So it turns out I have ADHD. What does this mean for writing?

I AM SO NERVOUS ABOUT THIS POST

How I feel most of the time, or a man named Albert Nelson according to a Wikimedia page in Dutch.

I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. I resisted the suspicion, the evaluation, and the diagnosis, and I think a lot of people who know me will be surprised or even skeptical. I was a very good student; I didn’t have a lot of issues as a kid, and as an adult I’ve generally managed and achieved and, idk, read long books. I generally don’t make typos and I don’t miss my deadlines. I’m dependable. It’s easy to match up all my different symptoms to other sources, whether it’s life in the attention economy, anxiety, or working in media. But according to three different therapists, a lot of reading, several online tests and a two hour professionally-administered one, here we are, and the case isn’t even a mild one.

I won’t go into all the symptoms because a) it’s tedious b) it feels like I’m trying to justify or prove it somehow c) my therapy journey is not exactly the subject of this newsletter. (If you’re really curious, these two pieces from the novelist Rebecca Makkai of SubMakk really spoke to me and I think were what finally urged me to get a formal diagnosis. I especially recommend them if you’re a creative who suspects they may have an attention deficit situation.)

But what I am trying to do is figure out what this means for me as someone who writes for a living and is trying to write something very long (a book, in case you’re new here). There’s a lot bubbling in that distractible brain.

• What do I do with all the advice that tells me to just put my butt in the chair and write? (Although I must say, a chair that allows me to sit cross-legged or in various weird positions helps with my general inability to take this advice.)

• How do I figure out book writing without having daily or even weekly deadlines?

• How am I supposed to balance life things, all the freelance work I have to do to sustain myself, and the 5,000 distractions I actively seek out on a daily basis with deep book work, all when I have issues with time management and prioritization?

• Can I trust my memory at all?

• How many different drafting systems am I going to come up with?

• How on Earth am I supposed to have an organized Scrivener document system? WHAT ABOUT ALL MY TABS?

• How do I efficiently keep track of sources with my tendency to go down rabbit holes and research tangents? Working on endnotes will be a nightmare, right?

• I have trouble with routine, but I know a routine is very helpful to book writing, what do I do?

• How do I get my focus superpowers to train on book work and not, say, researching the perfect planner for two hours?

• I can’t keep my desk mess-free but it needs to be tidy for me to deeply focus, how do I square this circle???

• etc., etc., etc.

Now, two caveats, especially if you’re my agent or my editor (hi! 💕), or a future employer. I’ve managed with my work in the past, and managed well (hey, I got a book deal and a journalism award this year!). I also have a psychiatrist appointment to get meds, and the reaction from some writer friends (“Do you get to go on the meds now? They’re amazinggggg”) has both encouraged me and made me kind of excited.

(Yes, I’m a sweet summer child who’s never taken Adderall, instead gritting my teeth to get through various deadlines to the point of tearing off all my enamel until prescribed an SSRI. Literally.)

“One-man orchestra” search results on Wikimedia are incredible

As glad as I am to have this label and hopeful that it will help me find various ways to handle all of the above, just thinking about the enormous psychic cost of having to deal with it all in my life up until now is exhausting. All the worrying, all the franticness, all the discombobulation, all the self-flagellation, all the work that went into what professionals call “masking,” something girls and women are particularly good at. And now, a hefty dose of self pity.

Not all the the thinking back is sad and bad. That two-parter from Rebecca Makkai helped me with realizing the good parts of the diagnosis. For instance:

These four things—generative passion, multitasking ability, fractal thinking, hyperfocus—they tend to lead you to a career in the arts. And not only because you’d be terrible at data analysis! An enormous number of writers and other kinds of artists have ADHD, and I believe we tend to go undiagnosed for much longer precisely because we’ve found careers suited to the way we think.

I’ve read elsewhere (Tweet? Skeet? Thread? Note? Post?) that journalism, that arts-adjacent career I’ve chosen, also may be particularly well suited for folks with attention-deficit. It’s basically never boring. You’re constantly chasing something new. Hurtling towards a deadline is our default mode, and that pressure helps the ADHD brain. Multi-tasking is an absolute must, especially in today’s media world where you don’t get John McPhee’s 30,000 word counts and 2-year deadlines, but have to work on 3 stories at the same time.

I add my own particular journalism trajectory to that. Maybe my resistance to stick to one beat, despite the constant (smart) advice to become an expert in one subject, is another kind of, sort of symptom? Maybe?

Woof, that’s a ton of feelings to hold and to put out there on the page. A cursed cocktail of sadness, doubt, confusion, fear, relief, curiosity, excitement. The only thing that is clear to me is the hokey notion that there’s a new chapter (😏) ahead.

I’ll keep you posted how those sweet, sweet meds are working.

P.S. I’m very good at my job(s), please don’t let this confession stop you from continuing to assign me stories, give me book deals, hire me for editing and fact-checking and ghostwriting! (Can you tell I’m nervous about this post?)

P.S.P.S. Send writing-with-ADHD tips.