How can I call myself a writer…

[Heliotrope]

I'm with Chessie on the creative voice.

The more I make my editor shut up, the more my crit partners like my work. WTF? But I found it was the same with one of my partners. The more time she spent trying to sound "professional" the more drained of blood her work felt. She would send me these super early "what do you think of this concept?" drafts and I they would be AMAZING! Then she would "clean them up" and they would come back as zombies. The walking dead. White, cold, lifeless words. Boring.

What happened? She got too self conscious. It was a shame. But I did the same thing. After I just let go and let the words flow things got way better.

Why? I think readers actually want to hear "my" voice, as weird as that seems. I have things to say, and I have a certain way of saying them that is only natural to me. I'm self conscious of my voice and think "oh, it's not so great" but to my readers it's new and different because it's not their voice.

That is a roundabout way of saying keep "It was a dark and stormy night." Many great chapters have started with less than that.

 

[Chessie]

I seriously don't even care what any other writer that's not my buddy says about my work. But that's another topic for discussion and I don't want to derail Nimue's thread (although I'm curious as to WHY she just hasn't been writing. Why? What is it??)

 

[FifthView]

That is a roundabout way of saying keep "It was a dark and stormy night." Many great chapters have started with less than that.

I feel properly chastised.

But wait, if I listen to your voice, I'm not properly shutting it out and letting my own creative voice reign supreme!

Nimue had mentioned awful prose, and the feeling is something I can easily understand. Happens to me.

And "not writing" for a day or three or months may not suddenly switch a person from being a writer to being a non-writer – although I think there might a paradox in them thar words. :confused-sign:

Helio, many great chapters may start with less than that, but my goal is not to write those chapters but write my own. So nyah nyah.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

It was a dark and stormy consciousness full of purple thoughts, running like rivulets of rain down the glass of her eyes, blurring the stark white of the blank page.

 

[Heliotrope]

True, though I'd argue that if you use it just to start, and you whip through a thousand words with your editor shut off, and then you go back and change them later once a better idea comes to you...

Isn't it better to write a thousand words and only keep half, than to write none at all because your editor is telling you you suck?

This took me a while to understand myself lol. They aren't etched in stone. A lot of my first drafts are a thousand words of something that looks like this:

It was dark outside. The moon was shining though, so not pitch dark. Across the street the neighbors garage lights flicked on, but only for an instant before going dark again. Mr. Johnson had probably just grabbed a beer from the outside fridge.

Martin wanted a beer. A cold one. A brew, like the guys back home used to call it. "Hey man," they'd call out from in front the glaring tv screen, "pass me a brew."

Martin had no brew though. Or a tv. Or anyone to share the loneliness.

Maybe not obvious through the internet, but that was stream of consciousness writing. Just whatever. Get it out there and see what comes out. Later I can edit... fix the lame stuff.

Anyway, yeah, I don't want to derail Nimue's thread either.

 

[Chessie]

It was a dark and stormy consciousness full of purple thoughts, running like rivulets of rain down the glass of her eyes, blurring the stark white of the blank page.

An autumn storm lashed and whirled against her window. The deadline was tomorrow and she'd only produced about twenty-five words in three hours of sitting. Twenty-five uninteresting, nauseating words. One for every year she'd been working on this novel.

 

[Chessie]

I'm here all day.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Hopefully without derailing, as there has been much well said in this thread...

There is a fine line between finding voice and going castrated writer voice, heh heh. The problem is that writers tend to have both Jekyl and Hyde living inside of them. One loves the writing, the other hates the writing, and this can flip from day to day, LOL.

I've critiqued writers who've answered "that's my voice, I'll sound bland if I get rid of XYZ". This has happened more than once. The truth is a bit different. Refining the prose refines the voice, makes it stronger. I think the problem comes when someone says to the writer "you're using too many -ly adverbs" and the writer goes crap! And just deletes adverbs, goes for clean and grammatical without considering that the adverbs can be replaced, not simply deleted, and then not always. This can go for a whole lot of different writing critiques.

That said, I think it can be useful for a writer to reach a point of castrated writer voice, so that they then can back off of that and find their voice, more concise and clean than before. It's a form of deconstruction of the prose, and it is probably rather instructional. It certainly isn't a mandatory stage in a writer's journey, but I've seen it work for a couple people.

