I became a paid subscriber just so that I could comment and THANK YOU for this post. I was diagnosed with ADHD at 38, and am still figuring out my relationship to the world. With all of the ADHD research I've done since then, I have never read anything THIS helpful. The sitting weird, the bursts of productivity, the maximalism, the leaning in to sensory overwhelm... I have never felt so seen. And then you gave actual actionable advice about those elements, specifically. Mind. Blown.
Bizarrely, I was planning that, in 2024, I was going to continue forcing myself to write "500 words a day", figurative rain or shine, and win the race by taking it "slow and steady". When you called out both of these phrases and dismissed them as unhelpful, I felt an enormous surge of freedom and, for the first time in years, hope.
So thank you. Thank you for writing this, and for being willing to share your experience so that weird internet randos like me can feel less alone, feel seen, and feel like we're not massive failures who can't do anything "right." Love & warmth from South Dakota.
After a couple of years of reading stuff on the Internet and wondering, these 2 newsletters prompted me to *finally* book an appt with a psychiatrist and get tested for ADHD. If I don't actually have it, I have something adjacent lol. I use the project management program Asana to give myself a deadline for literally everything—work tasks, writing tasks (revise chapter 12, fact-check tarot scene, etc), personal tasks (do laundry, buy hair ties, etc.) If it's not on my one big digital to-do list with a due date, it does not get done.
I have never read anything about the writing process that has made me feel more seen. I am actually a little teary right now. Thank you so much for this.
I've long suspected I have ADHD but have been reluctant to "admit" it or get a formal diagnosis-- simply b/c I have so many other health issues-- I didn't need another. But every single thing you wrote about your experience rings 1000% true for me! It really made me feel so much less alone and also hopeful that someone as successful as you struggles with these same things. There may be hope for me yet!! (and hope for the YA novel I've been working on for YEARS-- as you possibly may recall). Thank you!!!
I know what you mean about adding a diagnosis... But it's seriously been so illuminating, PLUS the meds help a lot. Of course I remember your YA novel -- I hope it's going well!! x
Siamese twins born two decades apart. Working on fear of pilots, but the 90 lb goldie resting on one foot with "Kashmir" playing, and the right foot wrapped around the chair leg, is working. 1040s are always late as it is too late for an ADHD diagnosis. So. MFA application is due 12/18. Goodreads vote completed after forgotten password fix. Thomas the Tank Engine? I think I can. Truly, eerily, helpful.
I do so much of my writing in the shower, in my head. Can’t watch TV without drawing, crocheting, Googling something. Also never wrote a college paper earlier than the night before it was due, I love a hard deadline. I find the Pomodoro method helpful-writing in 25 minute bursts with 5 minute breaks in between to do all the things that distract and take me away from writing-scrolling IG, unloading the dishwasher, etc. There’s an app.
Deadlines, give me deadlines! If I know someone is expecting to read five or ten pages of something I've promised, it will get written. If I'm doing it 'just' for me, then maybe it's time to re-read Terry Pratchett or something.
I think a big thing for me is the hotel room and the time to let my hyperfocus kick in. I wrote most of my dissertation in a cabin in the woods in about two weeks. I can not work as well at home. There is too much stuff to do at home. I know I need to budget for alternative working spaces, ideally several days in a row when I have nothing else to do but work, if I'm ever going to finish a novel.
As a [writer], I'm lost in discovery, easily distracted, and perpetually looking for someone or something to guide me and/or reign me in (Deadlines! Compatriots! Oddball challenges!). As a [coach to other writers] I am attentive, creative, generous, but also know how to crack a whip. Why can't I do for myself what I do for others? As a result, I have been attempting to go full "Robert Ledru" and neatly separate my personalities so that my detective self (writing coach) can bring to justice my crime-ing self (writer). Thank you for all of these helps!
I’m another spacey, lazy girl whose ADHD was finally diagnosed and treated, with moderate success, in middle age. I’m very late to this party, and most of what I could say others have already said better, but here goes:
Last week, I wrote almost 1,000 words every day. I was sure that this was because I’d finally made myself into one of *those* writers, and not because a conference application deadline was goosing my adrenal glands. I made the deadline with hours to go, then spent the weekend shopping and meal-planning and doing four loads of laundry so as to clear my schedule for another 5,000-word week. Come Monday morning, I saw the kids off to school and said, “I’ll take my Adderall and get to work right after I put away this laundry.”
Two hours later, I ate breakfast and took my meds, and four hours and fifty words after that, a fit of shame-googling overtook me and led me here. Reading this post was like looking in a mirror, and when I read its companion, it was like a light switched on and revealed the mirror to be a window. I sense that both are going to become very very important to my writing life, meaning that I will print them out, put them in one of my piles of very very important papers, and leave them there until I die. In the interim, here’s a bulleted list (*my* preferred coping strategy, long predating diagnosis) of ways they’ve helped me in the intervening 72 hours:
• I gave up hope of continuing to hit a daily quota, stopped beating myself up about it, and *leaned into the many things that constitute work.* Actually, just one: freewriting from the POV of one of my secondary characters. Knowing that these pages are destined for the trash helps me fill them by the dozen, and along the way I’m gleaning new insights about my character’s motives, etc. that I’ll have in my toolkit when the word count gods again smile upon me.
