Plugged-ln Prose

By J.D. Reed

Authors switch on to word processors

Jimmy Carter uses one. So do Novelists John Hersey and Richard Condon. Every month more writers are discarding their pencils and typewriters for "word processors"--technical jargon for small computers with typewriter-like keyboards, electronic screens for scanning and manipulating text, units to store information, and high-speed printers. Like all other modern products, they come in a range of prices, from Apple's no-frills model at about $2,500 to the luxurious new CPT 8100. Cost of the machine, with a twin-head Rotary VII Printer that can switch instantaneously from roman to italic type or from letters to scientific symbols: $19,990.

Plugged-in writing is not a new phenomenon. In 1973 Hersey tried out electronic fiction writing in order to aid a Yale University computer project--and became an instant convert. But it took a while to get the gadget out of the institution and into the study. Once Carter was pictured composing his memoirs on the Lanier "No Problem," authors and others could easily imagine themselves at the console. Spurred by the new availability of word-processing programs for personal computers like Radio Shack, Apple and Atari, demand for home units has risen dramatically. Among the aficionados: Bestseller Luminaries Michael Crichton (Congo) and Alvin Toffler (The Third Wave). Spy-Master Robert Ludlum endorses the Atari system in magazine ads. Though Novelist Irving Wallace still writes on a 1920-vintage portable, he has promised his secretary a processor.

These authors praise their new ability to delete and move words and paragraphs at the touch of a few keys, and to enjoy automatic pagination, footnoting and regular book-quality right-hand margins. Novelist Stanley Elkin (The Living End), 51, professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, was given the use of a $13,000 Lexitron by the school. Even before he was disabled by the disease, claims Elkin, the processor would have accelerated his output: "You don't have to screw around erasing and crossing out, finding a clear place in the forest to drop the next hat. If I'd had it in 1964, I'd have written three more books by now." Chicago Author William Brashler (The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings), 33, switched on when his exhausted electric portable began throwing keys across the room. Says Brashler of his $8,400 IBM Displaywriter: "It takes the drudgery out of writing. I correct a mistake on the screen in a second, and the printer retypes the page in three seconds. No more retyping the whole page by hand."

Co-author of April in Paris, Screenwriter Melville Shavelson converted his Radio Shack home computer into a word processor with the addition of inexpensive software. This double-barreled capacity to tap and then manipulate information allows him a futuristic scope: "I subscribe to a Virginia computer service called The Source. I can get Jack Anderson scoops three days before they're scoops," claims Shavelson. "I can feed into it any two cities in the world and it'll figure out the airline connections for me, with a restaurant guide to various cities. Also I have a research service and memory bank feature that gives me data from 150 libraries around the world right on my screen. It's everything in one package."

Sesame Street Consultant Christopher Cerf adds even more voltage to his endorsement: "I use my processor to write, to store notes, to create, to edit, to organize. It's already paid for itself. I don't need a secretary any more. It's the most important tool writers have been given since Gutenberg created movable type."

Still, there were those who thought Gutenberg's invention was the work of the devil, and there are many writers who refuse to countenance a glowing screen above their keyboards. Screenwriter Jeffrey Fiskin (Cutter and Bone) decided against one: "Testing a machine, I programmed out the. The processor also removed thesis and theocracy. I thought: 'Do I want one of those, or do I want to add to my wine cellar?' The wine cellar won." John Updike speaks for many colleagues: "I am not persuaded that the expense and time it takes to learn the machine would be worth it. I'll stick to my manual, as I have for 20 years."

Even zealots occasionally have second thoughts. Carter forgot to store several pages of his memoirs and lost them from his Lanier "No Problem." Historical Romance Writer Robyn Carr (The Blue Falcon) fears that workmen digging near her new house in Florida will hit a power line. A voltage drop of even a few seconds could cause the displayed page of text to disappear on her Burroughs Redactor-III. (Apple Computer Inc. offers an accessory for just such occasions--a battery pack that supplies electricity during blackouts. Its name: Apple Juice.) The most surreal glitch occurred when Environmentalist-Writer Michael Parfit, 30, recently heard a zap, and his Radio Shack TRS-80 stopped dead. It seemed that ants had crawled into the air vents.

These are the equivalents of leaky pens, misplaced notes, carbon paper inserted backward--all the inevitable vexations of the writing trade. They may be annoying, but they are not enough to turn off the current of this newest electronic revolution. Even the biggest drawback to processors, their size, is shrinking. Sony, master of the mini, recently introduced a 3-lb. briefcase-size keyboard unit capable of storing text to be printed out later. A few stubborn novelists and historians may resist until the final pencil stub and the last typewriter ribbon, but in the final chapter, the processor will win. As Cerf concludes, "I have seen the future, and it glows." --By J.D. Reed. Reported by

Jeanne North/New York

With reporting by Jeanne North

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.