Voice is a tricky thing when it come to critique too, I don't think I fully appreciate anybody's voice until 20k words into a novel. Every writer with a strong voice is a bit like a new haircut... it sucks until you're used to it. Most writers, unfortunately tend to be "meh" as far as voice goes. Such as the writer I promised to never pick on again... ::cough" Sanderson ::cough cough::

I think I've achieved a voice, I just don't know if it's a good one LOL.

I'm with Chessie on the creative voice.

The more I make my editor shut up, the more my crit partners like my work. WTF? But I found it was the same with one of my partners. The more time she spent trying to sound "professional" the more drained of blood her work felt. She would send me these super early "what do you think of this concept?" drafts and I they would be AMAZING! Then she would "clean them up" and they would come back as zombies. The walking dead. White, cold, lifeless words. Boring.

What happened? She got too self conscious. It was a shame. But I did the same thing. After I just let go and let the words flow things got way better.

Why? I think readers actually want to hear "my" voice, as weird as that seems. I have things to say, and I have a certain way of saying them that is only natural to me. I'm self conscious of my voice and think "oh, it's not so great" but to my readers it's new and different because it's not their voice.

That is a roundabout way of saying keep "It was a dark and stormy night." Many great chapters have started with less than that.

 

[Deleted member 4265]

I know this feeling. I call myself an aspiring writer because I've never finished anything. Seriously, I've tried writing short fiction and it just doesn't work. So yeah when I finish something - and I mean really finish like edit it and polish it up until it reads like a publishable manuscript although I wouldn't say no to finishing a rough draft - that's wen I'll consider myself a real writer.

I know people say, "if you write, you're a writer" and that'd be encouraging if I believed it but my personal view is that you're not a writer until you feel like a writer. I think we all have our own personal ideas of what a writer is and in order to be a writer we have to be like that. For me a writer is someone who has finished something and is ready to share it (writing for solely for personal enjoyment is an admirable thing, but I wouldn't consider such a person a writer. Others are free to disagree) When I've finished my WIP and its in a fit state for a beta reader, that's when I'll consider myself to be a writer.

What I'm trying to say is, if you don't feel like a writer, you're not. If you want to be a writer, you've got to do what writers do, whatever that means to you. If that means finishing things. Finish things. If that means writing every day make yourself write everyday. If it means writing "well", nobody writes flawless prose all the time, every day (or even most days) but if the quality of your writing seriously bothers you, and not just because you're feeling down. You can improve. You can study the craft, you can ruthlessly edit as you write until you're satisfied. If you want to be a writer, you'll find a way to do it.

Sorry, if that's harsh.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I got a hat for Christmas that says "WRITER", therefore...

 

[Chessie]

I know this feeling. I call myself an aspiring writer because I've never finished anything. Seriously, I've tried writing short fiction and it just doesn't work. So yeah when I finish something - and I mean really finish like edit it and polish it up until it reads like a publishable manuscript although I wouldn't say no to finishing a rough draft - that's wen I'll consider myself a real writer.

I know people say, "if you write, you're a writer" and that'd be encouraging if I believed it but my personal view is that you're not a writer until you feel like a writer. I think we all have our own personal ideas of what a writer is and in order to be a writer we have to be like that. For me a writer is someone who has finished something and is ready to share it (writing for solely for personal enjoyment is an admirable thing, but I wouldn't consider such a person a writer. Others are free to disagree) When I've finished my WIP and its in a fit state for a beta reader, that's when I'll consider myself to be a writer.

What I'm trying to say is, if you don't feel like a writer, you're not. If you want to be a writer, you've got to do what writers do, whatever that means to you. If that means finishing things. Finish things. If that means writing every day make yourself write everyday. If it means writing "well", nobody writes flawless prose all the time, every day (or even most days) but if the quality of your writing seriously bothers you, and not just because you're feeling down. You can improve. You can study the craft, you can ruthlessly edit as you write until you're satisfied. If you want to be a writer, you'll find a way to do it.

Sorry, if that's harsh.

I do like your response, however, the part in bold stood out to me. Writing books is simply storytelling using the written word. When we focus on it only being about prose, we miss the point. A honed voice is not the same as pretty prose. Is it maybe where Nimue is getting hung up? I question this because she writes with slow, methodical precision and beautiful words...but could that maybe be part of the problem? Striving for perfection? Not to insult the way Nimue does things, but I'm curious. Some of the best books I've read had strong voices where the prose seemed invisible.

