vi has a 70s ambience (no mouse, no GUI) that's refreshingly clean. In that sense, vi is a treasured software servant. It works well without showy presence and respectfully stays out of the way.

Sure, vi is only a digitized window on the ThinkPad screen. But, at times, I can almost imagine another sheet of paper filling up with words, not unlike one I rolled into my Hermes typewriter. That's when vi, the minimalist's text editor, lets the words roll freely, as with Hemingway's carpenter pencil, from my fingertips.

Slashdot welcomes readers' original features.

Comments

My observations...

[Lumpy]

I know 3 novel writers and many script writers...

and they all completely despise Microsoft Word and Open Office.

some of them even have nasty words to describe both of those products..

basically the jist of all their gripes is the damned "features" you cannot turn off or get in the way, both apps (word and Open Office) are written for childish minds as one of them put it... "any word processor that does anything you did not specifically ask for is a complete piece of crap" (referring to microsoft word.)

Mr Duncan

[Anonymous Coward]

I met him at a writers conference in the outskirts of Detroit. He presented a small essay about the life of the borgeouis class in late 19th century Germany which many people found fascinating. But what astounded me, and I'm not usually that superficial, is how even though he had a pronounced lisp he was one of the most captivating speakers in the seminar.

I spoke to him the following and explained to him that he was one of my main writing influences. I think I mildly embarassed him since he seemed to lost for words.

Great chap and an excellent writer.

Which is nice.

WFB on WordStar

[RabidOverYou]

"I'm told there are better programs [than WordStar], but I'm also told there are better alphabets." --William F. Buckley Jr.

This is a darn old quote; I've no idea what he's running these days.

Writing novels with real tools

[N7DR]

I don't suppose that anyone is really interested, but this does give me the opportunity to say that my novels have all been written using absolutely the best tools for the job: a real editor (in my case, mostly VEDIT Plus under Windows, although I also did one with emacs) and Plain Tex. Yes, that's Plain Tex, not LaTeX.

I remain firmly convinced that the combination of a powerful editor and Plain TeX cannot be beat.

The problem, though, is that nowadays publishers more and more demand manuscripts in the form of M$ Word files, which frankly sucks. I am measurably less productive under Word than I am with the combination of (editor + Plain TeX), and I suspect that the same would be true of most authors who are technically competent.

Jerry Pournelle's requirement

[Spectre]

And Jerry Pournelle successfully campaigned to have Microsoft add an option to Word just for him. Which one?

[] Blue background, white text

That option is still there to this day.

Dang, it must be nice to be able to tell Bill Gates what to do once in a while!

Re:Jerry Pournelle's requirement

[Rude Turnip]

Well, two people in my office (me + a secretary) would like to thank Jerry Pournelle for that feature! White text on blue is so much easier on the eyes.

You know...

[superdan2k]

I have a degree in English, with a concentration in Creative Writing. You know what I do? I write first, format later, and you know what? It works! It's called time management.

Furthermore, it's not tough to select Courier, 10pt., set the margin widths to 1.25" all the way around, and set the material to double-spacing. That's all that's really required.

Bah, computers?

[JaredOfEuropa]

I can imagine people appreciate a tool like vi, or notepad for that matter, that has few features and is more or less keyboard-driven. Myself, I use editplus to bang out lots of text for reports, memos and the like... which means I do not have to worry about formatting and such. When I am reaonably happy with the text, I paste it into Word and apply a template and formatting.

But for the more creative writing I still prefer a notepad and pencil for the first draft. I can easily annotate, make drawings, cross out stuff and then decide I want to keep that text after all... and there's just no computer tool that is as easy to use. I find that both the features and the inherent limitations get in the way of creativity.
The drawback of course is that I have to type it ito the computer anyway, at some point.

Work Method

[SpaceRook]

Once, while "writing" a software manual, I commented that I'd spent far more time formatting than actually writing. That comment went unanswered. I had a sure sense I needed to make an adjustment to new priorities.

I'd recommend writing the raw text first and then formatting later. I've written several lengthy user manuals. The first thing I write is a table of contents. This can be done in a program as simple as NotePad (although I like EditPlus).

Then, fill out each section. Write the content. Trying to format on the fly with something like MSWord is a major pain in the ass (don't even get me STARTED on what a nightmare subdocuments can be). Plus, you end up wasting a lot of time.

