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Word Processors — One Writer's Further Retreat
ch-dickinson writes "In 2003, I posted an essay ('Word Processors: One Writer's Retreat') here about my writing experience — professional and personal — that led to a novel draft in vi(m), and I outlined reasons I chose a simple non-WYSIWYG text editor rather than a more full-featured word processor. A few novels later, in 2010 now, I decided to try a text editor that predates even vi: ed. I'd run across ed about 20 years ago, working at a software company and vaguely recalled navigation of a text file meant mentally mapping such commands as +3 and -2: ed didn't click with me then. But writing a novel draft is mule work, one sentence after another, straight ahead — no navigating the text file. The writer must get the story down and my goal is 1,000 words a day, every day, until I'm done. I have an hour to 90 minutes for this. So when I returned after two decades, I was impressed with how efficiently ed generates plain text files."
Read on for the author's brief account of why he looked a few decades back in the software universe to find the right tool for the job.
Documentation for ed is available on the Internet, but I found it a great help to take Richard Gauthier's USING THE UNIX SYSTEM (1981) with me when I reported for jury duty in Portland, Oregon. His 30-page discussion of "the editor" is thorough and gave me some sense of the power of this pioneer text editor (cut & pastes, for example).
As I said, what drives my mule-like early morning routine is word count. The text editor ed has no internal word count tool (through dropping back to the command line gives, of course, wc). What I had to do was quite simple: I converted byte-counts (which ed does with each write to the file) into word equivalents. So if my style of writing runs 5.6 characters per word, then a word goal of 1,000 words is simply 5,600 bytes. Every day, I set my target byte count and once there, I quit.
In less than three months, I finished a 72,000-word novel draft and give ed credit for not slowing me down. Based on my experience writing novels with plain text editors (vim, geany, and now ed), I understand how few computing resources are needed to take manuscript composition off a typewriter and put it on a personal computer. The advantages of the latter are several, including less retyping, easier revision, and portability among different systems. Whether going from typewriter to personal computer makes for better writing I'll leave to others for comment.
What doesn't make for better writing is confusing text on demand (that daily word count that grows to a manuscript) with desktop publishing. Desktop publishing makes so many word processors into distracting choice-laden software tools. Obviously, there is a place for a manuscript as PDF file compliant with appropriate Acrobat Distiller settings, but that ends, not begins, the process. I like to think I'm not putting the cart before the horse.
So why would I recommend ed for a wordsmith? I'd say it comes down to just enough computing resources to do the job. WYSIWYG word processors have a cost and intuitively I think there's cerebral bus contention between flow of words onto the screen and keeping a handle on where the mouse arrow is (among other things).
But then perhaps I've a "less is more" bias (I have a car with nonpower steering — better road feel; I ride a fixed single-speed bike — ditto). That feeling is the sum of things there (and things left out). When I ride my fixie bike, it seems to know why I ride. Similarly, when I invoke ed, the text editor, it seems to know why I write. An illusion, sure, but also a harmony that goes with being responsible for all of it and staying focussed (without any distracting help balloons!).
One of Charlie Dickinson's novels is available for download at cetus-editons.com.
Documentation for ed is available on the Internet, but I found it a great help to take Richard Gauthier's USING THE UNIX SYSTEM (1981) with me when I reported for jury duty in Portland, Oregon. His 30-page discussion of "the editor" is thorough and gave me some sense of the power of this pioneer text editor (cut & pastes, for example).
As I said, what drives my mule-like early morning routine is word count. The text editor ed has no internal word count tool (through dropping back to the command line gives, of course, wc). What I had to do was quite simple: I converted byte-counts (which ed does with each write to the file) into word equivalents. So if my style of writing runs 5.6 characters per word, then a word goal of 1,000 words is simply 5,600 bytes. Every day, I set my target byte count and once there, I quit.
In less than three months, I finished a 72,000-word novel draft and give ed credit for not slowing me down. Based on my experience writing novels with plain text editors (vim, geany, and now ed), I understand how few computing resources are needed to take manuscript composition off a typewriter and put it on a personal computer. The advantages of the latter are several, including less retyping, easier revision, and portability among different systems. Whether going from typewriter to personal computer makes for better writing I'll leave to others for comment.