 

[Gribba]

Hahahaha... oh dear... spelling mistakes can sometimes make sense... :redface:

So it hit me, I am a writer, I might not be a professional writer but I write when I can, as much as I can and I have the sorties in my head, waiting for me to write them, be it in a notebook or a computer. The stories are there and I will write them, regardless of the time frame it will be in, therefor I will always be a writer! And so are you!

Oh this is great serendipity. Yes, sometimes there are stories, and sometimes there are only furtive sorties. But either way, the battle is far from over.....

:goodjob:

 

[FifthView]

At this point I don't know if I even want to hear someone say they write that slowly and they've made it work, somehow, or if I want to hear that I'm right, I'm not cut out for this; I should stop pretending at goals or improvement and sit in the corner with my daydreams, moving characters around like dolls in shallow scenes without plot or substance, as I did when I was a kid. It's not as though I've made it much beyond that. Just writing for my own entertainment, to scratch that peculiar itch. For what that's worth, it would be better to simply read more and find someone who's written what I want to, but done it well.

It's only realistic: not everybody creates something worth reading. I look at who I am and what little I've done so far and think, "Sorry, honey. This is not happening."

I don't know if anything I have to say will make much difference, but...

I think "being a writer" might not be like being a human, an American or Canadian or Earthling....Something you are 100% of the time or never yet and maybe never ever.

You're either writing, or you're not, and neither is bad unless you want to be the other and aren't.

I once threw myself into studying poetry, for about a decade, and there have been years when I wrote volumes of poetry. But I reached a point where I realized that although I had the tools (more or less) and the theory and could propose a subject for myself, I had nothing much to say. It's not that I had absolutely nothing to say, but only that poetry as a medium was not meet for what I wanted to say at that point in my life. Until I realized this, I was extremely frustrated and felt stupid, thinking I'd wasted a decade trying to be something I'm not–the poems only trickled out now and weren't very satisfying.

And then I spent some years blogging. More like, online essay writing with some random miscellaneous blogging also thrown in. I had a lot to say. Most of this stuff was thrown to the wind, self-pubbed on my blog and read by a steady circle of like-minded folk, although I did have one really crappy essay published eventually by someone who'd first read it on my blog. But eventually, I closed the blog. I still had a lot to say, and the essay form probably suits me better than anything else (witness my long and...well, comments here), but I wanted to give up those careful, analytical essays into real world topics which were beginning to bore me anyway. Maybe "bore" isn't the right word, because I'm still greatly interested in real world topics. But I wanted to indulge my imagination in ways that I couldn't through the essay form. Also, I realized that writing essays and blogging them was often about trying to influence minds, for me (in addition to just trying to clear up my own)....and I simply made a sharp turn away from that. It would be so much more fun to entertain myself and others without always trying to influence or persuade, and I missed writing fiction which was something I'd done when I was much younger. I wanted to create stories. But that blog was a long time dying, and I'd begun to feel frustrated and stupid until I finally shut it down and gave up on it.

Now, I have written the above and am now writing this very line, so I must be a writer, just like you were a writer when you wrote the opening post of this thread. I was writing when I was creating poetry every day and when I was writing hundreds of pages of essays and blog posts. This might seem a rather ridiculous consideration if your main point is that you want to be a fiction writer, or a novelist. But my general point, at least one I have gathered from my own personal experience, is that the medium you choose can make a huge difference.

And sometimes "medium" can be broken down when you are trying to find the right one. A person can struggle for years to write great epic fantasy, growing in frustration, then suddenly make a go of writing satirical comedic fantasy and have his "voice" roar to life. Or maybe it's romance fantasy. Maybe it's not even fantasy fiction but some other genre. Maybe it's first person instead of third intimate, or an epistolary novel, or poetry.

 

[Deleted member 4265]

I do like your response, however, the part in bold stood out to me. Writing books is simply storytelling using the written word. When we focus on it only being about prose, we miss the point. A honed voice is not the same as pretty prose. Is it maybe where Nimue is getting hung up? I question this because she writes with slow, methodical precision and beautiful words...but could that maybe be part of the problem? Striving for perfection? Not to insult the way Nimue does things, but I'm curious. Some of the best books I've read had strong voices where the prose seemed invisible.

I know from personal experience that being unhappy with your prose can make you feel worthless as a writer. I was always taught to just get things down on paper and polish it up later, but I've finally come to realize I don't work like that. I can't do Nanowrimo style word-vomiting. If a part of my story isn't up to my usual standards it nags at me and makes me feel like I'll never be a writer until I fix it.

