I'm not advocating writing the whole first draft of a novel without editing. I couldn't advocate that, even if it might be the best plan, because I don't do it. But I do recommend getting a decent chunk of writing down, at least a few hundred words, before you return to edit, and I recommend finding some scheme for ensuring that the editing causes only a limited delay.
The only thing I let software do is format and spellcheck. However, if you know your glue or other problem words, you could use Find and Replace* to see where they are and decide if they're needed or not. *or whatever your software's closest equivalent is.
The trouble with PWA (and even more so hemmingway app) is a lack of discrimination - blindly accepting all their suggestions will ruin your writing. They are useful if you only use them to flag potential issues and decide for yourself which to accept and which to reject
Yeah, I do that Find thing all the time. I'm directing the software in that instance; it's not directing me. All it does is save me some time. If I had to go through the piece manually to look for certain words or phrases, it would take ages. Find is just a lot quicker.
Maybe if you think your first draft is little more than a list of events and ideas, why not make it into an outline of the story anyway, most of my work starts that way, the outline is mostly just a chronological list of 'stuff', but suddenly a bit bursts out and there's an actual scene popped in there as well. Outlining can be anything from a brief list of headings to as many words as you like. You might be able to turn what you regard as an 'issue' into something helpful. Book two of my current saga is in basic outline form - which for me is a series of three levels of headings in MS Word, I use the Headings for navigation, but the scene where my heroic little band help themselves to The Girl With The Pearl Earring and a self portrait by Rembrandt before escaping in a lifeboat is almost finished, writing method changes over time and according to what's in progress right now, it's a case of trying things until it works nicely for you. Patience helps, but sadly I don't have much of that.
