"Writing is easy", goes the old saw, "you just stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." I've on occasion wondered just exactly how the word processor has affected the act of writing. Has it made it better, worse, the same? I can't entirely fathom people today who still use a typewriter or longhand for extended composition, but they exist. Most of the great works of Western literature were composed with a pen or a typewriter, which when you look at something novel sized makes it even more impressive. Not only did someone write that, it was with tools that seem almost singularly designed to frustrate getting thoughts from the mind to the page.
My first experience with word processors predates high school. On occasion my Dad would need to go into his office on the weekend and my brother and I would accompany him. We looked forward to this because my Dad's office had three incredibly cool toys. A multi-line telephone with intercom, a photocopier, and a Wang word processor. At the time, this was the closest I'd ever got to something that resembled a computer, and I thought it was the neatest thing I'd ever seen. You type stuff on this green screen, and hit a few buttons, and this daisy-wheel printer in the next room would go off like a machine gun, and pow, there was what you wrote centered, underlined, you name it. Now, I was eight, so it's not like what I or my brother wrote was particularly memorable, but we enjoyed ourselves. Probably more than my Dad, now that I think back, since he had to work on the weekend.
I leapt at word processing the first time I got a chance to use it in high school. I possess some of the worst handwriting known to the craft, and developed such an utter loathing of touch typing in grade school that I never bothered to pick it up. I've always wondered if this has affected how I write. I can get up to four flying fingers going on a good day, so things tend to come in fits and starts. A sentence, maybe two, then nothing. Then a few more words. Then I delete the whole line and start again, or move it around. Little points and observations tend to accumulate at the bottom of something I'm working on, sort of a running set of footnotes that sometimes get worked back into the text.
In contrast, my wife, who can type like blazes, blasts out paragraphs like a machine gun. Blatta-blatta-blatta. Intro paragraph. Blatta-blatta-blatta. Supporting information. Blatta-blatta-blatta. Towards the end there's the usual mopping up that comes after any major operation, policing up the commas, ferreting out dangling participles holed up in a paragraph with a grenade, that sort of thing. I've known guests to dive for cover when she starts typing. I only get that reaction when I start speaking.
I can't claim to have done extensive research (this is not the day job afterall), but from the research and summaries of research I've looked at:
http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~candc/archives/v2/2_4_html/2_4_04_Mcallister.html
http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~candc/archives/v4/4_1_html/4_1_1_Hawisher.html
http://scs.une.edu.au/EDIT312/competencies/Resources/BasicOps/WordProcessor.html
It seems that word processor use can reduce the number of mechanical errors a writer makes, it doesn't improve the overall quality of writing in and of itself. The first conclusion shouldn't be too surprising. The whole point of the word processor's is to make the technical aspects of writing easier. I expected some indication that easing the technical process would result in some improvement in the quality, but apparently this is not the case, or any improvements are too small to make much difference.
I find that my writing is actually worse when I go straight to a typewriter. There is something about writing it all in longhand first that makes it more organic - like I have some kind of physical control over it. Plus, the first time I type it, it's already a second draft, so it can't be THAT horrible.