"Every day tech news is rife with stories about the latest and greatest, but some people don't want the latest and greatest; they want their old faves. The blogosphere is buzzing this week with the revelation that George R.R. Martin , the much-admired author of the A Game of Thrones and more, actually does his writing on a DOS machine running the old, 1970s word processor, Wordstar .

Should that matter? I don't think so . Not one bit. In fact, Wordstar and DOS have a couple of advantages over more modern hardware and software: probably no Internet connection, no icons, nothing buzzing or beeping or flashing at you. In sum, the perfect environment for focusing on your writing. Judging by the success of GRRM's books, it's working!"

http://pipedot.org/story/2014-05-14/...-to-stop-using

Anne Rice was another Wordstar fan. She's not using it anymore, but she did use it way, way past its EOL:

http://www.examiner.com/article/anne...riting-process

One of the first computers that I ever owned was a Franklin ACE. It was an Apple-II knockoff, yes, but it was really designed to be "a WordStar machine." It had an IBM Selectric grade keyboard ... the best I've ever seen on any computer before or since. It had a CP/M daughterboard. And, it ran WordStar like a champ. It was designed to be "a WordStar machine," and it certainly was. Both I and my mother put many a term-paper (and in her case, a dissertation) through it, flawlessly.

To this day, I think that WordStar was a "best of breed" application. Much like Microsoft Project, it was built by someone who keenly understood what "people who do this all day long for a living" needed most, and delivered it reliably.

I wonder why there isn't a popular ncurses-based Wordstar clone.

What comes to mind for me in this case is that people are typically idolatrous. They want to know what their idols do under some superstitious belief that it gives them special powers. It's the root concept of celebrity advertising, I guess.

In this case what probably happens is that Martin, and everyone like him is a luddite. Nothing more complicated than that is likely.

The only thing that would scare me is portability and redundancy. I compose in vi and notepad. I get tired of Word yelling at me about my grammar. I would think trying to write conversation, like for screen-plays, in Word might make a person completely crackers -- might even lead him to destroy a loom or gin.

The very first mainframe I used (not for basic) had what amounted to wordstar on it, before there were PC's. Worked great then so I did buy a copy of wordstar later.

Slackware includes one called joe

-Ben

Not that Wordstar granted them, but Martin's special powers are easily tested. Many want to be a popular and prolific writer, but not everyone makes it.

Which professional wants to be ignorant of what their tools will do?

-Ben

Thanks for the nice link. I imagine that what's in the author's head is more important than what's at their hands. Stories like this seem to back that up.

-Ben

No, he's a professional writer, and a long-time screenwriter. The job consists of producing hundreds of pages of prose that conform to a particular style and pattern which is going to be used on a movie-set in production. (Unlike Perl, "there is only one way to do it.") You spend all day, every day, doing that.

And, it so happens that WordStar still does a great job with a task like that. Fancy-pants formatting is unimportant. Having a tool that enables you to write prolifically, is.

It's probably one of those happy accidents: at the time it was made, WordStar couldn't computationally afford to having clippy bouncing around on the screen and DOS hadn't figured out that what people really want are incessant requests to "Update Windows Now!" so it gave way to a workstation that emphasized work and not the curious amount of distractions that are built into computer desktops software today.

In DOS, just getting your software to freaking work was enough of a challenge. YOU REQUIRE MORE CONVENTIONAL MEMORY.

Correlation does not equal causation. Just because Michael Jordan brushed his teeth with Colgate doesn't mean using Colgate contributed to his basketball skills. How many great writers DONT use Wordstar?

As you said, "[anti-]correlation does not equal [anti-]causation."