Of interest to folks here, because we love talking about writing tools.
MS-DOS worked for George RR Martin!
Some people use pencils.
And typewriters.
Can’t recall the names of the authors doing it…
Harlan Ellison used typewriters write up until he died, in 2018. As I recall, he preferred a particular brand and model and had multiples—possibly dozens of them—to cannibalize for parts.
Or it’s the reason he doesn’t get anything done, haha.
All kidding aside, DOS boxes had some really, really good text editors. I remember this software called QEdit that would actually let you select vertical blocks (i.e. “columns 1-4, rows 10-20”). It was pretty awesome.
And other than issues with running out of memory on a sufficiently-sized file, everything was pretty snappy. I would imagine they’d make great super-dedicated text editing machines.
My first editor software was WordStar. It had excellent find/replace features. Writing text in a non-GUI environment is a truly focused effort.
Page 87:
__ _
_/ \ _(\(o
/ \ / _ ^^^o
/ ! \/ ! '!!!v'
! ! \ _' ( \____
! . \ _!\ \===^\)
\ \_! / __!
\! / \
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\ ^^--^^ __-^ /(__
^^----^^ "^--v'
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3= / =D <::::::::::]==o
To be fair, doing much of anything in MS-DOS was a truly focused effort. Multitasking was largely impossible, other than TSR utilities that would sit in the keyboard loop and do stuff.
Tom Hanks has a thing for typewriters. But I don’t know how much he writes with them vs. just collecting them.
We were given pfs:Write and Lotus 1-2-3 v1. I “borrowed” copies to use on my personal 2 floppy, no hard drive portable.
Neal Stephenson writes (or at least wrote the three-tomb Baroque Cycle) with a fountain pen.
I love this.
Our friend Joe Haldeman, the science fiction writer, writes in fountain pen in bound books on an enclosed porch before dawn every morning, lit only by a kerosene lantern.