Advice, please?

[Tom]

Does anyone have advice for dealing with ADD while writing? I can't seem to stay focused for very long. Every time I start a story, I lose interest within a few chapters and move on to a new idea. This is embarrassing, but I've only finished five stories. In my life.
I'm freaking out right now, because my current WIP has a deadline. I don't know if I'll be able to scrape enough focus together to finish it in time.
I know I'm not supposed to let my disability overcome me, but I'm really frustrated. My ADD was mild when I was younger, but over my teen years it seems like it's gotten worse. It's not severe enough to medicate, but it's still very challenging to deal with.
Anyone else have problems like these? Any suggestions on how I can deal with them?

 

[CupofJoe]

I don't have ADD.
I have finished 2 stories in 30+ years of writing and then only one of them really, the other I just stopped when I couldn't think what to add... [I would guess that the idea/finish ratio for most writers is incredible if they/we were honest...]
I have [easily] 200+ stalled WIP. Some I will never go back to. Some are on the "one day" list... Some are on the "I wish" list... some are things I tinker with the entire time...
I get bored and loose focus very easily.
For me the only thing that even sort of works is to break down a story in to chapter, then scenes, then subscenes, then a conversation then a line or two of dialogue. Some days I'm happy if I get the name of a character right.
I can hold the entire story in my head [I know what is going to happen - well sort of] but I can only work on the next 15 second/minutes of my characters' lives and stay with them...
Things I have learnt to do -
I never tell anyone the plot of my current story - At best I give them an abstraction of what I think the story is about...
I don't think of the deadline - It will be the elephant in the room even if I am the only to know about it...
I work on any part of the story I can think clearly on - Anything - just star writing and carry on. I have written several books in my professional capacity and each one started out as a 500 word blurb for something or other... and then grew while I wasn't looking.
Don't know if any of this helps... Good Luck.

 

[Devor]

There's no good short term answer. If I had to try, I would say to focus on that moment you lose interest, and see if you can develop a counter-trigger. I have a friend with (extreme?) ADD, and if you call it out right after he loses interest, he comes back to it for a few more minutes. So if it were me, I would be looking for some way to internalize that call back for your writing. If you lose interest, you lose focus, what will bring you back?

That also happens to match a common productivity tip, to focus on starting as often as possible, until eventually each time you start you'll stay a little longer.

 

[skip.knox]

Here's my advice. I will not claim it's good advice.

1. Don't call it ADD. You are who you are. This is how you write. You can work on that. You can work on how you write. You can't work on ADD.

2. Now that we're focusing on writing, you're just another writer, like the rest of us. Like the rest of us, writing is a struggle. Who am I kidding: it's a war. There are many ways to wage it.

There are tons of time management techniques out there. One you might consider is Pomodoro. Like many time management techniques, it's a universe unto itself, but the core concept is simple enough: work in bursts of 25 minutes. You literally time it and you literally stop at exactly 25 minutes. You do this day after day (you can do more than one burst a day!) and eventually it becomes habit and behold! you are productive. That's what it says in the brochure. There are many other methodologies out there. I've tried many and have permanently settled on none, but they do work for others.

Know you are not alone in this. Plenty of us, probably most of us, exhibit the behavior you describe. The trick is to keep going, no matter what, no matter how crappy the writing, no matter how little the progress. The only way to fail is to quit.

And one final thought: it's possible you keep hopping to new ideas because you don't have actual stories. You have ideas. I did this a lot before I finally understood what was going on. I'd have a scene, or a title, a concept, a setting, a character ... what I didn't have was a story. I still get these and I still write them down, but now I see them for what they aren't. They go into a grab bag. When I'm looking around for a new story, I rummage through the grab bag, take out an idea and look at it more closely to see if it can grow into a real, live story. What I don't do is think of the fifty or so ideas in there as unfinished stories. Even if I have invested a few thousand words into them, they aren't stories yet. They're just sketches, and that's a good thing. An artist has a hundred sketches for every completed painting.

 

[Tom]

Thank you all for the advice. I'm feeling a lot less despairing now.
I actually have come up with a simple way to keep myself focused-I'll write it out in case anyone else wants to try it.
I use MS Word, so when I find a scene I need to finish, I type something like "work on this" at the end of the scene. Later, when I open the document again, I use the "Find" feature to go right to the scene I was working on. Then I work on it for about ten minutes and move on to the next section I've marked out. It's simple but it's really been a big help.
Except when I ignore it. Er...bad habit.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

What I'm about to say is old hat, but it may help.

You stated you burn out after a few chapters. That tells me your trying to produce a novel without ever finishing many stories. Consider this point... You may not be ready to write a novel.

Some writers can just sit down and produce novels. They never write in any other form, just novel after novel. Some writers need to take a different road. Maybe that's where your path lies.

Have you ever made a sincere effort to focus on shorter fiction while you learn the writing craft, gain an understanding of storytelling, and develop your voice? If not, think about taking a considerable amount of time writing short stories, novellas, or even flash fiction.

