new to his sight dumb question...maybe

Your luck went awry when I was the first person to read this. I'm sure someone who knows what you're saying will be along shortly. And after you said we were so bright and informed,

Welcome to AW.

If your inner critic is stopping you from finishing any Works in Progress (WIPs), then maybe you should give http://www.nanowrimo.org a go. When you do it in November, you have the added bonus of extra support, but the idea can be applied throughout the year. Pick two works in progress you really care about and don't allow yourself to work on anything else until one of them gets finished. (If you get an idea for something else, write it down and continue with the story) Another idea: have someone review your work. Your inner critic may be too harsh or pushing the wrong issues on to you. Once you get reliable feedback from someone else, your inner critic is out of a job and might actually shut up.

(Side note: Spelling checkers won't find right words used in the wrong place like the word "sight" in your original post we're a website with "site" meaning location rather then "seeing". Make sure you look up commonly mixed up homonyms so you can check for these.)

There's nothing wrong with a 4.6 grade level for readability. Many classic works of fiction have a sixth grade readability score.

My advice, such as it is, is to ignore such things (turning them off, for example, while writing), and simply listen to the story that you want to tell, and get it down.

Good luck!

barbilarry said:

Then it gets to a point when I spell chech and all the above mentioned stuff. It gives me an 81 or such on read ability and a 4.6 on grade level. I am such a perfectionist that I become the rewrite monster from h--l ...

Click to expand...

I don't understand. Is there something you dislike about an 81 readability score and a 4.6 grade reading level?

Dale

Welcome to AW

Do use Word's word count; that's fine.

Spell check is useful, but has its limitations. It can't recognized that a correctly spelled word isn't the right word. As Stijn pointed out, it won't catch misused homonyms: there/their/they're, its/it's, to/two/too, right/write/rite/wright, etc. Many simple typos also create correctly spelled words: from/form, this/his, heat/hat, hat/hate, etc. And a lot of proper names aren't in Word's dictionary, so they're flagged as errors even when correct. You'll still need to proofread your work thoroughly.

All the rest of the tools--grammar check, readability score, grade level, and so on--are more of a distraction than anything useful. They're tuned for bland business letters, not fiction. Ignore them.

I can't answer your question, but welcome to the cooler, anyway.

No kidding -- I am pleased as punch when I get a grade level below 5 and readability in the eighties! What that means is that a reader can sail through and enjoy the story without any head-scratching. It is good to have scores like that, it's not some kind of put-down of your work.

You seem to be worrying about results when you don't understand what the results mean.

And a perfectionist knows how to spell grammar.

Get the basics right before worrying about being a perfectionist.

Welcome, barbilarry -

Don't run the spell check on your entire work. Have it on while you write and avoid getting the overall grades and such. The only thing I ever used it for was a passive count, and I'd far rather catch them as I write, anyway. (Saves on the re-writes. )

Welcome, barbilarry.

First of all, sh!t-can all of the writing evaluation stuff. It's meaningless for fiction writing.

Second, what is more important to you, the story you are writing, or the writing itself? It should be about the story and nothing else on any first draft. Writing is about story, and that story is written for readers, not for the writer. Get over the agonizing about the writing and just get the story down in that first draft. Threre will be plenty of time to get the actual writing in good shape in subsequent drafts. But you have nothing but a bunch of words until you finish off a story.

The following is a challenge, not a slam. We see posts like yours all the time here, and they are filled with nothing but excuses. Jumping from project to project when writing gets a little tough is the worst trait to develop if one is trying to become a writer. Writers finish projects. It takes self-discipline. Period. So here is the challenge--pick one project and carry it through to the end. Turn off your desire to get the writing right. Turn off the temptation to jump to another project. Right now, you are just a person who writes stuff. Become a writer--finish a project.

Another $.02: Perfectionism is not self-discipline, it is more often a form of self-indulgence. Nothing is ever perfect.

You can turn off almost anything that you don't need in Word. Learn how to use your tools effectively and they will help rather than hinder.