Wordstar 4.0 is an edition of Wordstar, a once-popular word processor and composition software, released in 1987 for the DOS operating system. It is the direct successor of Wordstar 2000, and includes features not found in the previous edition.
I initially became interested in this software when George R. R. Martin, an inspiration of mine as a writer, confessed in an interview that he personally wrote, and continues to write, all his novels in Wordstar. This may seem baffling to the modern writer; comparative to programs like Word, it falls short in so many respects. Word itself falls short in comparison to programs like Scrivener; Wordstar is archaic in comparison. It lacks the ability to preview your document on the page, to change fonts or resize text, its interface is bare-bones and line-wrap isn't always automatic; sometimes you need to realign the text to get it to fit on the screen. You can't change the number of words or lines required for a "page" to be calculated and marked in the software. The modern writer might say that, because of these things, it is outright inferior.
"I have a secret weapon; I actually have two computers. I have the computer that I browse the internet with, and then I get my email on, and then I do my taxes on, that computer. And then I have my writing computer, which is a DOS machine, not connected to the internet. You remember DOS? Yes, I use Wordstar four-point-zero as my word processing system."
"Did you make this computer out of wood," Conan asks, "did you carve it? I'm curious why you decided to stick with this old program."
"Well, I actually like it. It does everything I want a word processing computer should do, and it doesn't do anything else. I don't want any help, you know. I hate some of these modern systems, where you type a lowercase letter and it becomes a capital. I don't want a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to use the shift key!"
"What about spell check?"
"Oh, I hate spell check."
For years, I have wanted to get a computer running Wordstar. I tried desperately to do the "authentic" thing -- get a computer from the 80s or 90s, get the wordstar floppy disks, get the program running. I acquired an old computer, it had slots for big and small floppies, I thought it was perfect. But the BIOS had a beep error, which, when referring to a guide, said that it was a video card error.
So I bought a video card for an old machine like that, which wasn't cheap and wasn't easy to find. I bought several, actually, once the first one didn't work. As well as several boxes of floppy disks, the wordstar floppies, a USB floppy drive for getting files to my main PC, all of it. I couldn't get the ruddy machine to work, and after spending probably close to $200, I gave up the dream. Shelved it, despite my lust for this hardware.
Lo and behold, I discovered something glorious last week: FreeDOS. This is a version of DOS that can do the following: be installed from a USB thumbdrive, run DOS programs, and detect USB drives as though they are file systems. It was perfect. I got an old computer from the Iowa State University surplus. Not super old, it had a sata drive and no floppy slots, but was an old office computer, it cost me basically nothing. And I got what I always wanted, desperately longed for, ached for, lusted for: a computer that authentically runs Wordstar and nothing else.
Once I became aware of this function, I formatted my laptop and put DOS on it. I had to. It is now my portable typewriter. I now have two DOS machines; a desktop and a laptop.
Now I can shut off all my electronics and experience pure zen. No desktop environment. No productivity software. No internet access. Just me and Wordstar.
I made the joke that the program is possessing me, corrupting me like the Ring of Power corrupted Gollum. The longer I use it, the more I am transforming into GRRM. Suspenders are rising out of my flesh, a newsboy cap is sprouting from my head. I am rapidly gaining weight, I am growing a neckbeard. Soon, I will be only dimly aware of my own existence. The software will own me, dominate me, use me, and ultimately discard me. I will be an instrument through which it operates.
The next step in my journey is to acquire an IBM Model M keyboard, another very old piece of technology. Once I have the keyboard and the Wordstar paired, I will be unstoppable and one step closer to becoming perfect, complete, godlike.
"It's probably the greatest desktop keyboard I ever used. Noisy, but you grow accustomed. The thing about the original keyboard is just how resistant it was to damage. The ones I recovered had been thrown from a third floor window into a skip and they worked flawlessly!" -- Wertperch
I have found that one page in Wordstar is around 450 words. I copied the file onto my desktop pc, ran the perl script, and calculated everything up to the Wordstar page break. 450 words of regular non-dialogue paragraphs. This means that I need to write 112 Wordstar pages to get a standard 50,000 word novel. I want to try doing a belated Nanowrimo in the month of December, not July. This adds up to just under four pages per day -- I am a few days behind at the moment, but if I write four per day henceforth, I will catch up.
I have begun to write a historic fantasy story. It's set in 1300s Britannia, in a world where the Normans never invaded or conquered Britain. There's a dozen or so kingdoms in the territory, each with their own culture. The story is about a small kingdom where everyone simultaneously experiences a shared psychosis, and all are convinced that it was a prophecy of doom. The monarch has died, and the people are convinced the heir is accursed, and her ascendance brought on the prophecy of doom. The Royal Justiciar siezes power, and she (the heir) has to flee to France. Very fun to write, I am enjoying it very much, and Wordstar has proven effective in being useful enough for me to write without any form of setback in terms of creative flow or process.
Regardless, I don't miss Scrivener. It was nice for a very long time, but ultimately and in conclusion it destracted me a lot with all its features. Oftentimes I would get all stuck up, modifying this or that setting, using the tools, editing and rearranging my documents. I still plan on using it for some things, but not for writing the primary draft. Wordstar has replaced it. Is this permanent? I don't know. But GRRM does it, and his writing is monolithic, which means it is possible to do in Wordstar.
A pessimistic and cynical part of me wonders if Wordstar is the reason his books take so goddamn long to write, but I am choosing not to believe such a thing.