But I do agree with you. A lot of people do get way too hung up on having beautiful prose, but my point was more that Nimue should figure out why she doesn't feel like a writer and work toward changing that whatever it is more than that she should do anything specific. Granted, I sincerely doubt bad prose Nimue's problem. Often times prose is just the scapegoat for some larger problem like not having a strong voice or stumbling over a plot point or character issue. Finding the real issue is usually half the battle.

 

[Chessie]

Nanowrimo style word-vomiting <--- it's actually not word-vomiting. Fast writing requires practice and patience, but every time someone here pops up with this line of thought it annoys me. Fast writing is not equal to trash. No way at all. Some people (like me) write fast but this doesn't mean our prose is trash. And it's not about the prose anyway. Don't knock it 'til...??

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

…
It's been almost a year since I started my current main project. In that time, I have barely cleared 30k words on it. That is it.
...

Don't compare yourself to people who are turning out 50k a month, who might have only done that for NaNoWriMo during the month of November. Compare yourself to the people you know who have never attempted to write even a single word of a novel, article, short story, piece of flash fiction, comic book, graphic novel, gaming system or supplement, or a serious piece of poetry. You have 30k words towards a novel. What do they have? Personal emails and texts, scribbled grocery shopping lists, social media status updates, maybe some love letters.

Now tell us, when it comes to writing, what are your aspirations? Will you be happy never coming up with the next 30k words, never thinking about another idea for a novel or short story, never staring at the blank page/screen again with the hope of pouring your soul onto it? As others have said, there is more to being a writer than typing. Word count is not the measure of your worth as a writer.

Moreover, you're trying to decide if you are worthy of a label. Why does the label matter? Live your life. If you are a writer, you will write. No one puts constraints on that for you except yourself. There is no Writing Police going around assessing ideas, examining word counts or checking the quality of writing.

I'm in my late 50s. I've written some short stories and rpg supplements, some of which have been self-published, and some of which have been published by someone else. I've received money for some of what I've written. I've yet to write a novel, and that's my dream. I hardly feel like a writer some days, though technically it could be said that I'm a professional, since I've received money for my writing. But until I complete my novel and it is available to the general public, I won't have the feeling that I want concerning my being a writer. Maybe this is similar to where you are. But I'm not going to let it get me down. I don't care whether people label me as a writer, an author, a professional, a fraud, or something else. I will keep pushing on with my aspirations to the best of my ability within the constraints of my own life. I've been working on my debut novel now for over four years. The end product will be roughly 120k. That's less than 30k a year on the average. If I take another year to finish, that will bring the yearly average down to 24k. So what? It takes what time it takes.

I hope you will not shut down the voice within you that yearns to be shared. It's obvious that you have such a voice. If the way forward seems difficult, well, that's life. Some things come naturally to some people, but they are typically the exception to the rule, and not for the rest of us to compare ourselves against. The rest of us have to put up with some headache and heartache to get to where we want to be.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

While not all 50-60k writing in a month is word vomiting... most nanowrimo is, depending on how one defines word vomiting. Fact is, it's kind of designed to be that... write write write, who cares about quality, just write, sort of stuff.


I could do 50-60k in a month fairly easily in a month, 30 days, 2k per day... not that big of a deal. But that would probably put me at three months to finish the draft of a 150k epic... and 3 months straight of that, I would probably start drinking heavily, which both slows the writing and ruin the prose, and would perhaps taint the stories with incidents of vomiting and hangovers and very slurred dialogue.

Nanowrimo style word-vomiting <--- it's actually not word-vomiting. Fast writing requires practice and patience, but every time someone here pops up with this line of thought it annoys me. Fast writing is not equal to trash. No way at all. Some people (like me) write fast but this doesn't mean our prose is trash. And it's not about the prose anyway. Don't knock it 'til...??

 

[Nimue]

'How many words did you get today?' the friend pursued.

Joyce (still in despair, still sprawled facedown on his desk): 'Seven.'

'Seven? But James… that’s good, at least for you.'

'Yes,' Joyce said, finally looking up. 'I suppose it is… but I don’t know what order they go in!'​

Reading Finnegan's Wake, I wonder if he ever did figure out the order words go in. Heh heh...