Actually finishing stories, all the way through revision & editing, offers an enormous amount of learning. It can also grant you the confidence in your own abilities as an artist, confidence you'll need to complete novel-length works.

There are opportunities everywhere for short fiction writers online...contests...peer review sites...ezines. Here on Mythic Scribes we have an EZine (Myths Inscribed) as well as several challenges in the Challenge forum where you could home these skills along with your other scribes.

The Iron Pen challenge is just finishing its seventeenth installment & has published select stories in an anthology. Alongside the Iron Pen, there are three other active challenges running. I know at least one other has the eventual goal of publication for monthly winners.

Considering the issues you have with your attention span, perhaps this sort of writing is currently more in your wheelhouse. In time, you could mold yourself into the novel writer you want to become. Or, maybe after compiling a laundry lists of shorts, or a few novellas, you compile them into a novel. That's what Hugh Howey did, I believe. He compiled an omnibus of stories into his popular novel entitled Wool.

Anyway, point being, there are many ways to skin a cat. Experiment with different types of writing while you allow yourself time to grow. You may just find what your looking for along the way.

 

[Tom]

@T.Allen.Smith: Thanks for suggesting different story forms. I've only just started experimenting with short stories, and I already like the format a lot. However, many of my ideas are big, complex ones that require a longer format. I'm not one of those Robert Jordan-esque writers who always produce 800+ page books in ten-volume series. (*shudder* did I really just type Robert Jordan?)I prefer short standalones, which my one WIP is.
However, I like the idea of building a larger novel out of short stories--it would be multifaceted, with a lot of different perspectives to hold my interest. Thanks for that suggestion!

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I don't know if you have ADHD (it hasn't been ADD for about a decade now) or simply an inability to concentrate. I would suspect it's the latter actually because there are certain other symptoms common to the diagnosis that you haven't described. However having said that there are certain strategies that sufferers use to help them manage their issues. Some of them may be helpful to others without ADHD. I'd suggest having a look at these and seeing if any of them will help you. I would recommend that keeping a master list, a journal and cutting clutter are all excellent ideas, and absolutely you need to take care of yourself and watch your sleep etc.

12 Best Tips for Coping with ADHD | World of Psychology

I'd also suggesting that if you have not already done so, a trip to the doctor to have a proper diagnosis done would be in order.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Penpilot]

Hmm... sounds like you've got a little of what I have in terms of large ideas. This bleeds into other areas of my life.

People have said my eyes are bigger than my stomach on more than one occasion.

My solution is find simpler ideas to work on first. My first book had 6 POVs (3 major and 3 minor) and was a world spanning epic. It was terrible, and is a mess that will take a lot of work to fix, if I ever get around to it. When I got to the end of my 3rd draft, there seemed to be so many things wrong, so many things that needed fixing, and I didn't even know where to begin to start. I felt so overwhelmed and discouraged, but then I made the decision to put the book aside and moved on.

My second novel I simplified. I resisted the urge to make it a book about saving the world and focused on one major POV their small story, with a small interlude into a minor character's POV. I finished the first half of the novel in a month. I would have had the second half done in another month, but serious family stuff got in the way, and I had to stop writing for a few months.

After I finished, even though the rewrites were major, they never felt beyond my reach. I never felt that I was drowning. The story was always under my control.

I'm working on my third novel now, and it's a bit of an epic. Three major POVs and one minor one so far. Even though the task is large ahead of me, I gained enough experience with my second book that I think I know how to handle something larger and more complex. Issues are popping, up but I've learned how to handle them. I certainly don't feel overwhelmed any longer.

One of the greatest tools I found is an outline. You don't have to adhere to it strictly but having a map of where you want to go certainly helps. I allows me to break the story down into small chunks that I can focus on without worrying about the larger whole.

I just realized I wrote a long post for a person with ADD. Sorry about that. Hopefully you'll get something out of it.

TL;DR Start with smaller, simpler stories first and outline to break a story down into digestible chunks.

 

[Tom]

@ psychotick:
I was diagnosed with mild ADD at...about seven or eight, I think. I didn't describe all my symptoms because I didn't want to come across as a whiny emo. Since you asked, though--
-I have an inability to concentrate, especially in loud/crowded environments. I'm very sensitive to auditory stimuli, so when I'm talking to someone I'll often drop what I'm saying in the middle of a sentence because I was distracted by a noise that the other person either didn't hear, or did hear but just ignored. I also often have to have people repeat something they said to me two or three times before it clicks.
-I alternate between hyperfocus and utter distraction when I'm trying to work on something. Hyperfocus is one good thing about ADD. You get on a roll and nothing can jolt you out of it. Some of my best writing was laid down in one sitting thanks to hyperfocus.
-Sometimes it feels like my own brain is moving to fast for me to keep up. That can be scary! I tend to skip from one thing to another at high speed when talking or writing, often between subjects that have no relation to each other. Maybe I should experiment with stream-of-consciousness narrative.

