During my school years, I had three years of Latin, four of French, and two of Spanish. I can't speak any of them

Heh. Boy do I know that feeling.

Since I'm always working in Word, I'll type the 'almost-right' word, then use the internal MS Word thesaurus to see if I can identify the exact word I'm looking for.

I feel like a prize idiot, because I didn't even know Word *had* a thesaurus. Sometimes I type in the almost-right word and put an asterisk afterwards, so I know to go back and find the right one.

I believe that it's human tendency to write a bit more 'upscale' than we speak, so it worked for me.

Oh yeah, and that presents all sorts of difficulties for getting the "right" characterization. Even if your canon is book-based, you so often see the characters *speak* as opposed to *write*, and I definitely agree that everyone I've ever encountered has different writing habits than they do speech habits.

But, when all else fails, I will 'settle' for the 'adequate' word;

It really depends on the piece, but I've done this fairly often. It drives me buggy. Whenever I reread I note the word and lament I didn't find the better word I knew there was! But sometimes there's just a mental block, the way there is sometimes when I write a first draft meaning to rewrite it and simply can't find new ways to rephrase certain parts.

I don't think any method is 'wrong' if we keep that goal in mind.

Oh, definitely!

Thanks for your thoughts!