Sorry for taking so long to reply...I didn't feel equal to writing something up during work, and after work I went and got Thai food with my sister. Which helped. But thank you guys for the support, and even if I don't address everything that was said, I do appreciate it. It's very kind.

I suppose it all boils down to Chester's question: why am I not writing? Well. *deep sigh*

Why am I not writing now? The holidays took a lot out of me, I was sick for a week or so, and work was and is busier than usual. I was actually a little surprised to realize I've only been dead on the water for a month--it seems like much longer, an interminable stretch of inaction, enforced by traveling and activities and stress. I say enforced, but of course it wasn't. I could have written frequently during that time, but instead I didn't try, and took it as a "break", which has become sour and entrenched as I try to get moving again.

But that's not really the question, is it. Why don't I write? It tends to follow the same pattern, with counterpoint variations. Something derails me. A stressful day, a new game or passion, an immersive book whose world crowds out the world in my head for a while. Or dissatisfaction taking root around a weak scene or a bad day's prose. Procrastination ensues. Guilt creeps in, and I build up the idea of writing in my head as something Important and Difficult. A test that I'm failing day by day, and most definitively flunk when I try to write a sentence or two and it's contrived and clunky and clearly, I've lost the Spark (and it never existed in the first place, for good measure. All foxfire.) The moment I stop writing, I lose all faith in my ability to string words together. I'll never be able to recapture that feeling. I'll never be able to come up with anything original again. The solution there would seem to be don't stop writing, then, but a flake like me never manages that, and that missed day/week becomes another black mark, sign of one's failure, etc, etc.

A little tongue-in-cheek, but the voice in my head has paved the garden path with all those stupid, counterproductive things. I know it's hard, and it should be hard, and my brain has a million ways of squirming out of doing hard things.

In specific...yes, prose is a sticking point for me. A bad sentence spoils the whole session. Even if I mutter "I can edit that later" three times under my breath in the requisite countercurse. Such a broad gulf between saying something and believing it--witness any advice on how to keep writing and buck up I've posted on this forum. I think I've actually gotten better at that with my current project, but leaving in the bad writing makes me feel like it's all a house of cards. If I can't look at a single scene and think it reads well, then what reassurance is there that any of this is worthwhile?

That leads into another problem submerged in this mess... I don't know how to edit. In theory, of course. But in practice? I think this may be common to other non-finishers--I try to stick to the "no editing until it's done" and then never finish anything, so I have no clear evidence of what can be improved through editing and revising. I've shared first drafts of novels-in-progress, regrettably. The short stories I've written have been minimally edited, often mainly for length. Lots of roleplaying posts, all uneditable. Aaallll my college papers--very faintly edited, if at all. While I've had different versions of stories, those were generally rewritten from the ground up. So I'm sunk in this habit of writing as close to word-perfect as I can get, from beginning to end, and feeling that what's on the page is immutable. Which, clearly, is not the case--there is verifiable evidence that authors substantially edit their work, believe it or not--but it's what I've spent all my life doing.

This isn't really about calling myself a writer, or "being a writer", whatever that means. I think Devouring Wolf touched on this. It's about a need to accomplish something, to have written and finished and met a standard of my own making. To have that experience to lean upon, some grain of confidence.

Well. Feeling extraordinarily done with all this moaning. At this point I'd like to write down a series of Things to Do, but I really have to get some sleep, so that'll have to wait until tomorrow. I'll think on it. In the meantime, thanks again for humoring me. I'm happy at least that some discussion came out of this.

 

[Penpilot]

The only one that can say if you're a writer or not is you. IMHO, a lot of people put too much pressure on themselves to produce big numbers to prove that they're real writers. Or only use perfect ideas before they can write. I use to do this. And I don't think it's healthy.

Examine your life and determine what a manageable pace is for yourself and try to stick to it. If you love writing write. Write with no expectations. I know this is cliche, but do it for the sake of just doing it.

I love hockey. I play it because I love playing, not because I expect to be discovered and become a professional. Try that with your writing. Just play with it. Have fun.

If you want to get writing again, here's a something you can try. Think of it as a small mean-nothing challenge. Select a writing prompt. Say Boy meets Girl or any combination of something like that and write a story based on that. Now here are the rules.

1- You can only write for five minutes on this story per day, but you have to write something down, no matter how wacky or stupid it may seem. Set a timer and once time is up, you have to stop.

2 -No backspacing. Once something is typed out no turning back.

