Writing with ADHD : My Experience

Breaking down my process

As a neurodiverse writer one of the questions which I get the most often is: how do you write? What’s your process? I’m going to share what I can about my experience today, and hopefully there is something here which is helpful to aspiring writers.

I will preface though: Neurodiversity is a spectrum, and I am very lucky to have somehow gotten a lot of the more ‘useful’ traits of AuDHD - once I know how to work with them rather than against them. I realise some people will have totally different struggles to me, and I’m unfortunately not best placed to offer advice for those.

Here are my six steps broken down:

1. TIME - MAKING IT

I am extremely privileged to be able to write full-time. I realise that I am in a huge minority, and for those who are writing to annual release contracts alongside a full-time job, I am in awe. I did write my first book alongside a full-time job, but Covid massively helped speed things along, and there were no deadlines or expectations. I will say, I think I actually found writing when I had a job easier to stick to - I knew that my days were full and if I wanted to get any writing done I knew that it had to be as soon as I got home before I melted onto the sofa and was unable to get back up. This strict self-imposed schedule melded into my everyday routine and became the norm for me, and an extension of my working day.

Writing now that I don’t have a full-time job or schedule to conform to is much more difficult, because I put it off. Some days I wake up creative, inspired, desperate to write. Those are the best days, but they are far and few. Most days I wake up with a list of life admin I have to get done, and can’t be bothered writing and find a list of excuses to avoid it. Medication helps (I’ll do an entire post on my diagnosis and experience on medication separately) but to be completely honest, the only way is to be extremely strict and make it a habit.

The way that I write is similar to Stephen King, which makes it slightly easier (see point 5.) The hardest bit is beginning - once you’re on a roll, it becomes easier. I also try to listen to my circadian rhythm. I am useless before midday. My body clock is sluggish, lazy, and I can’t concentrate on anything at all. I tend to write quite well around 2/3pm, but often will get sudden creative bursts much later, around 8pm. Those are the best sessions, and I will usually drop whatever I am doing to chase the ‘high’ of writing when I am in that mental state, literally vomiting words out and hallucinating scenes like a madwoman. I think listening to your body, your brain, and following it when you are able is the best way to go, rather than fighting against it to fit around neurotypical lifestyles. If you work best at 3am, then you work best at 3am. There’s no point fighting it.

TIME - WRITING TIME

I am an extremely fast writer. Everything I do is fast - speaking, walking, weeing. Writing is no exception. If I sit down with a scene in mind, I can write thousands of words within an hour, so a first draft manuscript can build out very quickly. However, I have to be clear on what I am writing before I sit down, otherwise I’ll dither and trail off into nothing. I end every writing session with an idea for what I want to happen next, and will write a line at the end to remind myself the next day. E.g.

‘They go to the cinema and get into a big fight.’

These are often things which come naturally as I tell the story, versus being strictly plotted out scene by scene, so it helps keep the momentum if I can pick up where my brain left off the day before.

PLANNING

Planning takes a long time. I need to feel entirely comfortable in my characters, the plot, the world, and the psychology or themes behind the story before I even begin. For this reason, my books must have themes that I’m greatly interested in, enough that I can hyperfixate on the topic for a few weeks or months and ingest as much information as possible to help build out my plot.

For Cuckoo, the bulk of my research was legal (so terribly boring and difficult to force myself to do) and psychology of various mental disorders - which was much more interesting to me and I looked forward to. For Greedy, it was cannibalism, capitalism, and Japanese welfare.

I use an oldschool notebook for research and jot down things which I learn, highlighting parts which I think could seamlessly fit into the story. I also use Pinterest to find pictures of my characters, scenes, and locations so that I can refer to them as descriptions when needed. Because I love to be tactile and creative, making these notebooks of information is really fun for me, and doesn’t feel like a chore. I look forward to buying a new notebook for each new novel!

I research using media in all formats - podcasts, Youtube videos, blogs, news articles, academic journals, and in some cases, interviews. This part of the process to me can be fun, but can also drag out a lot. Information is infinite - there needs to be a cap on when you feel you have enough, or you can keep going forever. I use deadlines for this - dates when I tell myself I will begin to draft no matter what.

And speaking of deadlines - I often ask my agent / editor to set me horribly short deadlines. This means that the work gets done. If they gave me a longer lead time, I’d put it off and probably forget about it, whereas the urgency of a time crunch feeds my drive and makes me work harder under the pressure.

