Paul F. Olson

A Journal of Miscellany and Disorder

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.

My unrequited love affair with the phantasmagorical typing device in the post below below got me thinking about the tools of the writer’s trade.

Three decades ago, when I was starting out, there seemed to be great fascination with writing implements. Almost every author profile contained a few obligatory questions about his or her preferred method of getting words down on paper. Do you use an electric typewriter? A manual? Do you still write your stories in longhand? Just a few years later, such questions became even more common, but now the goal was to find out which authors still hammered away on their IBM Selectrics and which had embraced the future by purchasing one of those newfangled computers – a “word processor,” as most of us called the hardware in those days. Writers who had taken the plunge were looked on with some measure of awe, but those who clung to older technologies were also admired, honored for being more concerned with their stories than the equipment used to tell them.

It might be my imagination, but it seems some of this interest has faded over the years, perhaps because it’s assumed that everyone now uses a computer – a state of the art something or other running some sort of topnotch software, most likely Microsoft Word. The loyal diehards who cling to their typewriters and pens are no longer viewed as dedicated pros. Quirky or downright strange is more like it.

The sad thing is, writers in years past often had great affection for their typewriters. They could talk at length about the ruggedness, reliability, ergonomic beauty, creative benefits and even the humorous eccentricities of their particular machines. They felt as if their typewriters were full partners in the lonely and difficult business of turning ideas into stories, and they spoke about them as such. Compare that to today. You almost never hear authors wax rhapsodic about their laptops. And why would they? Typewriters are distinct individuals with unique personalities. Computers are faceless, uniform drones, one the same as the next. Used one, used ‘em all. If you do happen to praise your computer, you’re more likely to talk about its speed, memory, hard drive size, graphics capability or utility as a video and mp3 player than its reliable but utterly unsurprising word-processing abilities.

Personally, I miss the typewriter I used back when I was starting out – an Olympia electric that looked exactly like this. It served me well through four early novels and countless short stories, poems and other bits of ephemera. She was a beauty, a workhorse and a friend. She spoke in a smooth and gentle purr that occasionally deepened into a sexy, throaty growl. She was sometimes demanding but never truly obstinate. She never missed a day of work, and when I was tempted to skip out, she would glare at me quietly until I sat down and got busy. I loved that machine with all my heart and still do, though she is long gone. I’ve never felt remotely the same about any of the many computers that followed in her wake.

I’m also one of those oddballs who loves fine pens and still likes to write early drafts in longhand, though I don’t do it nearly as much as I used to, thanks in large part to my “day job,” which requires me to spend many hours every week scribbling notes at meetings – sometimes as much as 20 pages of notes for a 60-minute city council session. After that, when it comes time to really write, longhand can feel frighteningly like drudge work.

Of course, nothing ever stays the same, does it? Nor should it. Such is the advance of progress, the march of time.

Still, it’s a melancholy feeling, this realization that we have gained so much … but lost so much along the way.