I like technology

[mrandre]

I must confess to enjoying the feel of fresh pen on paper. And I have printed countless copies of nearly identical sections of writing, just so that my pen can run across the paper. Of course, when visceral pleasure runs out, practicality must take over, and it's easier to manage a large digital collection of scraps than a large pile of scrap paper. And so I have turned to DevonThink, a mac-only program that I am thrilled with. It makes it terrifically simple to edit many little scraps, and organize them into useful groupings. I will always relish the pen, but when work needs done, DevonThink does the trick.

Vi, vim, editors for the 21st century?

[UninvitedCompany]

I learned vi back in the 1970s and have returned to it after some years of using other word processors. In the early days, we used troff(1) to format the output; vi and troff together had a feature set exceeding that of most word processors up until recently.

The article above surprises me, mainly because vi is so difficult to learn. Having once learned it, it's not a half bad editor, but there are better ones that are easier to learn. After all, vi was designed to take advantage of the (then) increasingly ubiquitous terminals with addressable cursors, connected at serial rates between 600 and 9600 bps. Most had only the keys found on a typewriter, with no function keys, arrow keys, or numeric keypad, and certainly no mouse. That made the keyboard-only, modal interface necessary.

With today's PCs, there are so many better choices out there, that it's surprising that vi retains any following at all. But what can I say, I still use it myself.

WordPerfect...5.1

[ZephyrQ]

I used to be rather prolific...enjoyed writing and all that. Even when I had to write grant requests and such...

Then WordPerfect went to 6.0. I configured it to look a *lot* like 5.1 -- still lotsa joy.

Then MSWord became the defacto format...which is when I started looking at other OSes because, well, I *hated* MSWord. But WP couldn't keep up. I eventually landed at Linux and had the corresponding version of WP. Then Corel bought it, then MS bought/ran/abused Corel.

I've been switching between gedit/abiword/OOOrg since and haven't been able to get the same...zen...as I used to with WordPerfect.

And, y'know, I think my desire to write has decreased as a result...

Re:Tools of the trade.

[Theaetetus]

I like to write my first drafts in pencil and paper. I use a 0.5mm #2 Pentel pencil, a Magic Rub eraser, and college-ruled paper. Subsequent drafts are typically on PC, in whatever format--usually .DOC format, since I primarily use Windows at home. I spent a half hour configuring the normal.dot template the way I wanted it, and I was off and running.

Call it a result of my lousy public school upbringing, or a result of my 17 years of piano lessons, but I can type at 95 wpm and handwrite at only 15-20. Typing, I can almost keep up with my thoughts, and I find that papers, essays, and stories flow much easier from my mind to the page. Writing by hand, by the end of a long sentence, I've gotten so wrapped up in the mechanics of writing - loops, curves, dotting the T's and crossing the I's - that I've lost the flow, and have to frequently read back the same line over and over again to complete the thought.

I'm not saying it's for everyone, but when teachers stopped insisting on handwritten rough drafts, I was a happy man.

-T

LaTex anyone?

[olorin42]

I personally use LaTeX for all of my writing beyond a simple memo (which is usually email at this point). Although I am no professional writer, I find myself writing and maintaining several large documents on a daily basis. Things like software architecture documentation, requirements documents, etc.

Tex's seperation of "content" from "formating" means that, as I am writing, I am not distracted by things like font and layout, I can decide on that stuff later. Then all I do is publish to Postscript,PDF or HTML and I am done.

I have written everything from my master's thesis, to magazine/journal articles, and large(50-200 page) documents for my business with it and have had no complaints. The documents can easily be maintained in a source controll system like cvs, because they are just text. I use the emacs tex-mode for editing the documents and I find it to be a very productive combination.

The other nice thing is that LaTeX is a full fledged typesetting system and does a very good job of laying things out in a consistent manner. IIRC, O'Reilly used to use TeX for typesetting all of there books, but I am not sure if that is still ture. But LaTeX does produce great looking documents, I have recieved numerous comments from my clients on how consistent and professional my documents look.

The only problem with it is when people want to get the document in "word format" so that it can be maintained by someone other than myself. Or when I am working on an article and the magazine requires it to be submitted in word format. I still haven't found a good solution to this, but thankfully it is not something that happens too often.