PLOTTING

I always have the begining and end of a story very clearly in my head. These are often the most gripping scenes, the ones the reader will remember. The hook, and the final punch. For the middle part, I’ll have an idea of how to get from A to B, and my research to help give me ideas for how to pad out information. For example, researching cannibalism I read about the Aztec tribes. I knew I wanted to weave the lore in somehow, and the idea of their history being told as a scary story around a campfire came to mind - so I created a camping trip for the plot.

I find that keeping the middle part of my plot relatively loose and free means that I can be more creative, and sometimes the characters will end up doing things I couldn’t have plotted for them before getting to know and understand them properly through drafting the story, so this can be exciting. It can also be infuriating when I hit a dead end and feel like I have no clue what to do. When this happens, I’ll sometimes just write a crap scene that I know will be removed just for the sake of keeping the momentum, and then during that time a new idea or direction may come to mind.

Other ideas for when you’ve run out of plot is to write side stories, side-character short stories, or letters from your characters to help add more dimension and ideas that you can use for the main plot.

DRAFTING

When I begin a first draft, I write every single day. Whether it is one sentence or one chapter or several chapters - I must write every single day. That is my rule - if I don’t, I lose momentum, forget where I was and what I was feeling and what was happening, and it all goes to shit. This is one of the reasons that it is easy for me to put off starting - if I have a trip or holiday booked, I’ll tell myself I’ll start after that, so that there’s no struggle in my daily writing rule. But sometimes, I just have to take the hit, and write whilst I’m away or get up early on busy days to get it done.

The second rule (and this is very important) is to never look back. I never re-read what I’ve already written, I never edit or tweak. The tense may change 100 times, but this is a problem for future Callie. I may create a huge plot hole, but again, this is a problem for future Callie. On one occasion I forgot I’d killed off a character and wrote them back in! But if I go back to re-read, I’ll begin to edit. If I start to edit, I will keep editing, again and again and again trying to get it perfect, when such a thing doesn’t exist. If I keep editing, I’m not writing, and if I’m not writing, it won’t get finished.

So, the two most important rules for me : write every day, and don’t look back.

You can’t edit a blank page, after all!

I also refer to this ‘don’t look back’ draft as my ‘skeleton draft’ - even worse than a first draft. I call it a skeleton because often, I’m just trying to get from the start to the end. Some parts will be scenes I have really envisioned clearly with descriptions, dialogue, and everything fleshed out. Most scenes are not, and just have the bones of the storyline. ‘He went here and said this to her and then she did this and said this’ - that sort of thing. Telling, no showing, with key dialogue and character building bits. This first draft is often around 50-60k words. The editing will flesh everything out and pull it to circa 85k words once I add descriptions, atmospheric prose, and anything else that’s missing.

EDITING

This is, for me, the worst part. I don’t notice my mistakes, I hate reading the same thing over and over, I hate nit-picking and re-reading the crap I’ve written on a new day with new eyes. But, it has to be done, and every job has it’s bad parts. At the end of the day, it just needs to be done. I edit a few times, then it goes to my agent, who will probably add loads more edits, then to the editors, who will, again, do probably two more rounds. By this point, I can barely stand the story at all, and am probably just clicking ‘accept all changes’. (Just kidding, Emily and Jesse!)

Then, the worst part. The copy edits. This is essentially when someone like a fact-checker goes through and highlights all inconsistencies and holes in the story. I hate this part, because it’s a totally unrelatable brain pattern for me. I don’t sweat the small stuff, I don’t think people will notice these issues. (Spoiler: they do. And mention them in reviews.)

I hate them because sometimes they’re really, really hard to fix, especially if it’s relating to timeline issues because my brain struggles to understand time and numeric issues. I hate them because often, you’re put in a position where you have to choose whether to take artistic flair and keep your reader engaged and excited, or whether to be factually accurate. (I chose creative flair for much of the courtroom scenes in Cuckoo, because who wants to read about boring court documents?! Someone reviewed saying that I ‘obviously had done no legal research’ and I wanted to pull my hair out. I had! I’d just chosen purposefully to opt for drama over facts.)

These decisions can be stressful, as ultimately, you’re disappointing someone out there. But at the end of the day, I have to put out a piece of work that I’m happy with, and that reflects the themes in the way which I am trying to frame them. I want to entertain readers and get them thinking, not give them a legal lesson or non-fiction information dumps. I’ve also heard of many people who have copyeditors who are painfully pedantic, or change writing style for no clear reason. (e.g. changing ‘it’s’ to ‘it is’.) That can also feel really dejecting. But often I just want everything done as quickly as possible so it can be sent off to the typesetter, so at the end of it all, I just have to choose my battles and get on with it.

I hope there were some tips here which help, please comment below if you have any other questions or anything you’d like me to cover next!

Callie x