George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels, he saves his work on floppy disks. Of course, he has a second computer for email and web browsing.
For a TUI program Wordstar seemed much more accessible than WordPerfect. But I guess WP was more aimed at professional secretaries and typists, and people with offbrand printers.
When I was first messing around with Linux, I was (pleasantly) surprised when a WordStar clone popped-up instead of vi. Googling says it was called joe editor.
JOE is one of the most versatile TUI editors out there. It can emulate not only Wordstar, but Pico/nano, and Emacs. It has full UTF-8 support and can display pretty much any character in any written language.
These days I just use nano for simple, quick command line editing, but my writing machine (2000 era Dell Latitude CPx with Slackware) has JOE for long-form writing in Wordstar mode. Like the article author there's no need for internet or other distractions, just boot to terminal, log in, open JOE, and start writing on the fantastic keyboard.
5 1⁄4" floppies in the year 2020? I'd be sweating. I assume he's saving multiple copies.
Still have painful memories of using Fastback, a DOS based backup software. Sitting there feeding floppies into a drive. Stacks of floppies. Twice. Praying the data would restore.
Part of my innovative file sharing solution, aka SneakerNet.
~90% of my 5.25" floppies written between 1992 and 1995 are readable (verified 2 years ago.) As for my CD-R collection from 1999-2005 ~50% got problems reading everything from it.
There was a bit of a fuss over it a few years back. You can find mention of it in the Wikipedia article on Wordstar.[0] Robert J. Sawyer maintains a page on using Wordstar on modern computers.[1]
Authors have been seeking ways to avoid distractions for decades, and it goes well beyond pervasive connectivity. Sometimes the very features that aid them in their work can also hinder them. For example: computers vastly simplify the editing process, yet one of the earliest pieces of advice I saw was to turn off the computer monitor while writing in order to avoid editing prematurely.
I believe the [citation needed] was intended to humorously question specifically whether Martin is in fact still making progress on those books, not to question that he uses an archaic setup.
Ah. That joke completely went over my head since my knowledge of Martin pretty much amounts to him being the author of Game of Thrones and his use of Wordstar.
> one of the earliest pieces of advice I saw was to turn off the computer monitor while writing in order to avoid editing prematurely
I do this by closing my eyes while writing. Makes the writing more descriptive and easier to imagine big scenes with a lot of color and vibrance. Using the 10 finger writing system, I am really fast doing this.
Oh my goodness- yes. I have to shut my eyes and just write. I come back and edit later. It works, and also keeps me 100% distraction free if that's what's needed.
> George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels
A much better modern alternative is the Alphasmart Neo 2.
* It was designed for elementary school children so it's decently rugged.
* It runs a long time (months) on 2 AA batteries.
* To get the text off the device, it impersonates a USB keyboard, making it compatible with basically every computer.
He likes WordStar 4.0. There are people who like WordPerfect for DOS, Word 5.1 for Mac or even XyWrite.
It's fairly easy (not always cheap) to get almost any old computer you could think of in very good condition to run the programs you like without further hassles. This can make a lot of sense because sometimes there are hassles associated to virtualisation/emulation/modern hardware.
Maybe you feel at home using WordStar 4.0 + VGA text mode in a CRT monitor. If that's the case, you can't beat the ease and responsiveness of a DOS computer. I have this conviction that there's nothing wrong with that.
I put together a 'RRMartin' setup on an old laptop - booting into DOS and then auto launching WordStar 4.0. I can see how appealing it would be for focused writing (I'm still trying to find my perfect set up for writing).
I also toyed with releasing the setup as a USB boot image, but the copyright on WordStar is still very much active :(
Maybe "much better" when it comes to distraction-less writing, although I don't think a DOS computer offers more than that, and the portability only enables going to places where there's more going on…
But a predilection towards WordStar isn't just about not having fancy icons and weird ribbons, as author Robert Sawyer[1] pointed out. The "long page" metaphor and a short-cut friendly environment should be somewhat understandable for us programmer people.
You're getting downvoted, but you raise a good point. There's an interesting Medium article[1] on it. Basically just a keyboard with an 4 line LCD above it so you can see some context as you type.
>> George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels
> A much better modern alternative is the Alphasmart Neo 2.
* It was designed for elementary school children so it's decently rugged. * It runs a long time (months) on 2 AA batteries. * To get the text off the device, it impersonates a USB keyboard, making it compatible with basically every computer.
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