I have thought about moving to a more "modern" system like DocBook, but I haven't found any good tools for working with DocBook documents yet. Nor do I like the very verbose XML syntax which seems to me to clutter up the text much more than the simple LaTeX directives. So, I really haven't had sufficient motivation to change yet.

Re:vi for writers? YES! - LaTeX

[AugustMoon]

I write everything in vi, including dissertations, theses, technical journal publications, reports, stage plays, screen plays, and short stories (no books yet).

The key (for me) is to use LaTeX as a markup language. It is available for windows, Mac, and Linux and for non-table non-equation oriented work is trivial to learn. Equations and tables aren't particularly hard either, quicker (assuming you type quickly) than MS Word equation mechanisms. Plus it handles all your typesetting for you. I actually use pdflatex which generates nice pdf files.

Ten years from now, all my work will be in ascii text still, and wether or not LaTeX exists at that time, all I need is a text editor to view my work!

Now, I'm partial to vi, but any sufficiently good text editor would be fine. Functionally rich enough and worth the learning curve.

My Dream Writing System

[Schlemphfer]

I've been working on a book for the past year, and I spent many hours thinking hard before settling on my writing tool of choice. It wasn't my G4 tower with flat panel, nor was it my 1.6 gigahertz Vaio with flat panel. I decided the optimal tool for writing my book was a 266 Mhz Thinkpad I scored last summer off eBay for about $250.

I prefered the Thinkpad for a couple of reasons. First, it had the best keyboard I've ever used. Second, I deliberately never installed games, nor hooked it up to the Internet. So I was never tempted to check email or surf the web when I should be writing.

As for my word processor, OpenOffice did not until recently have a decent "draft mode" type view until recently. ABIword was too unstable (I don't know about the new 2.0 release.) So I've been using WordPerfect 10.0, which has the speed and flexibility I could desire, great footnoting, plus the ability to view embedded codes on the off chance your document gets screwed up.

I'd say right now, my dream system for writing would be:

A mini-PC
Flat panel
Thinkpad 600 Keyboard (how I wish I could buy the keyboard alone, that's why this is a dream PC.)
WordPerfect

A little shopping around for a used 1.6 Mhz system, and the whole thing shouldn't cost more than $400-$500. I couldn't ask for anything better for writing.

Modern-day typewriters

[CAIMLAS]

If you're big on 'minimalist' stuff for writing, I'd strongly recommend one of the following (depending on how 'minimalist' you want to get):

AlphaSmart 3000

AlphaSmart Dana

They're (basically) Palm Pilots with full-sized keyboard functionality, w/o any irritating clip-on devices, etc. Their "word processor" is quite minimalistic with basic features such as spellcheck. Definately a nice tool for the mobile geek writer.

Additional Simplicity

[Keighvin]

I'm of the same school of thought, keep the writing process as simple as possible so as not to occlude the creativity.

To that end, I have an AlphaSmart(.com) - a small portable keyboard, 4 lines of text, capable of storing about 100 pages (12pt. single spaced courier) of information. It runs on 3 AA (LR6) batteries and gets between 500-700 hours (no, no missing decimal points) of active use per set. I honestly haven't changed them in over a year. All active memory too, never worry about saving - it's always there no matter when it's turned off.

It emulates a keyboard when hooked up to a host machine, so open your favorite app and hit "Send" and the text is put in wherever you want it; connects via ADB, PS2, and USB. The only additional feature I've ever wished for was a VI interface on it to speed up some editing proceedures.

I highly recommend any freelance writer, journalist, novelist, student, etc. take a look at the device. They have a newer model running PalmOS for those who might be interested as well (no Linux, yet).

Re:Textpad!!

[nv5]

yessss! on Windows, it is still my favorite text editor. It is extremely intuitive. When one of the Java developers of my last company made me aware of it, and I had the control over the development tools budget, we gladly paid for a copy for every developer. on Linux/KDE, I've been using Kate for HTML and PHP coding.

Re:Tools of the trade.

[cei]

In a previous /. discussion on the death of cursive writing, one of the arguments FOR writing longhand was that it made you think harder about what you were committing to paper. A million monkeys with computers can generate a nive USENET feed, but if they had to write in script, there might be better stuff to read. *shrug*

Nonsense. Mark Twain started using a typewriter...

[dpbsmith]

...practically the day it was invented. Indeed, it can be argued that he started using one before it had been invented, or at least perfected.

