I definitely agree with you that Word provides too much of a set-in-stone medium. Not my favourite program by any means. That part of your post I was cheering on enthusiastically :) It's why I'm so beholden to my little Virtual Typewriter program - it allows me to write an actual, honest-to-deity draft without the pain of retyping my illegible handwriting...also, it has pretty stationary and makes a 'ding' sound at the end of each page. Word count is just one of the obligations Word lays on a creative writer, but I think it's in combination with all the others that it becomes so damn oppressive.