James asked me two good questions:
1) Do you compose your sonnet (or other structured verse) on paper first? Have you ever tried to compose structured verse directly on screen? If so, any difference? 2) How strict are you about iambs? I get the sense you put more focus on syllable count, but I may be mistaken on that score.
Before I answer, let me make it clear that I am not prescribing anything, but only telling what suits me now. I've changed my ways before and I probably will again, at least about the second question. As for the first, I've written virtually everything at the keyboard for 30 years, and, since I've had Macs (1985!), I've seldom printed anything before I thought it was good enough to show to a first reader. The story I tell, which is at least partly true, is that Mrs. Slaughter, my 3rd grade teacher and I'm not kidding about the name, thought I'd be handicapped by being left-handed and tied my left hand to the desk when we were learning cursive. I can't read my writing 30 minutes after I've written it.
These days I write poetry using a program called NoteTaker, a sort of super-outliner. I've posted the drafts of the last sonnet I wrote here. The lines of asterisks represent the places where I copied some core out of one entry of the outline into a new entry and started elaborating or changing from that new base. I try not to erase anything (I'm bad sometimes) so that all previous versions and doodles are visible by scrolling, and I can also go to different pages and sections in the NoteTaker document to read or copy things I've done before. It works marvelously well for me.
NoteTaker will produce html, but not flexibly enough. I use BBEdit to format these entries, and Radio Userland for blogging. It's pretty much digital all the way down for me—I don't remember the last time I used a pen or pencil on a poem.
The simple answer to the second question is that I count only feet, not syllables. These days I'm fairly strict about substitutions, using (almost) no headless iambs and using trochees only initially or after a caesura. I don't mind the occasional anapest, except in the first foot, and I'm trying without much success to use more feminine rhymes. I'm wary of enjambment, mostly because I used to be much too free with it, and I will not enjamb across rhyme groups or stanzas. I do claim the right of elision, when it suits me, between adjacent vowels and across the liquid consonants. As an example, here's how I'd scan that same sonnet:
Walking Away
1. He LEFT / the KEY / in the UN / locked DOOR, / surPRISED
2. To FIND / it ODD,/ and HARD / er THAN / he'd THOUGHT.
3. He'd MISS / this CUL / de SAC, / he RE / aLIZED.
4. He'd MISS / the CAR, / the KIDS, / the COF / feePOT.
5. SINCE there / was ON / ly ONE / way HE / could GO
6. He WENT / that WAY, / each QUICK / ening STEP / unPLANNED
7. UnTIL / he FOUND / the ROAD / he COULD / n't KNOW
8. When IN / that OTH / er LIFE, / that OTH / er LAND.
9. SOMEhow / he WORE / no SHOES / and his FEET HURT,
10. But DIS / tantLY, / JUST as / his SUN / burned BACK
11. Was ON / ly IN /teresTING. / He FELT / aLERT, /
12. But WHY? / Was THERE / some FEAR? / Was THERE / some LACK?
13. AFter / a WHILE / a BEET / le LAND / ed THERE
14. And SPAWNED / beFORE / reTURN / ing TO / the AIR.
That's pretty conventional pentameter, though I don't think I'd quite realized how many trochaic substitutions there are before scanning the thing—I don't scan while I'm writing except to count beats or to try to figure out why something's wrong. Still, the three in lines 5, 9, and 13 start, not just lines, but sections of the poem, and the fourth, in line 10, occurs immediately following a caesura and reinforces, I think, the loss of purpose the character is experiencing. The first two could probably be read as iambs without bothering me much.
There are three feet here one might reasonably call either anapests or iambs using elision: the 3rd foot of line 1, the 4th foot of line 6, and the 3rd foot of line 11. I call them all iambs.
Line 9 starts the volta, not really necessary in this kind of sonnet, and it has an interesting additional variation in its last four syllables. That pattern, - - / /, is sometimes called a double iamb and sometimes called an ionic minor. I don't really care—but it's not a pyrhhic followed by a spondee.
If I were revising this right now, I'd probably start with line 12—it isn't really strong enough to set up the couplet. One thing that might help is to arrange the line so that the accents shift between the first "was there" and the second. Maybe something like this:
But WHY? / Was THERE / some FEAR?/ or WAS / there LACK?
7:46:16 PM 
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