Word Processors — One Writer's Further Retreat 391
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.
What you see isn't what you'll get anyway (Score:3, Informative)
Not if you're going to see it in print, that is. A writer writes the words. An editor and publisher will have it put into the final form.
I got to review Jef Raskin's book in its manuscript form, and "manuscript" is very close to what it was. One of the early human-computer interface experts, who helped develop the Macintosh, created his book in double-spaced Courier, designed to be proof-read, not published. Drawings were sketched; a real artist created what ended up in the book.
I don't know what he used, and he'd probably find "ed" to be a little ridiculous: it's a line editor, not suited to blocks of text. He probably used something WYSIWYG. But didn't bother with any formatting, and that saved him a lot of time and care.
Re:Ok...But let's not blame the mouse. (Score:4, Informative)
> Even though I'm struggling to understand why you went this route (I'm leaning towards you're a hopeless romantic, or worse)
I think you would be surprised.
The thing about writing is, it's hard. You get this brief bright spark of a plot idea that you've got to write, and then it's hour upon hour upon hour of churning word after word after fuck it I'll go check out Slashdot. The initial excitation lasts perhaps all of 10 minutes before you start asking yourself what the hell you're doing. And at this point anything -- anything -- becomes a tempting distraction. A simple, no-nonsense editor is a boon. You set it full screen and keep trudging along. I like vim; dark color schemes are easier on the eye, you can jump between sentences at the press of a key, and if you're at all the nerdy type a plug-in like ScmFrontEnd or Fugitive lets you version your work on the fly.
There's a reason why George R. R. Martin notoriously uses Wordstar on MS-DOS to this day, you know. :)
It is not like you have to use Powerpoint... (Score:3, Informative)
Scrivener is almost good enough to make me want a mac. [literatureandlatte.com]
Rough Draft [f2s.com] is what I actually use to write novels, it is simple and outputs in RTF, has very few features, but the ones that it does have are what I want.
IMO a good creative writing software package has to be simple, and it looks like TFA is looking to simplify even further... It is an understandable thing, because distractions are killer for a writer...
IMO he should get an AlphaSmart [neo-direct.com] A portable, purpose built device which does text and only text. Full keyboard, it gets something like 700 hours on 3 AA batteries, it does not have fonts or animated assistants or 1gb install files, and best of all, you don't have to look like a pretentious douche on slashdot to use it.
Ed not pioneering (Score:3, Informative)
Old School on the New School (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know what OS the author of the original post is using, but if he's using a Mac, he should look into WriteRoom.
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom [hogbaysoftware.com]
It's like writing on the word processor from the Apple II days, it clear all the modern OS widgets out of the way so you're not constantly distracted, and you can edit in any combination of background/text colors you want.
I prefer bold blue text on a black background. None of the formatting is saved in the document, it's only done in presentation by the app and you get modern features like word count and what not.
I can't recommend it high enough.
But hey, I'm an oldster around here, what do I know?
Re:MS Notepad (Score:3, Informative)
Isnt it simpler to ise the arrow keys for navigation and backspace for backspace,etc..
I believe gedit does the same for Linux
Pls enlighten me..
Firstly, the arrow keys work just fine in vim. However, in my experience, the arrow keys are just about the worst irritant for RSI problems, surpassed only by certain mouse operations. The arrow keys encourage you to bend your wrist sharply and make a bunch of repeated keypresses. This is very hard on the tendons that go through the wrist.
Using the HJKL keys in vim is much more natural hand positioning, and the powerful cursor movement commands in vim cut way down on how many keys need to be pressed in the first place. (I do map the ESC key in vim to Alt+F so that I don't have to reach for that all the time either.)
Re:Whatever Works For You (Score:1, Informative)
I've always hated Word and its ilk because the program is constantly fighting how I want to work. I spend more time fighting with the program than I do creating new content.
I think people psychologically like that. Because, otherwise, you'd just hit the preferences and turn off whatever Auto-whatever was "fighting" you... and in 10 seconds, you'd never, ever have the problem again.
So people who make this complaint either:
1) Don't know how to work the Settings
2) Like to see it has a conflict, and purposefully don't change the Settings (why else would you use the word "fighting"?)
This is just fruit loops! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What's your point? (Score:2, Informative)
Having to do so every time he creates a new document.
What?? Set the goddamn default font, dude... even a typewriter needs a ribbon and a sheet of paper before you use it. In Word 2010 there's a great big "Set as Default" button on the Font dialog box.
