George R. R. Martin Explains Why He Writes Game of Thrones in DOS

I suspected he was weird but this cinches it for me. Wordstar was a terrible word processor. It seemed to be at least a magnitude more cumbersome and useless than the second worst word processor I have ever used. Maybe I was only using WS 2.x and it got a lot better when no one was buying it. It was in competition with Wordperfect. That is a different story all together. There are some features such as the spell checker and justification Word has never matched. I am a poor enough speller that the spell checker difference is problematic. I sometimes wind up using Google. Word still has not completely gotten full justification as well as a mid 80s version of Wordperfect. With that said, I haven't used Wordperfect in decades. What is up with George?

He seems staunchly grounded in logic and reality .... especially relative to some other prolific creative types that come to mind.

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Just listen to David Lynch for a little while, and George begins to sound much more like the stereotypical accountant...weird only for a lack of stand-out traits.

I'm curious, what do you mean by "...are some features such as the spell checker and justification Word has never matched"? Could you elaborate?

I use Word and have not had any issues with justification. Perhaps I have but just wasn't aware of it.

Wordstar and Word are very different creatures.

Why not write by hand and then get somebody else type it in a format acceptable to publishers ?

Why not write by hand and scan it as a pdf?

One time I wanted to do a typewritten poem so I got out the old Underwood and mashed away at the keys until I got it perfect. When I went to turn it in the editor asked if I wanted it retyped for the newsletter. I said "No! It's supposed to look like that!"

Sad to say, but the intended format is no longer (seemingly) of importance. If you're a writer/poet, you could always scan and post the images to appropriate online publishing sites (?). It's rather like a painter being told 'we've got to digitize your work before we'll let anyone else see it'.

Blimey - Wordstar - there's a blast from the past.