• I just sent this post and its companion to my psychiatrist, because they articulate how my brain works and how it limits me better than I’ve ever managed to do: I can’t think in a straight line! I finish one sentence for every ten I start! Why did I not describe myself in these very words several years and mental health professionals ago? ☝🏻 How much time and frustration could I have saved myself, if I had? ☝🏻☝🏻
• I have a new rote answer to the doubt that coils like an invasive vine around my arborescent thoughts when I try to write: what even is the point of this? There is a chance, however small, that something I’ll produce will become a mirror/window for someone else.
Which is to say, thank you so much.
ADE
☝🏻Because such lucid, crisp insights visit me only after arborescent, rhizomatic, sidebar-stuffed soliloquies lasting 25 minutes or more, and my insurance only pays for 20.
☝🏻☝🏻If one presents as a halfway functional adult — if one has earned degrees, held on to jobs, paid bills, kept oneself and/or other people alive; no matter how much stress and anxiety and exhaustion it has cost one to fulfill minimum requirements for functional adulthood — asking to be evaluated for ADHD is likely to get one flagged as a drug seeker and treated for anxiety/depression/everything *but* ADHD. The third or fourth or fifth time I asked my previous psychiatrist to refer me for neuropsych testing, she said, “Even if you do have ADHD, what do you think treatment would let you do that you aren’t doing now?” ☝🏻☝🏻☝🏻
☝🏻☝🏻☝🏻“Write 5.2 books,” I should have answered. Then again, that might have netted me a different sort of referral.
This is not the answer for everyone, but...I've found some marijuana strains that are as effective for me as my prescribed meds, actually better since they don't mess with my sleep. Current fave is Creative Sativa (pre rolls) by Lowell Smokes. Three hits of the joint, headphones on, legs crossed in comfy big chair, large glass of cold water...guaranteed productivity for a few hours😊
How many people are just now, after reading these two newsletters, realizing that they have ADHD? 🙋🏻♀️
It's cool, i'm only 54
Yeah, that would be me, and I'm older than that. I've developed many of these strategies on my own and enjoy my lizard mind.
Sorry about the tax forms .....
I became a paid subscriber just so that I could comment and THANK YOU for this post. I was diagnosed with ADHD at 38, and am still figuring out my relationship to the world. With all of the ADHD research I've done since then, I have never read anything THIS helpful. The sitting weird, the bursts of productivity, the maximalism, the leaning in to sensory overwhelm... I have never felt so seen. And then you gave actual actionable advice about those elements, specifically. Mind. Blown.
Bizarrely, I was planning that, in 2024, I was going to continue forcing myself to write "500 words a day", figurative rain or shine, and win the race by taking it "slow and steady". When you called out both of these phrases and dismissed them as unhelpful, I felt an enormous surge of freedom and, for the first time in years, hope.
So thank you. Thank you for writing this, and for being willing to share your experience so that weird internet randos like me can feel less alone, feel seen, and feel like we're not massive failures who can't do anything "right." Love & warmth from South Dakota.
This makes me so happy!! Thank you.
Me too!
Gah! Taking a shower is SO boring.
I sweahtagahd, you're in my brain. These tips feel like damn cheat codes.
So FINE, I will talk to my doctor about ADHD meds and regular vitamin B shots.
After a couple of years of reading stuff on the Internet and wondering, these 2 newsletters prompted me to *finally* book an appt with a psychiatrist and get tested for ADHD. If I don't actually have it, I have something adjacent lol. I use the project management program Asana to give myself a deadline for literally everything—work tasks, writing tasks (revise chapter 12, fact-check tarot scene, etc), personal tasks (do laundry, buy hair ties, etc.) If it's not on my one big digital to-do list with a due date, it does not get done.
I'm so glad you made the appointment!! I've heard good things about Asana... I keep adopting various list-type programs and then abandoning them. Oof.
I have never read anything about the writing process that has made me feel more seen. I am actually a little teary right now. Thank you so much for this.
Oh, that makes me happy! Solidarity!
I've long suspected I have ADHD but have been reluctant to "admit" it or get a formal diagnosis-- simply b/c I have so many other health issues-- I didn't need another. But every single thing you wrote about your experience rings 1000% true for me! It really made me feel so much less alone and also hopeful that someone as successful as you struggles with these same things. There may be hope for me yet!! (and hope for the YA novel I've been working on for YEARS-- as you possibly may recall). Thank you!!!
I know what you mean about adding a diagnosis... But it's seriously been so illuminating, PLUS the meds help a lot. Of course I remember your YA novel -- I hope it's going well!! x
I am on the verge of tears. Thank you for helping me feel less hopeless.