Jack London began using a typewriter the very instant he could afford one. The one he could afford wasn't very good--a balky Blickensderfer that required great effort to operate, was badly aligned, and only typed in uppercase--and he switched to a better one as soon as he could afford that.

Here's a picture of the typewriter he used from 1904 on.

"Creative people" latched onto the Macintosh within months of its introduction.

Re:In 1996,

[orac2]

Dear God, no! I'm an editor in the U.S. and you just sent a shiver down my spine at the thought that I should try to read the next manuscript to cross my desk in courier, or any non-proportional sans serif font.

Serif proportional fonts are much more readable for bulk text, as found in the body of a manuscript (this applies to paper printouts, not neccesarily on-screen where the crappy resolution of most monitors compared to paper gives proportional, sans-serif fonts the edge). As for things like word counts, etc, manuscripts invariably appear with an accompanying electronic copy (and often only the electronic copy, e.g. when something is filed by email).

I don't know anyone who demands Courier 12/24. Actually, once upon a time, I was drinking with a bunch of publishing nerds, and we tried to work out what booze would go with what fonts, i.e. if Ariel was a drink, what drink would it be? (I did mention we were nerds right?). Anyhoo, Whiskey was the best match for Courier, and Guinness the best match for Times New Roman. The point is, disregarding price, which would most people rather drink a pint of? The longer the text, the more likely I am to want to see it in anything other than Courier.

Re:In 1996,

[swillden]

BTW, where I work we generally use MS Word, because it turns out that some of those pain-in-the-ass advanced features do have utility, specifically the ability to track changes.

I create a lot of technical documents, and I specifically do *not* use Word because of it's poor support for change tracking. Software developers have created fantastic tools for change management, and I find that these are as good for documents as they are for code.

Word probably does the job you need, but for requirements specifications where you have to not only know what changed between the version you're looking at and two or three revisions back, but also keep track for all time of who changed what, when and why, CVS is a much better solution.

Re:In 1996,

[kalidasa]

When I did editing (at a lit/academic journal), the main reason we wanted Courier was because that was all our scanner could handle. In other words, if we didn't get a disk, and we were pretty sure we were going to use it, we explicitly asked for courier.

What Knuth does

[Phronesis]

Here is a description of Donald Knuth's writing process, as related by one of his students in Mathematical Writing (p. 14):

His first copy is written in pencil. Some people compose at a terminal, but Don says, "The speed at which I write by hand is almost perfectly synchronized with the speed at which I think. I type faster than I think so I have to stop, and that interrupts the flow."

In the process of typing his handwritten copy into the computer he edits his composition for flow, so that it will read well at normal reading speed. Somewhere around here the text gets TeXed, but the description of this stage was tangled up with the description of the process of rewriting the composition. Of course, rewriting does not all occur at any one stage. As Don said, "You see things in different ways on the different passes. Some things look good in longhand but not in type."

Re:In 1996,

[Sablepegasus]

Believe it or not, this is something I was wondering about.

I'm a writer myself and have always been advised to submit MS in typewriter (Courier) font.

HOWEVER, I have begun write in Times myself. Or in the font closest to it that is A: Clear to read without tiring the eyes and B: Closest to that which is printed in magazines and books.

In the past, the Courier printer font was advised over "prettier" fonts because it looked closest to that copy that was produced on a typewriter. However, since this advice was given back in the late 80s, when the personal computer was still pretty much a luxury and 'new', as well as the fact that the printers of the time were dot matrix, it is logical to assume that the advice is outmoded. However, I have still seen this exact same advice printed in writing books published as recently as last year (I do not own any writing books published in 2003, since I have been working the majority of this year and haven't had time to read much).

On the flip side, there have been more books printed advising Times in addition to Courier, but personally, I haven't read anything advising Times and Serif fonts over Courier and the Sans-serif Typewriter fonts. I certainly hope this is a trend in publishing that will become better known soon.

I am quite in agreement that reading a 300+ MS typed in Courier is a headache. (I have several reams of MS printed in Courier. They're in a box in my garage.) Times and the similar fonts just look better printed out and they are easier to read. (Not to mention they appear slightly smalller and better formed and it seems that you can get more words on one page than you can with the same point size in Courier.)

Anyway, thanks for a valuable piece of information! Next MS I submit, I'll use Times or a similar Serif font.

Sable