Writing in DOS

Conan: These novels that you write tend to be over a thousand pages long, they are massive tomes, and apparently you write them all on a computer. But, unlike most authors, you are not worried about a computer virus. An author who writes a thousand page book, their greatest fear is that a virus invades and destroys their book. You are not worried about a computer virus. Why?

George R. R. Martin: I have a secret weapon. I have two computers. I have the computer that I browse the internet with and then I have my actual computer which is a DOS machine not connected to the internet.

Conan: A DOS machine.

George R. R. Martin: A DOS machine. You remember DOS? I used WordStar 4.0 as my word processing system.

Conan: Did you make this computer out of wood? Did you carve it? I'm curious, why did you decide to stick with this old program?

George R. R. Martin: Well, 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. I hate these modern systems where you type out a lower case letter and it becomes a capital, I don’t want a capital. If I’d wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key.

Conan: You yell at computers a lot. What about spell check. I bet you hate spell check.

George R. R. Martin: I hate spell check. Especially when you have the Realm of Orbitor.

Conan: You would constantly be like "and then Lord Targaryen" and it would be like "There's no Targaryen, You mean Tire Center!" No! I don't mean Tire Center!