What doesn't make for better writing is confusing text on demand (that daily word count that grows to a manuscript) with desktop publishing. Desktop publishing makes so many word processors into distracting choice-laden software tools. Obviously, there is a place for a manuscript as PDF file compliant with appropriate Acrobat Distiller settings, but that ends, not begins, the process. I like to think I'm not putting the cart before the horse.
So why would I recommend ed for a wordsmith? I'd say it comes down to just enough computing resources to do the job. WYSIWYG word processors have a cost and intuitively I think there's cerebral bus contention between flow of words onto the screen and keeping a handle on where the mouse arrow is (among other things).
But then perhaps I've a "less is more" bias (I have a car with nonpower steering — better road feel; I ride a fixed single-speed bike — ditto). That feeling is the sum of things there (and things left out). When I ride my fixie bike, it seems to know why I ride. Similarly, when I invoke ed, the text editor, it seems to know why I write. An illusion, sure, but also a harmony that goes with being responsible for all of it and staying focussed (without any distracting help balloons!).
One of Charlie Dickinson's novels is available for download at cetus-editons.com.
real men use
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Well why don't you just buy a pen and notebook then chump?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Its all about personal taste, and I happen to like little red squiggly lines under most of my words.
Hex editors are too bloated. He should use cat instead (not the bloated monstrosity that is GNU cat of course).
Well why don't you just buy a inkwell and parchment, chump?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Real Writers use a magnet-tipped pen to flip bits on the hdd.
Well why don't you just buy a cave and some paint, chump.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
"When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi and Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, ‘C-h for help’ and ‘“foo” File is read only’. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.
Ed, man! !man ed"
http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html :-)
Well why don't you just sit down and tell your stories to audience, chump.
The last time I used Word, 'plop' was very descriptive of its behavior as well.
Have gnu, will travel.
Well unless you tell your stories using grunts I think cave painting probably came before spoken language, fail.
Next year he should upgrade to Microsoft Edlin. That'll teach him.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Bah, you're still fussing over small details.
LET THERE BE LIGHT!
Emotions! In your brain!
Real men use 'cat > story.txt', starting from the beginning each time.
Counter-example: Macintosh computers. A hipster is only permitted to be without his Mac if he is carrying at least one iPhone. On a Mac, the only backwards, impractical tool in common use is iTunes.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
> tl;dr
Is that the emacs command used to indicate you're a twat?
The real litigious bastards...
How I'd love to see this guy's clutterfree text editor, especially if it's running in a window surrounded by blinking reminders to upgrade Skype, update Java, download the new version of Nokia PC Suite, check whether there are new updates for all Apple applications installed; then the antivirus requires immediate attention because the subscription is due, there's 20 unread Twitter status updates, and everytime a new friend comes online MSN Messenger throws a big party on its side of the screen... Oh yeah, that would be worth writing a big story about productivity.
Cats are too unpredictable to be good editors. The last time I let a cat use my keyboard to edit something I wrote, I ended up with page after page of "vnmerhi gbchqeruiph vvj buiphbjnnk wfqÙQSC g[no tyn"
Line based editing? That's just got too many distractions for a real writer.
Get yourself a CP/M machine and write your novels on that 64kB at a time. Like a Kaypro II or maybe an Osborne 1 would probably be your best bet. Although a C128 or AppleII with Z80 card would would be usable as well.
A Xerox 820 II with 8" disk drives would also be fun, but they are a little pricey on ebay in working condition, especially if it had the 8086 expansion board for CP/M-86 or MS-DOS.
Then to send it up to your PC you can use the serial port, which was often used for printers on CP/M, so you might be able to just hit "print" to transmit to your PC.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I'm sure he'll answer you as soon as he finishes his first copy.
Then the sun is gods version of a binary word processor?
Guess we should be glad he never switched to dvorak...
I do all my text editing using Adobe Illustrator... I like things complicated!
Tomorrow is another day...
Don't be silly. "tl;dr" is an Internet acronym for, "I'm stupid and lazy."
No. It's the command in TECO to write a novel for you. However, you need to remember to press the ESC key twice at the end of the command and not the RETURN key.
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