When all you have is a word processor in front of you, you have to write. That had some limitations, but it had some major strengths, too, particularly for the task of writing. Even so-called multitasking environments like DesqView were in reality task-switchers. When you ran DOS, you could only have one program in memory at one time. I found that I really liked the readability of green text on a black background. I did this with the intention of learning to write programs, which I eventually did, but not before I fell in love with simple ANSI text editors that were like WordStar and many of which allowed you to use WordStar keycodes. Then, in the early 90s I bought my first PC. I used that machine for years and wrote many more short stories, all of which remain unpublished. The Panasonic featured an integrated type-lift correction tape and you could correct the immediate few letters. In the mid-80s I upgraded to an electric Panasonic, though I always fancied an IBM Selectric. Those stories are still around in a box somewhere – earnest and pretentious, most of them. I had a portable Royal on which I wrote both college papers and a number of unpublished short stories. I have fond memories of writing with simpler tools – although I never published any of it, my earliest writing was on a typewriter. I started back down this path after reading a paen to WordStar on Robert J Sawyer’s blog. I’ve configured a theme that makes it look like an old DOS based word processor, with a mono-spaced font in green over a black screen. He always used the same one, and as much as I thought I got the worse of the two, whenever I picked up the other one, it just wasn’t comfortable. We had, for example, two scythes for clearing weeds near fence and irrigation lines. My father had his tools, and I couldn’t use them most of the time. I am reminded of years working on the farm where I grew up. A writer’s tools are very personal things.
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