Oxford English Dictionary 'will not be printed again'

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Originally Posted by davem

in Tolkien's case that would have meant no HoM-e - in fact, no Sil as we have it at all - there would have been no multiple drafts for him to play around with, return to, amend, switching around different versions. We'll never see anything like HoM-e in the future, because writers no longer work that way, & that's because the computer has made it unnecessary

That's not entirely true. I began writing in a time when the basic electric typewriter was the pinnacle of a sophisticated writer's tool, but I mentor a number of young writers who weren't even born before the first affordable home computers came into being. Because computer files have virtually no physical space needed to be kept, they keep all the various drafts and notes and ideas, on their computers, and backed up on other storage media, just in case the computer dies, or in case they might want to use in a later project what they're editing out of the current one. And they keep drafts so they can compare versions, decide which really is better, and what was just an interesting idea that they aren't using, but don't want to throw away forever. Certainly, there are some who always destroy everything but the finished product, but that's true even if a person uses no electronic media at all. Tolkien was a pack rat, and would've been that way regardless, I think. I'm much the same way creatively, and I know young people who are, too.