ASOIF series creator George R.R. Martin isn’t shy about letting people know how unfathomably old his word processor is. On Conan last night, he mentioned that he still uses Wordstar 4.0, a program that was initially released in 1978, to write his books. When you listen to his logic behind this decision, though, it actually makes sense.
Coming from someone who writes about nerd stuff for a living and types the name “Daenerys Targaryen” once a day, I could totally see how using spell check would become annoying for a fantasy author like Martin. If you ever decide to upgrade, though, George, then there are plenty of word processors you can use that allow you to turn that feature off while you’re writing. Scrivener is particularly great for novelists because it lets you organize drafts, chapters, character profiles (which could be useful for keeping everybody in Westeros straight), and much more. If that’s too many bells and whistles for you, there’s also Omniwriter, which is basically a blank DOS-like screen with better music and background color options.
But we wouldn’t tell Martin he has to make the switch, of course. Maybe Wordstar is the greatest thing since direwolf-molded bread. You keep doing you, Buddy. Just get The Winds of Winter to us as soon as you can and we’ll be solid.
(via Team CoCo)
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- Speaking of The Winds of Winter, there’s a new chapter out
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