3 -Have fun with it. Just see where your typing leads you. Beg, borrow, and outright steal ideas and situations from wherever. Because...

4 -No expectations because this isn't for publishing. This isn't for sharing. This is for you.

 

[Gribba]

Sorry for the long rant... You guys have given me so many good replies and helpful once and inspiration from your experiences so I was hoping to do something useful with my experiences and crazy way of looking at life.
Maybe I missed the mark but hey... I tried... There is no stupid questions or answers, only questions and possible answers.

I suppose it all boils down to Chester's question: why am I not writing? Well. *deep sigh*

Why am I not writing now? The holidays took a lot out of me, I was sick for a week or so, and work was and is busier than usual. […]

This is allowed!
And I believe that our stories can only be better when we live our life. How is the reader to believe anything we write if we have not lived, experienced, felt the feelings that life has to offer. (some experience much in a short time and others take longer but it is all relevant to the story).

But that's not really the question, is it. Why don't I write? It tends to follow the same pattern, with counterpoint variations. Something derails me. […] The solution there would seem to be don't stop writing, then, but a flake like me never manages that, and that missed day/week becomes another black mark, sign of one's failure, etc, etc.

This I understand and I think every person that ever wrote anything or works towards writing something, knows this feeling. But if your head is not in it, then it is not in it and that is ok too (it will come back because you are a writer, you cant help it).

The guilt, it is so sneaky and unfair. Adding this black mark on this wonderful and hopeful thing, called writing.

(The word awesome is my mantra, you can replace it with the word you find best for you, while reading this).
I have been there and this may sound crazy but when I get there, I tell it to go away and do, not so pleasant, stuff to itself, because I am the boss of how I feel and I am not letting some lame feeling take me down. I remind myself everyday, until I don't need to anymore, that I am awesome and I can do anything I want. Sometimes it takes a while and other times I need to step back from it and then rush back in with my head first.
I know this is not as easy as it may sound, it requires you to say NO with force, to yourself, when those feelings turn up and it requires you to choose to be kind to yourself and positive despite those feelings. Those feelings and that voice, will never go away but it can be managed and told to shut up, when it is being a pain in the 'you know what'.
I went through years with depression and anxiety, it took me many years to get out. During that time I had to teach myself to, NOT listen to that voice, that kept telling me, I was not good enough and I did not deserve anything good in my life, that voice had so many incredibly negative and unpleasant things to say, I took it all in and I wallowed in it, for a long time.
Until I finally got it, if the glass is half full then you have just begun something, take it all in, learn, experience and take the things you can use, from it, and make it yours. If the glass is half empty, there is a new beginning right around the corner. And If the glass is only halfway through, then you have gotten this far and you have more to go, keep making it yours. It is how you choose to look at it.

So when a similar voice began showing up, after I begun writing again, I reminded myself not to listen to that silly voice as it has noting good to contribute in my life. I can use it to better describe something but not to live my life by nor when it comes to my writing. Saying NO, with force and not allowing it to be the foundation of how I feel. I am the boss of me and how I choose to feel, every day, every moment of the day, I get to choose and I choose AWESOME! All the time!

In specific...yes, prose is a sticking point for me. [...]

I am dyslexic and I used to get so hung up on the red lines under the words, I would use so much of my time fixing spelling mistakes and be insecure about my writing, because I could not even write properly, why the hell was I even trying it… Regardless of what language I write in, Icelandic, Danish or English, those red lines, everywhere, mocking me!
Every time I wrote a sentence I would go back and fix the words that were spelled wrong and I lost the flow of the story. I forgot the “brilliant” sentence that was suppose to come next. It made me often feel inadequate and I allow this black cloud hang over my writing, resulting in my head telling me, to not waste my time on writing anymore. I could not write anyway, so why bother...
It broke my heart to stop writing and made me feel frustrated with all the ideas in my head that were waiting to be written.
So I began reminding myself, when I had the page in front of me, that now, I was going to write until I could no more. Either I ran out of stuff to write or my fingers hurt (or the kids came home and needed me), then and only then, I could go back and fix the spelling mistakes. It took me a few tries and slap on my fingers for going back to fix the spelling before I was allowed to but in the end I got there and now those red lines under the text are just what they are, red lines to look at later. Doing this did wonders for me, it made writing easier and more enjoyable.

Prose is your hang up, find a way to loosen it from your head and return to it when you are done with the more important task, writing your story.