3 ms·

There are some other characteristics as well. With pen and paper, you can only move forward. That is, your only real option is to complete the draft. You can re

There are some other characteristics as well. With pen and paper, you can only move forward. That is, your only real option is to complete the draft. You can revise or rewrite when you're typing it in. Neil Gaiman writes this way; fountain pen and notebook for first draft. Cutting material is much less painful. You simply don't type it in. The temptation to go back and tweak what you've written is fairly strong with modern tools. An author can waste hours, an entire writing session, on rereading what they wrote and making adjustments. That's an activity best left to after you have a completed draft in hand.

omarhaneef 5y ago
I completely agree, but the inability to edit doesn't explain the advantage (if any) of the wordstar/ms-dos editor crowd.
- slowmovintarget 5y ago
  Right. You identified the prime characteristic for the CUI crowd: no context switching. Though Wordstar purportedly was superior for text manipulation. Robert J. Sawyer wrote an article [1] on why he still uses it. Made me want to learn it, but I realize that if I'm going to put effort into learning a tool, I'd likely want it to be Emacs instead. (I currently use Scrivener.) [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/wordstar-a-writers-word-processor/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/words...
  - olivertaylor 5y ago
    Emacs is worth it from a “creating an ideal environment” perspective, but it is a nightmare from a “stay focused” one. Tweaking your editor becomes very easy and very distracting.
    - icedata 5y ago
      I use emacs and org-mode all day long, and never tweak it unless there's a really strong reason. My goal is to keep it as close to vanilla as possible.
      - throw10920 5y ago
        I use emacs as well, and regularly get distracted tweaking it. Maybe the temptation to tweak isn't present for you - but is for a lot of other people. I think it's a personality trait.

omarhaneef 5y ago

I completely agree, but the inability to edit doesn't explain the advantage (if any) of the wordstar/ms-dos editor crowd.

slowmovintarget 5y ago
Right. You identified the prime characteristic for the CUI crowd: no context switching. Though Wordstar purportedly was superior for text manipulation. Robert J. Sawyer wrote an article [1] on why he still uses it. Made me want to learn it, but I realize that if I'm going to put effort into learning a tool, I'd likely want it to be Emacs instead. (I currently use Scrivener.) [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/wordstar-a-writers-word-processor/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/words...
- olivertaylor 5y ago
  Emacs is worth it from a “creating an ideal environment” perspective, but it is a nightmare from a “stay focused” one. Tweaking your editor becomes very easy and very distracting.
  - icedata 5y ago
    I use emacs and org-mode all day long, and never tweak it unless there's a really strong reason. My goal is to keep it as close to vanilla as possible.
    - throw10920 5y ago
      I use emacs as well, and regularly get distracted tweaking it. Maybe the temptation to tweak isn't present for you - but is for a lot of other people. I think it's a personality trait.