ADD/ADHD And Writing

[Statius]

Hey everyone. I am ADHD and I write on LitE. I am creating this thread as a place for me to come and write down my frustrations in dealing with that. I will be trying to work thru the often times confusion in my brain and the stress it creates in my creative process, however if you are not a writer please feel free to join in and work out your own stuff here as well. Who knows? Maybe it'll help. If nothing else perhaps you'll find a friendly ear, someone who gets it. If not maybe seeing my own struggles will be entertaining, who knows? Or maybe no one will care, doesn't matter, just don't be a jerk, ha!

 

[Statius]

It's hard writing being ADHD. For me, I am either super creative, or very very black and white, linear thinking, point A to point B, o BS in between. My job requires me to be linear, straight to the point; in other words, non creative. Seems easy right? Nope. Switching gears is near impossible. I cannot simply go from one to the other, it takes great effort and it's mentally draining and exhausting.

When I am in creative mode and working on a story, ideas and words flood so fast I can't keep up. Even when I complete one and I think it's ready, after sitting on it for a week, after 3 rounds of editing, I'll go back to it after publication and it's like really? Why? To the point where I am currently doing edits on existing stories mostly due to repeated words, punctuation, the comma is like heroin to me for some reason.

But I know why, I just can't get around it. It's because it's the IDEA, THE CONCEPT, that matters to me, not the writing. Why? Because writing, technically, is linear thought, and I cannot do both at the same time. If I think my narrative conveys the idea and/or image I had in my head, that is what matters. Until 3 months later.

 

[Statius]

I should note that I am unmedicated. I was told when first diagnosed that the best thing to do would be to train my brain in a particular way, so I did. Thru reading philosophy, poetry (my first literary love), then novels. Philosophy and poetry are obvious; logical, and patterned. Classical music has the same affect on me as poetry. The patterns (numbers as they say) flow in a particular way, rhythmic. Both are soothing to me mentally for that reason and can help calm my chaotic brain. Of course too much of it and I become immune to the affect. Fun.

Getting back to the point I was going to make. I cannot switch gears easily. It takes a long time to go from linear thinking to creative, and back again. It's exhausting, mind breaking, can be soul crushing. And then there's the loss of confidence in my creativity. Especially when I go back and re read either a week later or 3 months later and see all the errors I left even tho I edited 3 times. It's like they were never there before. How did I overlook so many dumb and obvious mistakes? 3 times!

 

[Statius]

If you are ADD/ADHD like me, you probably know that there is a real struggle with things everyone else finds simple. And there you are lost in confusion. But you probably also instinctually know things, or things are obvious to you that everyone else is just 'How the fuck do you know that ' or 'How the fuck did you know how to do that?' And that is what makes me so good at my job. But not so much on the creative side, or to be more precise, the linear aspect of being creative