Continuing with the theme of using the best tool for the job: How many of you remember Wordstar?

I not only remember it, I actually used it for many years, starting in the 1980s, when I first made the transition from typewriters to computers. For the first few years, it was my only word processor. I went on to experiment with other products, but Wordstar remained my primary means of getting thoughts from my brain onto the screen, and from there onto paper. After seven or eight years, I finally moved on for good, flirting with a succession of mistresses that included Ami Pro and Word Pro, Microsoft Word, and finally OpenOffice.org’s Writer.

I’m not as nostalgic about Wordstar as I am about, say, my old typewriter, but there are days that I miss its simplicity, its outstanding performance, and most of all, its do-one-thing-and-do-it-very-well design. I sometimes wish that I could go back and use it again, just for fun, just for the memories.

If you poke around the Internet, you’ll find that some people are still using Wordstar, including a few well-known writers. One in particular, the great Robert J. Sawyer, has written several times about his love for Wordstar. This piece, more than a decade old now, makes the case that Wordstar may have been the best tool ever invented for creative writing. It’s a fascinating read, even if you never heard of Wordstar and couldn’t care less about all the technical stuff. More recently – just a few weeks ago, in fact – Sawyer posted a shorter piece here, noting that the novel he’s working on now is the 18th he’s written with Wordstar.

Rereading Sawyer’s original essay, I find myself agreeing with almost everything he says. I am not a touch typist, not by a long shot. I am probably the world’s fastest three-fingers-and-a-thumb typist, which means I may not have enjoyed all of Wordstar’s benefits to their fullest. But it occurs to me that the software’s design almost certainly helped turn me into the kind of computer user I am today – that is, a user who relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts, avoids menus as much as possible, and tries to touch the mouse only when absolutely necessary. The keyboard is the conduit from the mind to the page. Every use of the mouse, no matter how brief or how unconscious, is a roadblock that interrupts the creative stream.

It’s no secret that word processing programs – even the best of them, like OOo Writer – have become huge, bloated behemoths. They have gained incredible flexibility and functionality, but at a price. They have strayed far from the goal of early programs like Wordstar, which was to give average writers what they truly needed to be effective. They have become gargantuan bulldozers, capable of carving out lakes and moving mountains, when most of us can really create far prettier gardens with a simple spade.