How I Wrote 2 Books with ADHD

So, I’m well aware that a number of you out there may not actually need this advice. You can hyperfocus for hours and write a million words in a weekend, and that’s awesome. My good friend Ellis Prybylski is one of those lucky souls (shout out to him, go check out his website listed in the description for some cool urban fantasy stuff), and I couldn’t be happier for y’all. 

That said…I’m not one of those people at all. 

Even if I’m writing a piece that I know well, that I’m excited about, I can write it, and then I’m right back to standing around with my thumb up my ass, waiting until I can write the next bit. It’s a lot to handle. But I still wrote my first draft, and I did it in….only…17 months. 

Maybe closer to 18.

But who’s counting? Not me. 

Truth is, I had to use some methods to get myself through the process, and now I want to share with you some of those ways, so that maybe it’ll help you get there, too. As always, you can watch me talk about it above.

Method 1: See your progress

“But Arianna,” I hear your fingies typing in immediate argument, “I can already see my progress when I look at my page count and word count after every writing session, and that doesn’t work!” 

That’s not what I mean. I tried that, too, and the problem is, if you don’t have a way of seeing what that number means in relation to all the other numbers before it, you won’t feel anything when you see it. Also, ADHD brains are horrific at pausing in the moment to absorb the achievement,so it’s a little too easy to look at that number and click right off of it. 

So, instead, I actually made a simple progress tracker in which I filled one square every time I sat down to write. I didn’t hold myself to a number of words, or push myself to specifically write my novel even. All that I had to do was sit down and write, and I got to color in the little square, showing that I put in the time.

Obviously, if your goal is more about page numbers or book length, your tracker could look a little different. But the point is to make sure you can actually see where you’re heading. 

Method 2: Keep things rigid but flexible

Don’t look at me like that. I know how fucking annoying this sounds, but it’s important. 

If you’re like me, your brain needs structure, but it also gets super pissed off and contrary if things are too structured. 

So, what do? WHAT DO, I SAY?

I learned that you compromise. 

For me, I found that I did best when I committed to the act of sitting down and working on my novel, but that’s it. I didn’t try to make myself sit down for a certain amount of time. I didn’t even necessarily have to write; in fact, I could choose to revise, read, or research. I just had to put some time towards it. 

I’m gonna be real here and also admit that this didn’t always work. In which case, I did the next thing. Which is: 

Method 3: Allow yourself days (or weeks or months) off

Sometimes, the problem really is just that your brain doesn’t know what it wants to do. You’re either dealing with a plothole, or your story isn’t making sense overall, or life is really squeezing you and you just don’t have it in you to think through anything heavy. 

In that case, I’m gonna throw down a hot take here that you’re totally allowed to just…not touch your work in progress for a bit. 

I know that writing communities really wanna push the whole “WRITE EVERYDAY” idea, which I get, but I also don’t think that fits everyone. The way I see it, there are bulldozers and there are architects. Bulldozers can push through any obstacle, any sickness, any difficulty to write what they want, when they want. Architects need the time to stand back and look at the plans to review where to go next. One isn’t any better than the other; it’s just that we almost never hear anyone talking to that second type. 

In fact, I can’t prove anything, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most architects are ADHD. 

That said, please make sure that you still set a time to return to your project. If you don’t do that, you’re gonna get confused and maybe not return. I made this mistake in the beginning and, no lie, had a three-month span where I didn’t touch my work at all. After that, I always walked away with a promise to come back in 48 hours, or one week, or two weeks, or whatever. I’d mark it down, and I’d leave things open in case an idea hit me during that time off. 

This last one might be the hardest part, but it was my ultimate saving grace: 

Method 4: I allowed myself to suck

We do not like to suck. We must be perfect. Even though we’re just throwing down words, even though every artist writes pure shit off the bat, we can’t be one of those people. How dare you. Shut up. 

But here’s the thing: You have to finish the first draft to get to the good shit. And the only way you’re going to do that is by having parts that aren’t great, because they aren’t ironed out yet. 

When it came to my first draft, this crazy thing happened wherein I introduced new characters in one chapter who I had no idea would eventually become very important later. Because of this, there’s some massive disconnect between some parts of my manuscript, and I could tell as I was writing them. I very badly wanted to throw the thing away from me out of pure frustration in the moment, but then I took a deep breath and reminded myself that this is my first draft and it’s allowed to blow right now. 

That friend of mine I mentioned earlier, Ellis, gave me one of my favorite lines of advice ever. He said: “the first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” And I said that to myself more than once as I wrote. 

Another thing that helped me push through the perfectionism was something I learned from Maddy Gabor, who did a talk at Chase the Chaos, that summit I run every year for neurodivergent adults. She did this awesome workshop wherein she taught us to push through the bullshit by asking ourselves to solve problems in ridiculous ways off the jump. Instead of saying, “What’s a super cool way my character can get out of this situation,” you ask yourself “How would a 7-year-old write this scene?” or “What’s the dumbest transition I could write between these two chapters?” 

And this does one of two things: it lowers your brain’s defenses and helps you actually think of things, now that you’re not locked up with fear of not being amazing, or you actually just come up with something really fucking stupid and hilarious that at least helps you bridge the gap into the next part that you’re excited to write. 

So that’s how I worked with my ADHD to make a book that I think is going to be a solid work of fiction. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to ask them and I’ll happily answer.