As a group authors seem to hoard more than our fair share of atypical brain stuff- anxiety, depression, and yes, ADD. While I could easily talk on what it’s like to live as an author with all three, this morning I did something stupid because of my ADD and I think I’d like to talk about that.

When I was young, I didn’t know I had ADD, I thought I just really liked to day dream and I assumed EVERYONE had trouble listening to other people talk for a long period- I mean it’s HARD, I couldn’t be the only one- or that it was normal to have so many things going through your mind all the time that small things were constantly falling through the cracks- putting completed homework into my backpack, getting permission slips signed, where I put the snack I just made, you name it. It wasn’t until I got to college that I fully understood the extent of my ADD. Trying to listen to a lecture, even on topics I thoroughly enjoyed, was often like trying to hold my breath. I could do it for a few brief seconds at a time, but it got harder and harder the more I tried. Things that fell through the cracks weren’t just homework but appointments, bills I needed to pay, when tests were…And as difficult as college was, I should’ve anticipated that running a business- and yes, being an author is a business- would be an even bigger challenge. I’ve chosen to handle my ADD without medication and most days it’s manageable, but if you’re wondering what it’s like to live with it day to day and the ways I’ve tried, and sometimes failed, to cope, buckle up because we’re going in.

When I realized that my writing was something I was going to take seriously as a business, the first thing I knew I had to address was the forgetting things issue. It’s all well and good to forget to pay a bill and get an angry email reminder, but I wasn’t about to risk forgetting takeovers or other things that might make other authors leery of working with me. So I decided a daily planner was just the thing. It’s the perfect solution, right? Write down everything right away and then look each day to see what you need to get done. It IS great, as long as I don’t get distracted before I write the thing down, or spend an entire week looking the week ahead and thinking I have nothing to remember that week, or when I get so caught up in words for the day that I forget to look and the next thing I know I’m getting tagged in a takeover I forgot I had. So, a planner helps but it’s not fool proof, unfortunately lol.

While scrambling to get a takeover set up at the last minute is annoying, it’s even worse when my ADD causes me to do something that either A. costs me money or B. makes me look unprofessional. For example, signing an entire set of books to the wrong person, sending what are supposed to be signed paperbacks that I forgot to sign, or posting a paperback order form without asking for email addresses in order to actually invoice the purchases. The latter is what prompted this blog topic, as I sent out PMs to a handful of readers, apologizing for my stupidity, I thought to myself “hey, people might be interested in knowing what it’s like to be an author with ADD”.

The final major challenge I face thanks to my ADD is the self-editing part of the process. I read through my manuscript as I write it but the final push to read through before my beta readers or editors get it, is painful to say the least. No matter how hard I try, I skim, I can’t help it. I’ve tried reading on a different screen, tried changing the font to trick my brain, but no matter what, my brain insists it already knows what’s going to happen and doesn’t need to read. Good proofers and kind ARC readers have saved me more than a few times with stupid typos that slip past me. And forget about proofing audio, it might as well be white noise, again hiring a proofer has been a lifesaver.

I don’t want you to think it’s all bad either though. Like I mentioned at the start, when I was young, the biggest manifestation of my ADD was constant daydreaming. I wouldn’t be here as an author today if it wasn’t for the fact that I learned at an early age just how wonderful and engaging all the characters in my mind could be. And, my ADD allows me to work, often more productively, on more than one book at a time. On a single book I may be able to focus long enough to get 2-3k words done in one day, but if I can turn my attention to another set of characters, I can typically double that, which is awesome.

I hope you learned something, and maybe you saw yourself a bit while reading this post, and I hope you know that no matter how difficult struggling with ADD or anything else might seem, it doesn’t have to hold you back. There are ways to get around all the ways your brain might try to mess with you, and there’s always ways to make it work. Go out there and do something amazing today, I believe in you.