I write off-line

I'm a very bad speller. I learned to read by the "see and say" method. I have a hard time sounding out new written words. The words that I do spell right when writing are the words I've memorize. If I do not know how to spell a word, I do try to spell it phonically. Usually I get close enough so that my word processor can correct it. Every once in a while I can't get close enough so that the spell checker can help. Then its Thesaurus time. If I can find a word that means something similar to the word I want, then bingo, the Thesaurus helps. God I love word processors! Back in the old days, in the late 50's, writing was hard when you could not spell well. In my college English class my in-class composition were bad. (BTW It took me several minutes to get ‘composition' spelled right.) Instead of spending my class period working on the quality of the writing, I spent most of my time looking up words in the dictionary and thinking of synonyms I could use in the paper. My out-of-class compositions earned A's and B's because I could spend the time on the quality of the writing as well as the spelling. My in-class compositions earned mostly D's. I received a D for the class. Why? The instructor thought someone else was writing my out-of-class compositions. I could understand her position as they did look like different authors, although I wrote both.
So why this post? I am writing about my old girlfriend D and I am stuck on the spelling of several words. It is soooo frustrating.
My next post, if I don't give up, is about D.