George R R Martin recently gave insight into his writing process, saying that he still uses a DOS computer to write his books.
“I actually like it. It does everything I want a word processing program to do, and it doesn’t do anything else. I don’t want any help,” he said on “Conan” this week.
Martin said he uses WordStar 4.0 on his DOS computer.
“I actually have two computers,” Martin told Conan. “I have a computer I browse the Internet with and I get my email on, and I do my taxes on. And then I have my writing computer, which is a DOS machine, not connected to the Internet. I use WordStar 4.0 as my word processing system.”
WordStar was first released in the 1970s and it’s text-only, becoming popular in the 1980s, describing the computer as his “secret weapon.”
“I don’t want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital letter. I don’t want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key,” he said on the show.
Martin said that he’s happy that he started working on the books long before “Game of Thrones” came out a few years ago.
“I think it’s a good thing that I wrote the books before we started making the show, because when you make the show and you actually meet the actors, then it’s harder to kill them,” Martin added.
“The Winds of Winter” is the next novel in his epic fantasy series, and Martin has indicated that he’s still working on it. After that, there’s another book.
“The World of Ice & Fire: The Official History of Westeros and The World of A Game of Thrones” will be published October 28, 2014.
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