When Writer launches, it opens a new document, which I then need to go and close.
Can I make it start up empty, showing just the background, from which I can choose to open one of my recent docs?
Are you sure you need to close the new document before opening an existing document? I use v5.4 and never bother to close the new document, with no ill effects that I have noticed.
Thanks to you, I looked again, and now I see that the open file button gives a couple different ways to open recently used docs. Yes, that does it.