@Penpilot:
Thanks for the advice! Yes, I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew. I've grown a little less ambitious in my projects, thank goodness. It was nice of you to consider how a long post can be incompatible with ADD. It's good with me. Now if it had been all long paragraphs with no double-spacing...*shudder*

Thank you to everyone who has posted on this thread! *gives out cookies*

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Tom, you actually sound like you struggle with many of the same issues that I do.

I am ADD - no "H," I'm not hyperactive.

Plus I have Asperger's as well as PTSD, bipolar, general anxiety and depression, and I'm psychotic. I bring up the laundry list because many people with these issues, either singly or in combination, can experience sensory overload, which is what you describe exactly when you talk about being sensitive to auditory stimuli. I have the exact same issue.

What helps me the most is listening to music while I write. It helps me to settle and focus for a few hours at a time - and then when I feel myself becoming restless I alternate, take what I call a "brain break" and come here or do some research or stretch my legs. Then I come back. But for me, music is crucial. It buffers out the rest of the noise and insulates me from the things that overload me.

And don't discount the seemingly unrelated things you may feel a need to research. You never know what will be useful. My writing partner and I have a library filled with strange and random resource material that now, as our series is coming together, I am constantly turning to. Nurture your curiosity!

 

[psychotick]

Hi Tom,

Hyperfocus? I've never heard of that before, but it doesn't sound like an ADHD thing from what you've described. Typically there are three variants of ADHD - the inattentive subtype, the hyperactive / impulsive subtype, and the combined subtype, and the symptoms fairly much match the names.

My thought would still be to see a doctor especially if you haven't been assessed since childhood.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Tom]

Hyperfocus is the flipside of lack of attention--it's an almost obsessive fixation on something, whether a task, a single detail of a writing/art piece, or a certain subject.
Usually it's associated with OCD or Asperger's, but it can pop up in ADD occasionally. I think it also goes by a different name now, but I've never felt the need to look it up. I have a name for it already, and I know what it is, so I can deal with it.
I think I'll take your advice and see a doctor, Greg. Thanks!

@A E Lowan:
Do you get anxious in very open spaces? I've been wondering if this is just a personal quirk or a real ADD symptom.
For instance, I always sit against the wall when I go out to eat, and my friends usually let me pick a table close to a wall or window because they know I hate sitting in the middle of the room.
Same thing in my college classes. I don't have a problem sitting in the first row, but I can't sit in the middle of the classroom. Has to be near the wall.
I also feel more comfortable surrounded by woods, hills, or mountains than flat, open land like prairie, but this might just be my Northeastern rural upbringing.
Does anyone else have this quirk?

 

[Tom]

Found out just now that hyperfocus is commonly called perseveration by clinical psychologists. It's a very fascinating subject-if someone wrote a story with a hero with perseveration, I'd read it.

 

[K.S. Crooks]

I have the same condition as you, perhaps milder. What I do is work on the outlines for up to 2 other stories while I am writing my current one, which also has an outline that gets update as I write. What this also means is when I go to begin a new story a lot of it is already written in a sense and it is a far better story than it would have been if I had written it right when the idea came to me. Hope this helps.

 

[AshleyTaylor]

I don't think it is a problem. You should use this different and new ideas in the same story. You only need to merge all the thoughts in one.

 

[Tom]

Usually the problem isn't an overabundance of ideas--it's the inability to sit down and concentrate long enough to write out the ideas.

 

[Bruce McKnight]

I haven't been diagnosed with ADD, but I have three issues (writing issues, anyways): losing focus on a story, lacking concentration when I'm sitting down to write, and just procrastinating (like I am right now) when I have time.

To stop from losing focus on a story, I turned towards outlining. I start with the major idea, then break it down into chunks, then write out scene headers. This makes it easier for me to tell if I'm going to want to finish the story. I would much rather realize I'm not in love with an idea when I'm just blocking out scenes.

Timers tend to work for me when motivation stalls. I usually time 15 minutes then do a word count. Then another 15 minutes and another word count. I'll keep doing this, trying to beat my counts. If it's a really unmotivated day, I go down to five minute timers.

In an attempt to battle procrastination, I try to chart my word counts. Seeing a few days (or weeks) go by with a flat line (sometimes) lights a little fire to get moving... not always, though. This is my biggest challenge so if anyone else has ideas, let me know!

 

[Jabrosky]

I don't know if I've ever been diagnosed with ADD, but I do have attention problems which may be symptomatic of it (this in addition to the Asperger's which I have been diagnosed with). I am still trying to figure out how to deal with these issues, but I think the posters here have contributed some good advice.

 

[Tom]

I'm so amazed by the outpouring of advice by so many people!

The way I deal with my issues, Jabrosky, is to keep myself from thinking of them as "issues" at all. I'm a highly competitive person, so when I was diagnosed as a kid, I resolved to think of my ADD as a challenge rather than an issue. I admit this won't work for everybody--I have to be very tough on myself, especially when I could slide and use my ADD as a crutch.

Also, think of yourself as a person foremost, and a person with issues second. It helps when you realize that your identity as a person isn't wrapped up in your issues.