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Lots of professional authors use "advanced" text editors for their stuff. And sadly, that often means old editors, because they often tend to have features that modern word processors lack (or make it easier to accept then). And of course once you get used to something...

There was a Salon article about people still using XyWrite[1]. As mentioned in the post, GRRM is one of the people[2] still using WordStar. I know that Steven Brust is using Emacs[3].

[1]: http://www.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/08/25feature.html/

[2]: http://www.sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm

[3]: from the front matter of http://dreamcafe.com/firefly.html



Steven Brust worked as a programmer before he was a full time novelist, according to his son, who is also a programmer.


Another example: Vernor Vinge (sci fi author, and a former math and CS professor at San Diego State) uses emacs [http://www.norwescon.org/archives/norwescon33/vingeinterview...]


Yet another example would be Neal Stephenson:

"I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor."

- In the Beginning was the Command Line http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html


That was written before his conversion to Mac OS X.

We don't know if it still applies.




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