Were successful novelists without word processors more capable somehow?

I think people spent more time to get the same amount of words in the quill pen age. And I do think you just end up with a different kind of writing.

One of my favorite early-America authors is Washington Irving. In "A Tour of the Prairies," he writes about an explorer getting sprayed by a skunk. Wryly Irving writes something like "the surrounding air was filled with fragrance." You can almost feel him sitting there with his quill pen, pausing to choose the perfect, grandest possible way to describe it.

I think that's how I'd characterize pre-word processor writing. Since the whole process was slower, there was perhaps more intentionality in each individual word, resulting in more compact but more intense sentences.

Fun fact: The first novel written on a typewriter was: Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer." (1876)

What if one used a fountain pen and one a pencil? What about a typewriter versus quill and parchment?

What is more important to quality? The end result or the effort it took to get there?

A word processor might be good for spell checking (but so are editors). It might be good for rescuing old drafts (but so are waste-paper baskets). It might even help arrange your characters and scenes (but so do card indexes).