I recently saw a comment from a new writer who was having issues because he was editing as he wrote. He got to the middle of his tome and was losing steam. He fell into one of the traps we writers fall into–they’re big and as deadly as bear traps to creativity, by the way!
Those of us who have been at this awhile know that you don’t stop the creative voice in your head and let the editor voice take over. EVER, NEVER…well, at least as much as you can control it. The voices in a writer’s head are very powerful!
Here’s a solution that I find works. It may work for others, so I’ve decided to share it with you, because I love you all sooooooooo much.
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Shutting up the editor in your head takes awhile to learn! Usually there are a lot of voices going on in there–so every time you find your self editing, try this.
Sit and write without paragraphs or looking at the keyboard…just WRITE and WRITE and WRITE as long as your characters will talk to you, then put down the computer and STAND AWAY.
Later have a separate sitting when you go through ONLY what you wrote in that writing frenzy and break into paragraphs, correct spelling and homonyms and then QUIT! Come on…I dare you!
That will help satisfy that nasty editor voice for a while and you can go back to writing. I haven’t had to do this more than once in the last year, so I know it works! Now a gentle talking to myself, “What the heck are you doing?” will gag the editor until the urge goes away.
As they used to say…somewhere…try it, you’ll like it!
Linda Rae Blair, Author 
Dragon is pretty good, but I prefer the distance between my brain and the keyboard for many forms of writing. In fact, when I made the move from a typewriter to a word-processor all those years ago (and this was long before the IBM PC and MS-DOS, let alone Windows or Macintosh), I felt the lack of the distance. I try to write as close to the finished product as possible on the first draft. I dislike editing, and I often have to write to deadlines for journal editors, etc., who won’t use me again if my writing requires too much work on their part. This spills over into my fiction as well.
I’d have to learn to touch type first. lol But your point is well taken.
Oh, my! I’ve touched typed for so many years (almost 40 now) that I didn’t even think of that. Poor baby. There are books on that, you know? LOL You could get Dragon software and “talk” your book. It types it. That would give your editor voice a nice job to do! A friend of mine says he’s tried it and it really works.
Excellent advice! Why edit as you write when you’re only tortuing yourself? Keep the ideas going and proofread later!
Excellent advice! Just keep writing and don’t stop! Editing can come later as it gets in the way of the ideas that you have in your head.