New Toy

I'm preparing the short story for Kindle, and it has to be in basically text format.  So I converted to text, and of course, stupid MicroSoft decided that since "WordPad isn't a word processing tool" that, by design, it doesn't need a spell checker.  Damn, my email has spell check, and it's not a word processing tool. 

So, I bought Scriviner.  My friend Joanne introduced me to it about two years ago, but it doesn't really do MS Word format, and at the time, I was sure I'd be able to get an agent, and agents require Word format.  C'est la vie.

I'm not saying you should buy it, but if you haven't heard about Scriviner, and you plan on e-publishing, you should check it out: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

One of the perks that I just stumbled upon was that Scriviner counts how many times you've used words (e.g., realized) and provides you a list with the count.  This may not sound important unless you're a writer, or you've read a book where the author uses the same word too many times and it starts pulling you out of the story.  I have a bad habit, when I'm in draft mode, of doing that.  So this is a great tool for me.

Of course, I spent the better part of the day just getting comfortable with it.  But in the long run, I think it'll help.