The only person who needs to be pleased with yor quilting is YOU. I use QuiltPro and love it. I own EQ (given from a friend who died) and even after working through the lessons, I hate it. I enjoy designing quilts even more than making them. I prefer not to follow other people's designs most of the time. However, we are not all required to follow a single path in our quilting (thank goodness!).
A couple of years ago, I designed a quilt on freezer paper. The advantage is that I could work in the scale I wanted. I don't have much use for graph paper for exactly that reason. Enlarging can be a pain. Our great grandmothers often designed on old (pressed to set the ink) newspapers.
Please don't let those of us who rarely use commercial patterns intimidate you. If you NEVER use quilt software, that will not mean that you are a less perfect person. Some members of my guild hate the idea of quilt software. A few love it. When people are ambivalent, I urge them to try. Some of my guild sisters design using PaintBrush, which sounds frustrating to me. I evaluated educational software for a teacher's mag for several years and taught computer usage. The whole subject seems very natural to me, but I know it is not for everyone. On the other hand, I can't draw. Before I was a computer user, I used cheap colored paper and scissors to mock up my applique designs.