A word processor I want
Typewriters were terrible tools for writing drafts if only because they had no facility for crossing sections out. At least with a pen, you could make a quick line through an entire paragraph that failed.
Word processors still act as if we know what we’re writing. Oh, they’re obviously much better than typewriters, for which I have zero nostalgia. (”Ah, remember the month I spent locked in my room, typing the final draft of my dissertation? Sweet!”) Word processors let you swiftly delete failed paragraphs, let you undo mistakes and re-do mistaken mistakes, and awkwardly track revisions. But they’re not designed for writing when you’re unsure of what you’re writing.
When you’re writing something hard, you probably work the way you do with a music composition system. You try out some notes. You play them back. You make a change. You shave and fit the pieces together. The same when you’re writing words. You try out a phrase, a sentence, a transition, a motif. You see how that affects the words around it. You make a change elsewhere, and now you have to hear how it presses on the ideas, words, and rhythms around it.
Word processors don’t recognize that way of working. They treat drafts as continuous improvements, not as tentative attempts. They don’t let you toggle quickly between two versions of a paragraph, side by side or back and forth, so you can see how each works, the way you might weigh two photographs to see which one you want to keep.
I don’t have a set of features I want. I’m just saying that word processors don’t work the way we write.
Categories: whines
David, I agree. My writing process must be with paper and pen. The word processor is great for editorial functions, for printing, for eventually sharing text with others but I can not compose on a computer. My writing process is a very slow word for word crafting where the slow pen fits the shaping. What would work for me is to write with a pen and then dictate into the computer via voice recognition. I have read rather bad reviews of voice recognition software (Dragon). Do you have any suggestions? I also like what you say about “hearing” when you try out your sentences. Most of my revisions come about when I read my writing aloud. I can hear what changes need to be made. Once I have a draft and it is on the computer it is easy to make editorial changes, corrections and additions. But I find that writing is such a natural process that I need the pen to complement my imagination. I love your analogy to music but would add sculpture and painting as well. There is a tactile need I have to sculpt or paint with both pen and paper. Touching the keys is not the same for me as touching the pen and paper as I write. My problem occurs after the initial draft writing has been completed, the inspiration has been exhausted, and the first series of auditory revisions are accomplished. Now I have to type the draft into the computer for further editing. Reminds me of all those late nights walking by dorm rooms and hearing the whine of the SCM electric typewriters. So my hope is that voice recognition will improve. I also like to do a fair amount of writing “en plein air” and even though I have a laptop, nothing beats my journal.
I sorta do that with mindmapping software. I use it to make a “fat” outline – get my general thoughts down, fill them out with quotes or important stuff I want to write about/remember. Then I dump all that into a word processor and fill in the gaps, so to speak.
Works for me, anyway!
I start out out with copious notes written by pen and then open TextEdit on my Mac laptop and a Word document alongside it. I then begin writing and cut and paste from the Word doc to TextEdit where I compare paragraphs. I then make any revisions in the Word doc. Somewhat convoluted I know but I end up with two versions of an essay – the final version in Word and a mangled but original version in TextEdit.
David,
I’ve been saying that for years. Word processors need versioning, and it would be a very easy thing to build into a program, especially with the advent of open document formats based on XML, and with the proliferation of SQLite being embedded in programs. It seems like
You know, the word processor in the Google Docs suite does pretty much all of what you mentioned, though. It lacks certain bells and whistles that the big boys like Word, Word Perfect, and Mellel have, but it does have versioning that allows you to compare revisions.
Having some programming experience, I use a version control program (SVN) to let me keep versions of my documents, and I am trying to write in LaTeX when I can. With this scheme, I have a really skinny versions of my documents, I can convert them into great looking pdfs, I can maintain versions of the file, and I have lots of copies in lots of places to keep them safe.
Jason, I’m not looking for versioning, exactly. I want somehow to be able to type in a sentence while keeping the old one there, so I can see them side by side. That’s different than versioning the entire doc and then running a diff.
I do use Google Docs, btw. And if it were versioning, I’d like features that Google Docs don’t give, such as naming versions so I can remember that that was the one where I tried this, and that one was when I was trying that.
But my real point is that I’d like to see someone design a word processor with an eye to how we actually write.
It’s interesting that you imagine your word processor in terms of music composition / recording software. The music recording software I use (MOTU Digital Performer) does pretty much everything you wish for, and more, in terms of allowing what’s ultimately a linear work to be put together as overlapping and non-linear chunks / branches / tracks / takes / structures / mixes.
It’s quite a good example, that lots of other kinds of software should ideally emulate.
check out scrivener
http://www.literatureandlatte......vener.html
Thanks, islamoyankee. I tried it once, but I’ll give it another look.
David,
Gotcha. I do have both of those advantages using LaTeX and SVN, though. I can use comments to have hidden versions of sentences. I can describe my versions with the commits. It has its downsides. It’s not WYSIWYG. It’s a bit of a learning curve. It provides a slew of headaches. But once it’s setup, you just write.
David, first of all you have to acknowledge that the word processor doesn’t have a particular feature you want but has hundreds you probably don’t want. How about something that just lets you write? That’s what I do miss about typewriters — no stylistic considerations, no spell-check, no buttons, just what you’ve written in front of you. Judging from the brief mention of typewriters you give, maybe you’re not fatally attracted to that aspect of a minimalist writing environment. But for those who are, I’d recommend WriteRoom for Mac, Dark Room for PC and PyRoom for *nix. They’re all pretty much the same thing — just darkness and your text with no graphic interface. You can customise the look and format of the text (and change the background and text colours) to make uyourself comfortable, and then it’s just you and your text. Brilliant.
For SVN ( which is great great great for revising work — and revising and writing should be kept as separate tasks), I recommend Versions for Mac, Tortoise for PC and Rapid SVN for *nix. They all offer sensible visual interfaces for easily comparing versions of your work through time.
Emacs.
Know I’m late on this, David, but your original post inspired me to look around. For Windows I think the most impressive is Liquid Story Binder XE from http://www.blackobelisksoftwar.....e.com . It allows versioning, and has a host of other tools for writers.