Any good stories you have about writing?
raffi: I used to work as a scientist for the Air Force and part of my job was writing reports and proposals. My community expected clear and concise technical writing. At the time I had a lot of trouble with passive voice and complex expressions. I was intimidated by our style guidelines and it really made it hard for me to start writing. One day I took a look at Style and Dict (GNU Tools for checking your writing) and wondered if I could do better.I then set out to create After the Deadline (http://www.afterthedeadline.com) and it has changed my writing in two major ways.1) Having a good tool in my corner gave me the confidence to focus on the content of my writing and not the mechanics. I knew I could run my writing through my tool later and get rid of the passive voice and complex expressions.2) Having software beat me over the head with my bad habits forced me to notice them and what they were. I then stopped making some of these same mistakes. My writing is not perfect (and I'm in the position where some people find meaning in their life pointing this out), but it's passable. :)So my recommendation for writers:Know that not all spell and grammar checking software sucks. There are solutions beyond Microsoft Word. Find something that matches the style of writing you're going for and use it to help with the mechanical things.I also recommend turning off the "as you type" spell and grammar check as it's a distraction.