One of my hobbies is running a little science fiction newsletter, called Ansible, and in a recent issue ...
(Oh, all right, let me explain. The infamous PCW software house Ansible Information was called after the newsletter, simply because I already had a bank account in the name of Ansible. The actual word had been coined by Ursula Le Guin in the 60s and used in several of her SF novels for an instantaneous interstellar communication device ... which seemed to make it a good SF newsletter title. Let me brag a moment: Ansible is the only British publication ever to top the Best Fanzine category of science fiction's US-dominated Hugo award, a category which Ansible has won three times. On the other hand, Christopher Priest points out that the title is an obvious anagram of "lesbian" -- perhaps Ursula's little joke.)
As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted, a recent Ansible carried a news snippet about the cutting-edge SF author Neal Stephenson, author of novels like The Diamond Age which explore the radical effects on society of new computer developments, virtual reality and nanotechnology. The interesting point was that Stephenson had just gone public with an announcement that he'd given up writing with a word processor, and invested in a fountain pen. Gorblimey.
Why? Because "his laptop computer crashed, erasing a large chunk of writing." That is, because he was too idle to make backups. Perhaps realizing that this was not the most sensible of reasons, Stephenson went on to add that the computer made things too easy and "caused me to spill stuff out as fast as I could type.... When I went back and read it later, I found that I was using hackneyed phrases and sometimes writing in kind of a thoughtless way. With the pen, I tend to go a little slower and think a little harder." (New York Times, 9 April 1998)
You don't have to be a crazed Luddite to sympathize a little with the problem -- even if the Stephenson solution seems weirdly extreme. The lazy tendency to lose focus on what you're currently writing, let alone what you've already written, is encouraged by computers because even the best monitor display is a little bit harder to stare at with prolonged attention than mere paper. Nor is it easy to compare passages on different pages.
Another, subtler problem with word processing in general is identified by science fiction's wittiest critic John Clute in his book Look at the Evidence (1995). Dissecting a novel whose title doesn't matter, Clute reckoned that it ...
"... reads as though it had been written -- as most books are today, just as this review is being written -- on a computer; and if it doesn't exactly overstay its welcome the way books used to when they went on too long, it does, all the same, give off a sense that too many luxurious repetitions of the moody bits were patched into the text, just to make sure. (In the old days, when they were written consecutively, books grew too long at their top end, like buddleia; nowadays, when they can be assembled from tesseract blocks like vast mosaics, a book is likely to become too long at any point; and then get short again, maybe.)"
Even moving blocks of text around for the best effect -- so wonderfully easy with word-processing -- has its hazards. You might almost unconsciously be using more urgent prose rhythms, shorter and punchier words and sentences, in the action-packed Chapter 6. Then you decide that a chunk of philosophical exposition from the more leisurely Chapter 8 needs to be moved back to Chapter 6. There's nothing wrong with the words from Chapter 8, but in Chapter 6 they subtly don't fit....
Again, we're not talking about some hideous, inherent flaw in using a word processor, but about human nature and the attractions of the line of least resistance. LocoScript and ProText don't themselves prevent you from reading your whole text closely in the right order, looking for jarring changes of rhythm, for Stephenson's hackneyed phrasing, and for Clute's quagmires of tedium where the book suddenly and locally becomes too long. Word processors just make it easier to be lazy and let your eye slide over the dodgy bits. As I wrote once in PCW Plus, smooth and glowing text on screen -- unlike tatty sheets of typescript -- can soothe your critical senses merely by looking so polished, perfect and "finished".
Thus many writers force themselves to take a hard look at their text by printing it out, and determinedly reading and scribbling all over the resulting pages. Terry Pratchett even has a pool of what he calls "beta test readers", trusted fans who read the electronic drafts of Discworld books and tell him which parts don't feel quite right.
One trick to help you see your writing with fresh eyes is to change the word processor margin settings. Familiar paragraphs that looked vaguely OK as a whole suddenly appear with a new shape, revealing internal awkwardnesses of phrasing. Since I mostly write magazine columns and send them in by e-mail, I always reread the text as it appears in the completely different font, margins and background of my e-mail software -- and am frequently boggled by dreadful phrases suddenly highlighted by the change in perspective.
Knot to mention sum miss takes that parsed the spieling chequer....