Playing pretty

I've been writing at white-hot speed for the past week and added about 10,000 words to "The Danger of Destiny". Today I sat in front of the screen, my mind blank, so I decided to surf - but surf with a purpose.

Last night I read Chapter 8 to my writing group and, despite my reading it aloud earlier in the day, I was horrified at the number of repeated words. White-hot speed has its drawbacks! There had to be software to help with this, I thought. And there is.

Pro Writing Aid is FREE. You copy and paste the text you wish to be analysed into the online box and press the button. Numerous reports are available. Repeated words, pacing, overused words, grammar, writing style, sticky sentences - want to explore that one further, cliches and redundancies, even homonyms. For Windows users, there is a Word add-in and for us Mac users there is the promise of a similar add-in for Word for Mac.

If you want to splash out $35 (£23)/pa, you can 'go premium' with a few added benefits.

So, instead of writing, I've been playing and I've learned a lot about my writing style, some of which is sobering. The big advantage of this is now I know about my particular weaknesses - well some of them - and I can allow my subconscious to give me a nudge while I am writing.

And the pretty? Another feature is the ability to 'Word Cloud' the input text. The analysis highlights the most used words and Word Cloud creates a picture. To show you, here is the Word Cloud of Chapter 20.

See what I mean about pretty?

The added advantage for me this morning has been that the results of the short break from the heat of creativity has motivated me to crack on and write some more.

Better get on with it......