Professional video editors use crazy high-end software and hardware to do their work. Professional
photographers get fancy with Lightroom and Photoshop. The setup for high-level music
creation and DJ-ing is pretty nuts, as well. But whenever I try to look into the tools
used by professional writers to write scripts, novels, blogs, and so on - I wind up disappointed.
Every article I find interviewing writers or listing their tools has just boring entries:
Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Windows… Live… Writer? Or “Plain old Notepad” - or otherwise
some hyper-specific screenwriting program that isn’t at all relevant to me.
That is, until I found out what “Game of Thrones” is written on….
I’m EposVox, here to make tech easier and more fun, and yes - George R. R. Martin writes
his novels on a laptop running DOS. THAT DOS. And good old
Wordstar 4.0.
[clip from interview]
While the 1980s terminal-only interface isn’t super appealing today, the benefits of running
DOS as your operating system include performance (due to no extraneous OS bulk like with modern
Windows), and no worries about viruses. Even if some script kiddie had the IP address of
his laptop and a direct connection to it, they would have no idea how to do anything
to it - nor could they, in most cases. Script kiddies aren’t going to take the time to
learn DOS, and DOS doesn’t include any of the modern vulnerabilities that people know
to look for. Plus, he has no reason to put it online in the first place.
I was intrigued by this. I’m quite interested in distraction-free writing tools, and I do
most of my writing on laptops away from my main desk specifically because I find it to
be a more distraction-free experience. So how IS WordStar 4.0? I wanted to give it a
try.
Of course, the 5.25” floppy disks won’t quite fit into my laptop… So for this, I’m
using FreeDOS - a free DOS implementation that has been in development for 20 years
or so and is still maintained to this day. It’s a really neat project.
Currently I just have it running in VirtualBox on my main laptop. It doesn’t let me full-screen
the VM for some reason, but I’m given the pleasant, maximized WordStar 4.0 typing experience
while still having access to my panels to pull up FireFox or something for research.
This is neat, but less distraction-free since I am prone to click on the other things in
my desktop GUI. It’s… a mental thing.
Installing WordStar is fairly straightforward-ish, if you’re competent in DOS. I’m in the
younger crowd, so I’m not. My first gaming experiences at 9 months old involved playing
games on Windows 3.1, but actual computer usage didn’t really get started until the
Windows 95 and Mac OS 7 days. But a simple look through the manual and careful manipulation
of virtual floppy images within VirtualBox, and I’m even able to write this very script
on Wordstar.
It’s minimal and straightforward. Basic Function Key and Control plus letter combinations
are how you control the software, and… that’s it! It might seem super complicated and slow
from a glance - but by not worrying about extraneous functions, formatting, menus, or
even a cursor, you’re free to just type away and be as productive as possible. It’s
actually quite a refreshing experience. If I can get past the document conversion issues,
I may stick with this full time.
If you are having issues with running a VM, you can use DOSBox to emulate the program
itself, or simply make a FreeDOS boot disk and boot into FreeDOS on your machine just
for the purpose of running the program.
But there is a pretty annoying problem - converting the document files. Wordstar natively saves
to the .doc file format with a .bak backup file. If you’re confused, it’s time to
take note that Microsoft actually took over the .doc format and bastardized it with XML
structuring, but it didn’t originate with them. The files appear to be encoded with
US-ASCII format. Google Drive won’t open or convert the files, and LibreOffice has
0 compatibility tools whatsoever. WPS Office doesn’t seem to want to open the files either.
Unfortunately, the ONLY way that I have found to open the file format with characters in-tact
is by using actual Microsoft Word. When you try to open the .doc file in Word, it pops
up with the character encoding selection, you need to scroll down and choose “US-ASCII”.
This will keep all the letter in-tact, you just have to adjust the line spacing issues
and such. Not super convenient, and begs the question of whether the extra efficiency gained
by the distraction-free environment is worth the hassle and time it takes to convert the
files - especially since we only have a single Word activation, and it’s on my old rig,
now my fiancee’s.
But on the whole, WordStar is a nice program. It has the basic functions you need to write
a document, and won’t go auto-correcting your weird spelling if you happen to be writing
about the Targaryens or the Baratheons. I will still use it from time to time.
I did want to try exploring other distraction-free writing experiences again. I found plenty,
but most of them were tiny web-apps that didn’t have a pleasant writing experience at all,
and didn’t do much to take away the distraction. Heck, one added MORE distraction by “rewarding”
you with cat pictures. FocusWriter currently seems to be my best bet - though I had to
make a custom theme with a dark grey background and much bigger font size, as all the default
themes were horrible. But the interface can be pretty buggy on Linux, unfortunately.
I also ran into Hemingway - which takes your writing and analyzes it for readability, which
can be a huge bonus for making writing easier to understand. I plan to use this more for
video scripts in the future. It runs fine from a webapp. I wanted to get their desktop
app, but it’s only available for Windows and Mac and is TWENTY DOLLARS!! No thank you.
In the U.S., ISPs can now sell your browsing history and data, as internet privacy rules
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Tunnelbear is offering a FREE 3-day trial of their awesome VPN service for the next
month or so. Hide your data, keep your browsing history safe, behind a bear. Check the link
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My quest for truly distraction-free writing is still ongoing, but I have more knowledge
and experience now. I will continue using a combination of Google Drive and Wordstar
for now, and keep my eye out for other options. FreeWrite is one such example - a distraction-free
word processor designed for this very purpose. Maybe I’ll get to take a look at it some
day.
What do you think, could you use a dedicated word processing app like WordStar? Is the
DOS interface even something that fits the bill for “distraction free” in the first
place? Let me know in the comments below.
Otherwise, smash the like button and get subscribed for more tech videos like this. I’ll see
you next time.