I am loving the Thesaurus too, though most of the time I use my English/German dictionary for that rather than an actual Thesaurus. But I guess for me that's more of a unique situation, seeing how I seldom write fiction in my native language.
It's not that I "translate" in my head what I write from German to English. I write in English and the words form in English (otherwise writing would not work like this, I think). But every now and then, I'm not sure about a word or an expression -- if they have the right feel for the situation, if they mean what I think they mean. Often my gut feeling is right, but in those cases, I usually go to LEO (http://dict.leo.org) and look the word up.
And in a way, I can use the dictionary as a Thesaurus by clicking back and forth between the German and English words. Sometimes when you click the German word that feels right to use, it'll offer you other English words that mean the same or a similar thing. And then I take my pick for what I think fits best.
As for overuse of expressions, yeah, I have that problem sometimes, and I'm sure it's coupled with the non-native speaker thing. My active English vocabulary, while probably being way more extensive than the next German's, is still a lot smaller than my passive one. Well, that probably applies to German too, but I still get annoyed at myself sometimes for getting stuck on expressions and words and descriptions that I feel I keep using too often. That's when it helps to have a good beta reader.
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It's not that I "translate" in my head what I write from German to English. I write in English and the words form in English (otherwise writing would not work like this, I think). But every now and then, I'm not sure about a word or an expression -- if they have the right feel for the situation, if they mean what I think they mean. Often my gut feeling is right, but in those cases, I usually go to LEO (http://dict.leo.org) and look the word up.
And in a way, I can use the dictionary as a Thesaurus by clicking back and forth between the German and English words. Sometimes when you click the German word that feels right to use, it'll offer you other English words that mean the same or a similar thing. And then I take my pick for what I think fits best.
As for overuse of expressions, yeah, I have that problem sometimes, and I'm sure it's coupled with the non-native speaker thing. My active English vocabulary, while probably being way more extensive than the next German's, is still a lot smaller than my passive one. Well, that probably applies to German too, but I still get annoyed at myself sometimes for getting stuck on expressions and words and descriptions that I feel I keep using too often. That's when it helps to have a good beta reader.