Siamese twins born two decades apart. Working on fear of pilots, but the 90 lb goldie resting on one foot with "Kashmir" playing, and the right foot wrapped around the chair leg, is working. 1040s are always late as it is too late for an ADHD diagnosis. So. MFA application is due 12/18. Goodreads vote completed after forgotten password fix. Thomas the Tank Engine? I think I can. Truly, eerily, helpful.
I do so much of my writing in the shower, in my head. Can’t watch TV without drawing, crocheting, Googling something. Also never wrote a college paper earlier than the night before it was due, I love a hard deadline. I find the Pomodoro method helpful-writing in 25 minute bursts with 5 minute breaks in between to do all the things that distract and take me away from writing-scrolling IG, unloading the dishwasher, etc. There’s an app.
Deadlines, give me deadlines! If I know someone is expecting to read five or ten pages of something I've promised, it will get written. If I'm doing it 'just' for me, then maybe it's time to re-read Terry Pratchett or something.
I think a big thing for me is the hotel room and the time to let my hyperfocus kick in. I wrote most of my dissertation in a cabin in the woods in about two weeks. I can not work as well at home. There is too much stuff to do at home. I know I need to budget for alternative working spaces, ideally several days in a row when I have nothing else to do but work, if I'm ever going to finish a novel.
As a [writer], I'm lost in discovery, easily distracted, and perpetually looking for someone or something to guide me and/or reign me in (Deadlines! Compatriots! Oddball challenges!). As a [coach to other writers] I am attentive, creative, generous, but also know how to crack a whip. Why can't I do for myself what I do for others? As a result, I have been attempting to go full "Robert Ledru" and neatly separate my personalities so that my detective self (writing coach) can bring to justice my crime-ing self (writer). Thank you for all of these helps!
I’m another spacey, lazy girl whose ADHD was finally diagnosed and treated, with moderate success, in middle age. I’m very late to this party, and most of what I could say others have already said better, but here goes:
Last week, I wrote almost 1,000 words every day. I was sure that this was because I’d finally made myself into one of *those* writers, and not because a conference application deadline was goosing my adrenal glands. I made the deadline with hours to go, then spent the weekend shopping and meal-planning and doing four loads of laundry so as to clear my schedule for another 5,000-word week. Come Monday morning, I saw the kids off to school and said, “I’ll take my Adderall and get to work right after I put away this laundry.”
Two hours later, I ate breakfast and took my meds, and four hours and fifty words after that, a fit of shame-googling overtook me and led me here. Reading this post was like looking in a mirror, and when I read its companion, it was like a light switched on and revealed the mirror to be a window. I sense that both are going to become very very important to my writing life, meaning that I will print them out, put them in one of my piles of very very important papers, and leave them there until I die. In the interim, here’s a bulleted list (*my* preferred coping strategy, long predating diagnosis) of ways they’ve helped me in the intervening 72 hours:
• I gave up hope of continuing to hit a daily quota, stopped beating myself up about it, and *leaned into the many things that constitute work.* Actually, just one: freewriting from the POV of one of my secondary characters. Knowing that these pages are destined for the trash helps me fill them by the dozen, and along the way I’m gleaning new insights about my character’s motives, etc. that I’ll have in my toolkit when the word count gods again smile upon me.
• I just sent this post and its companion to my psychiatrist, because they articulate how my brain works and how it limits me better than I’ve ever managed to do: I can’t think in a straight line! I finish one sentence for every ten I start! Why did I not describe myself in these very words several years and mental health professionals ago? ☝🏻 How much time and frustration could I have saved myself, if I had? ☝🏻☝🏻
• I have a new rote answer to the doubt that coils like an invasive vine around my arborescent thoughts when I try to write: what even is the point of this? There is a chance, however small, that something I’ll produce will become a mirror/window for someone else.
Which is to say, thank you so much.
ADE
☝🏻Because such lucid, crisp insights visit me only after arborescent, rhizomatic, sidebar-stuffed soliloquies lasting 25 minutes or more, and my insurance only pays for 20.
☝🏻☝🏻If one presents as a halfway functional adult — if one has earned degrees, held on to jobs, paid bills, kept oneself and/or other people alive; no matter how much stress and anxiety and exhaustion it has cost one to fulfill minimum requirements for functional adulthood — asking to be evaluated for ADHD is likely to get one flagged as a drug seeker and treated for anxiety/depression/everything *but* ADHD. The third or fourth or fifth time I asked my previous psychiatrist to refer me for neuropsych testing, she said, “Even if you do have ADHD, what do you think treatment would let you do that you aren’t doing now?” ☝🏻☝🏻☝🏻
☝🏻☝🏻☝🏻“Write 5.2 books,” I should have answered. Then again, that might have netted me a different sort of referral.
This is not the answer for everyone, but...I've found some marijuana strains that are as effective for me as my prescribed meds, actually better since they don't mess with my sleep. Current fave is Creative Sativa (pre rolls) by Lowell Smokes. Three hits of the joint, headphones on, legs crossed in comfy big chair, large glass of cold water...guaranteed productivity for a few hours😊