Sorry for the slight delay with the post. Last week was a big one. I had family up from Fresno and we had a great time. I had to make a few sacrifices such as give up chunks of writing time, but since I don’t see my family from Fresno everyday those are sacrifices I’m willing to make. But one of the best things that happened to me over the week was that my parents brought the new laptop they bought for me. It’s an HP Pavilion 11-k013cl that came with Windows 8 but since my parents bought it during a special deal period it allowed me to download the new Windows 10 for free.
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| My new HP Pavilion 11-k013cl laptop. Photo Credit: Steven Rose, Jr. |
Word Processor Not Included
So far the new laptop has worked really good and the OS has all the necessary tools and apps that Windows 7 on my desktop has. The only drawback is that it doesn’t come with Microsoft Office and so doesn't have Word. This wasn’t a shock to me because I learned early on that most Windows computers no longer come with Office. But, as a writer, I can’t be without a word processor. So I searched the web for the best free office software out there and found LibreOffice which includes Writer, an MS Word alternative. A new computer device is always an exciting occasion for a science fiction writer, whether world-known or very, uh, obscure (like me) especially if it’s a writing tool, which is my case with Writer.Science Fiction Becoming Science Fact
Almost any kind of technological innovation is an exciting
event for a science fiction writer since it’s science fiction becoming science
fact. This goes for computer technology, both hardware and software. But I
think what’s been most exciting for many science fiction writers are new
innovations in writing technology such as the word processor. Many of the
writers who used the early word processors of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s were
science fiction authors such as Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Michael Crichton,
and Barry Longyear. Then Isaac Asimov published an article by Pournelle and Longyear who argued
with each other over whether a general computer or a stand-alone word processor
was more efficient to write with (Pournelle argued the former).
Writers such as these are both in love with the word and the
technology that produces it especially
if that technology is just making its transition from science fiction to
science fact which was not only the case with word processors but desktop
computers in general during that late ‘70s/early ‘80s period. Jerry Pournelle
was one of the first sci fi authors to write a full novel (Oath of Fealty),with Larry Niven, on a word processing program. Pournelle himself actually says, in an article at his website, jerrypournelle.com, that he was the
first science fiction author to write a novel on a computer. As much as I’d like to believe him, wouldn’t all science fiction writers like
to have been the first?
Well, maybe not quite all. Harlan Ellison has always used a
manual typewriter to write his stories (according to a note in his short
fiction collection, Slippage). Even
though Cory Doctorow is with it in much of today's computer technology, he
prefers using a text editor instead of a word processor. The reason, he says,
is that he finds a word processor’s formatting tools distracting in that he
feel’s tempted to format as he writes.
In Search of Free Software
When I found out that I couldn’t get Word on my new laptop
even with the Microsoft Office software disc I already had since the HP
Pavilion doesn’t have an external disc drive, I was thinking about using
Windows 10’s text editor myself. I wasn’t about to purchase downloadable word
processing software. I mean, I’m not a best-selling or award-winning author
like Pournelle and Niven are and so don’t make that kind of money. But I
decided to look for free software on the ‘net first because I knew how much of
a pain in the ass it could be having to format everything after I would
transfer my stories from a text editor to MS Word on my desktop. This would
likely be especially hell when I have to format my upcoming book, currently
entitled The Hidden, when it comes
time to self-publish it through Amazon’s Create Space (through which I
self-published my first book, The Fool’sIllusion). Create Space provides Microsoft Word templates but how well that would work
with Windows' text editor (Note Pad) I don't know and don’t want to find out
the hard way.
Libre Office Writer
So I did my research and discovered that Libre Office’s
Writer appeared to have the highest ratings for free, open source word
processing software and so I went with that. So far it works good enough; it
converts the text well between itself and Word although I just now found out
that some of the stylistic features, such as the highlighting tool, may get
lost in the conversion. It has all the essential tools Word has, even more in
some respects.
One of these extra tools is word suggestion that suggests the
word you’re trying to type and will finish typing it for you if you press the Enter
key. This is really nice, especially if you’re trying to write a word that’s
spelling you’re unsure of. This would be really helpful to a lot of users,
especially if they’re not avid writers like many of us and are just using the
software to do a paper in school or a technical report for a job. But, even
though it’s no big deal, I find it a little distracting since I believe that as
professional writers it’s our job to know how to spell and we should not have
to depend on automatic help that shows us the correct spelling. If we have
trouble spelling something that’s what the spell check is for, which Writer also
has.
For me, using a new computer tool is not only a learning
experience but also a partaking in transferring science fiction to science
fact. Every invention starts out as an idea, and so even if it’s not used in science
fiction story telling it’s, in a sense, still a fiction. But once it becomes
tangible it’s fact. And even though both commercial word processing software
like MS Word and open source software like Libre Office has been around for a
long time and is technology we now take for granted, it started off once as an
idea in science fiction and its on-going innovations continue growing out of
those science fiction roots. So I’m glad to partake in the use of new innovated
computer technology such as Microsoft Windows 10, the HP Pavilion--which is new
to me at least since it’s a big upgrade from my old laptop (a Toshiba)-- and
function-specific software such as Libre’s Writer.
Do you think ever advancing word processing software such as
Libre Office’s Writer with its word suggestion tool is making writing too easy?
Are machines beginning to write for us to the extent that us writers, God
forbid, will go extinct someday? Please feel free to leave your comments in the
box below.
Until next time . . .
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