Member-only story
Featured
How I Worked With My ADHD Brain to Write a Novel
Turns out writing 83,000 words in 30 days is easy when you can hyperfixate
On the precipice of leaving my last career, I laid my head on my pillow waiting for insomnia to join me as my usual bed companion. Instead, an urge (perhaps it felt more like a commandment) jolted my eyes open.
You have to write that novel.
What novel? I had no novel idea. I had always wanted to write fantasy novels, but I had never had the time. Working, graduate school, working, illness, working. It was the not-so-secret dream that had followed me from childhood but promised no future. Until this moment.
You need to write.
Whether this voice was something divine or my own subconscious, I will leave that to the unknown. Times were already strange. We were heading into a global pandemic and my more spiritual side wonders if the urge to write a novel was the secret salve to keep hold of my sanity over the coming years.
The novel idea came to me over the coming week. The story pieced itself together as my mind drew inspiration from some of my favourite works, asking new “what if” questions until I had invented an entirely new universe and met a character in my mind that begged me to walk with her.
