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How does it affect
me (negative)?: I start a lot of
projects, but I don't see them through. For example, I like to take videos and pictures, but when it gets time to manipulate, finalize, and post them, I procrastinate until I forget about them. Some of these
projects can be costly or result in more junk. For example, my decision to learn how to sew on a sewing machine and knit. Others result in disappointed other
people, in the case of them wanting to see the photos and videos.
How does it affect
me as a writer (negative)?: Basically, for fiction, I get a lot
of ideas, I write partial drafts or outlines or develop a world or character,
but no publishable work is produced, so no one benefits from it. I have started tons of novel manuscripts, but I can count on one hand how many are finished (that is, ready to publish or submit). I'm a little better with short stories, but not by much. Editing stages are boring. Major rewriting stages are like chomping down on a bad tooth. Idea stages aren't. They are like Hershey Kisses. I run through them so quickly, always wanting more. I write down ideas and plots and even sketches of
scenes, but due to lack of organization or desire to reread 50 pages of scattershot, rambling notes, I rarely use them. So when time comes to try, I procrastinate because I can't find something, or I have to
restart the idea and plan on losing something I really wanted to try in the work, or I waste time and get
frustrated trying to hunt that stuff down. Another example: Although I set up the business essentials to self-publish my works, here it is 5 months into the year, and nothing is up, not even my 30,000-word novella-in-progress.
Or for nonfiction, you can take a look at my blogger profile and see how many blogs I've started and abandoned. Or what about that Writer's Market subscription so I could become a magazine writer? I probably wrote three articles and submitted one, and that submission came before the subscription.
Are there any benefits I want
to keep?: Despite what I ranted about above: ideas. I love ideas. I just don't always like to take what I have in my head and develop it ceaselessly. One time, I tried a project of writing down a story idea for every day
(or it may have been 1000 ideas for one year). Great inspiration came from
those. I felt it exercised my creative side, forcing me to not just try the obvious idea. Also, this side of my ADD helps me develop some
preliminary world-building, which I love. So I want to keep idea and WB generation, as long as I can organize the ideas, keep them brief, and not jump ship from a current work to try out a shiny new idea.
Is there a . .
. puzzle for that?: No, but there is a puzzle book.
Let me explain
that. One summer, I saw a TV ad for a brain
exercise program to help with ADD. I thought to myself, What is the cheap woman's
substitute? And I remembered the variety puzzles I liked as a young teen (I failed to do well
on them, so they were soon abandoned). So I tried that . . . for a while. Did better on them than I did as a 13 year old, and they were fun. Still, for some reason, I failed to keep it up. But I remembered it later when I started reading
ADD books. So I picked up another puzzle book. Enjoyed it. Saw in it an ad for box of
back issues. And I bought them. All of that leads me to my current self-prescribed
treatment.
I've started about four of
five of these, but I have never finished one book.
So that will change. That's my treatment: finish one.
Now
by finish, I mean I have to make an honest attempt at every puzzle. If I get stumped, I can Do-Not-Finish (DNF) it, cheat by peeking, or complete the
whole thing hideously wrong (this is good for perfectionism too). I just have to get to the point I consider my
attempt on the puzzle complete. I don't
even have to finish it in one go. Or finish puzzles in
any order (that may be a follow up challenge). Just complete all the puzzles in the book and
not start another puzzle book of any kind until I do. Thank goodness they are
variety puzzles! I'd go nutso if they
were all one thing.
So that's the game
plan--completing something that I find fun. I'll keep you updated on progress. But before I sign off . . .
Caveat: I do
not think I can cure ADD through this or future methods. ADD
is with us, forever. So I think of it more as exercising a muscle,
with the old adage "you gotta use it or lose it" applying. As
a 100-mumble-mumble something pound woman, I'll probably never be able to
lift my weight, but that's not an excuse to not work on lifting, say, 50
pounds. To carry the exercise metaphor further: Sometimes when a
muscle hurts or when we prefer to be inactive (I've been in both
situations), we neglect exercise. But physical therapy isn't painless,
and it's essential to regaining use of the affected area. And choosing
to put off exercise through a variety of excuses hurts us in a
different way. My feeling is that pain (humiliation or past failures) can
make avoiders of us ADD people. My feeling is that, as ADD people, we are
really good at finding excuses to not try things we don't like. So I
believe we need to work on the areas we are weak in to build up some strength in them. Yet at the same
time, I also believe that being ADD is like being a left-handed person
in a right-handed world--or to go more extreme, it's like a person with a
broken leg facing a world that loves stairs. Sometimes you got to employ
workarounds to do the same thing normal people do. That's fine, but I'm
suggesting sometimes we gotta learn the normal way to do it too. Sometimes
we need to learn both methods, to be ambidextrous depending on the
situation. This series is me trying to do just that: become ambidextrous.