Word is not a decent tool for getting text into the computer. It starts slowly, vi starts without visible delay.
Starts slowly? What ancient hardware/version of Word are you using? The splash screen for Word 2010 includes a little box that allows you to abort opening the program if you double-clicked its icon by mistake. Unfortunately, I can't move my hand fast enough to click it before I'm staring at a new blank document. Typing "vi filename" actually takes longer.
Word also gets slowed down, when typing text, since it does formatting in realtime.
Are you saying this as something you've actually observed or are you just making assumptions? Last week I did some pretty extensive editing on a 973-page Word document with no slowdowns whatsoever. Global search-and-replace took a couple of seconds.
Then it saves the document in binary encoding, which is a really bad idea, if you want to not loose your data, with a couple of bit errors.
Got bad news for you; ASCII is a "binary encoding," too.
It also tends to correct spelling as you type, this slows down your typing.
Really? Saves me a lot of time correcting typos.
It has a nasty habit of changing i to I, despite having looked around and changed the language to swedish.
In Word 2010 you can click the little button that appears next to the change and tell it to "stop changing i to I." And at the same time it would have remembered to capitalize Swedish for you.
This slows down the typing, so word is about the worst tool to type in text to a computer.
Or maybe you don't know how to use the tools and you have strange typing habits?
Re:Word processors detriment on books. (Score:3, Informative)
I should add that editing in Word or OpenOffice, while easier, gets frustrating very soon if there is an awful lot to edit. Even a short document, if it needs a lot of changes, it tends to get very slow to load, and text blocks move around randomly, causing a lot of confusion. So although it's easy initially, some of the functionality is extremely poorly implemented.
Re:The essence of hipsterism: (Score:3, Informative)
Mine is lighter than my geared bikes, and the mechanical efficiency is higher because the system is simpler -- so I can accelerate off the line a lot faster, making it preferable in stop-and-go traffic*.
A lot faster than what? Someone who has left his bike in top gear when coming to a stop, and can't change down while stopped because he has derailleur gears? Acceleration depends on gearing more than on the last 10% of mechanical efficiency.
Also, my mind boggles at the thought of not having brakes. When you rely on pedal resistance to brake, you have maybe 20% of the braking torque available compared to any set of halfdecent brakes. That's not just inconvenient, IMO it borders on the criminally negligent.
Re:Next step? (Score:3, Informative)
It's spelled "EBCDIC" (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code... yes I knew that without looking it up), but you are correct: Hollerith cards usually used EBCDIC. IBM didn't start using that upstart ASCII code until the Personal Computer in the 1980s.
Re:Next step? (Score:3, Informative)
But I write LaTeX with a simple text editor.
Re:No kidding (Score:1, Informative)
Whether or not you have a brake has nothing to do whether it's a fixed gear bike (the brake isn't connected to the gear system at all); the important consideration is that the bike has no freewheel or freehub mechanism, i.e. the rear wheel and the chain gear are connected such that one cannot move without the other (and vice-versa)
Re:Next step? (Score:3, Informative)
Vim has had real-time interactive spell-checking for a while now (:set spell), and navigation is generally where Vi editors are seen to particularly excel :)
Re:Next step? (Score:4, Informative)
For that matter, Hollerith cards were around long before EBCDIC -- which, as I recall -- appeared in general use as part of the OS/360 horror-show. Hollerith potentially allowed 80 characters per card. But anyone with half a brain settled for 72 data columns and eight sequencing columns (cols 73-80) that could be used to mechanically sort the deck back into order after it was dropped.
Re:You CLEARLY don't get it (Score:2, Informative)
I totally agree with you. I truly believe that if an author can't edit his own work, then he can't write.
As for doing 1000 words in an hour and a half, I don't count his 1000 words, as 1000 words, because that's only brainstorming words. If I have to write 100 words, then I would prefer to give myself a full hour, to type it out, proof read for the overall flow, proof read again, for small grammatical and spelling errors, and then make a final check. In between those steps, I will make several checks for user friendly readability.
When I write, I rarely think about the tools that I use. If I need to make a PDF, then I'll use a word processor. If I'm just writing on /. or in my blog, then I'll just use the text box.
I had a difficult time reading the summary and story, because I couldn't figure out what he was trying to do.
Re:Linux distro? (Score:3, Informative)
id:3:initdefault:
fire:x:501:502::/home/fire:/usr/bin/vim
Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Informative)
Well you probably did not try Writemokey
http://writemonkey.com/features.php
jdarkroom (Score:3, Informative)