Writing & ADHD

 It's Monday. It's raining. It's chilly. If you're anything like me, your brain is swirling with all the things you want to get done this week, and your coffee has been empty for hours. Honestly, it's offensive. I need my bean juice to last longer, y'all. 

I wracked my brain over what I would write about today. I have brainstorming lists to choose from, but I wasn't feeling any of the topics. I went for a lunch walk, listened to TAKÉNOBU, and searched my soul for what was really going on, and it occurred to me, I haven't written at length about what it's like to write with ADHD.

Hello, I'm Kit, and I have ADHD. I write words (and draw, skate, hula-hoop, knit, crochet, paint, craft, etc., etc.) There are a LOT of creatives in the ADHD community but most of us will tell you we have the struggles. 

Writing schedules? Uhhhhhhhhh

Finishing Projects? Ummmmmm. 

Goal setting for projects? Sure, let's do that! And at the end of the year, I'll have tossed them aside and down 4 other things.

It's rough, y'all. Especially when so many successful writers go on about 5 THINGS YOU NEED TO BE A GOOD WRITER and they're literally all tips on how to be neurotypical. 

So how do you manage your writing, when you're ADHD, and you ran out of hyperfocus gas? This isn't rhetorical, if you have some brain hacks you want to share I WANT TO HEAR THEM. 

These are ways that I currently tackle it:

1. Forgiving myself and being kind when I don't live up to my own expectations. It's so easy to fall down the feelings pit when I stumble in my craft. I'm all over the place with projects & ideas and most of them don't stick. That doesn't make me a bad person, a bad writer, but it does mean I have to be radically kind to my little inner critic. Sometimes I'll list projects I have finished and thrust into the world, or I'll review the list, to remind myself that I am capable of completing projects and that they're pretty darn good. 
   
   
2. I created this very blog to help motivate myself to consistency, to inspire myself, and to keep myself writing. I had grand plans, of course, when I started it. I've given myself so many different writing schedules for this blog. Right now, I'm trying to write once a week (Mondays, what whaaat!) I go through periods where I write my thoughts on the craft, where I write actual poetry or prose and share it, but I try to keep it flexible. I use my blog to ground me, and sometimes it works. Sometimes I forget about it and get lost in writer's block. When that happens, I have to go back to #1.
   
   
3. I've recently started listening to the Start With This podcast and tackling the 2 assignments per episode (1 to consume, 1 to create). Podcasts about writing have been a good way to kick my brain into plotting & scheming. If you have some good writing podcast suggestions I would LOVE to hear them!
   
   
4. Permission to fail. Permission to succeed. Permission to look at fear of failure and fear of success in the eye and stare them down. Permission to look them in the eyes and have a little cry & a nap, as long as I dust myself off and get back up afterwards.

Well, my lunch break is almost over, so I better wrap this up! I hope y'all enjoyed reading and if you also struggle with writing & ADHD, I hope this helped or helped you feel less alone (and please, please, please share them tips 'n tricks, y'all!!)

As always, if you like (love) this content and want to support my writing outside of the big bad projects, and read supporter-only content, you can buy me a cuppa at ko.fi. You can also purchase my chapbook & audible of poetry, a record of night at Amazon. If you're so inclined, you can also follow my author page at goodreads or follow me on Twitter. 

Please show me some love and leave a comment, review, or rating on any of these platforms! Have an awesome day, my friends.

Nature inspo-

Happy Tuesday, my friends!

Let's talk about inspiration for writing poetry, or just writing in general. Somedays, weeks, years, it's hard to just sit down and find the words. Sometimes it's anxiety, sometimes fear, sometimes you're frustrated with your own personal lexicon (is that a blog for another day? Mayhaps!). There are a lot of different tips 'n tricks out there for how to inspire yourself out of a rut. If you're like me, you'll google it then spend time reading so many different tips n tricks that the Overwhelm just piles onto everything else and you end up giving up and wonder off to find a cookie or take a nap. So this isn't a list, and it's certainly not exhaustive. 

Personally, I like to get out into nature. Nature walks are my tried and true first step to combat writer's fatigue, writer's blocks, ruts, whatever you want to call it. It doesn't require any prep, just a water bottle and shoes you don't mind getting muddy. Nature is a powerful tool; it's playtime for adults. I like to get dirty, and lost, and race against the sun. I like to spend 3 hours playing in a creek, and 30 minutes running along the trail to get back before it's pitch black outside. I find it grounding to just dig in and be present and a little feral. 

But it's also a way to learn new words, new concepts, and new ways of thinking, and that shit's always good for writing. Take an ID book, not your cellphone, and go for a hike in the woods or park. What identification book should you get? That depends, what interests you? Wildflowers, fungi, trees, rocks, insects? Pick one and go get lost in the woods. Sit on an old igneous rock next to a creek and count the fossils, make a crayon rubbing of it, catalogue it in your journal, snap a photo. Climb a tree and sit there, balanced, in the air, and ID that leaning Sycamore growing near the bluff.

This is the stuff, my friends. If you're struggling to find the words, go learn something new about the world around you and learn it with your whole body. Feel it, see it, smell it, touch it, roll in it, poke it... but don't eat it unless you know for sure that it's not poisonous. Seriously.

Don't eat poison. I cannot stress this enough.

Hope y'all have a wildly creative and/or restorative week. The sun is coming back 💓

it's log it's log it's better than bad it's good

Love & sunshine & snow & moonlight,

Yours,

Kit

As always, if you like (love) this content and want to support my writing outside of the big bad projects, and read supporter-only content, you can buy me a cuppa at ko.fi. You can also purchase my chapbook & audible of poetry, a record of night at Amazon. If you're so inclined, you can also follow my author page at goodreads or follow me on Twitter. 

Please show me some love and leave a comment, review, or rating on any of these platforms! Have an awesome day, my friends.

 

Twenty Twenty Won

 Howdy All! 

We're well into 2021 and have already had an attempted coup at the White House. It feels a little ridiculous to be blogging about anything besides that, right now, but others have said it more succinct and powerfully .

So I'm going to indulge in some positivity and dedicate this blog to a summary of all the creative things that happened in my 2020. 

Accomplished

• Audible of my chapbook a record of night, produced & narrated by Erin Knowles
• Put out a paper copy of a record of night 💓
• Opened a ko-fi.com/KitSteitz account to work on my hustle
• Started a poetry project for August and completed it
• August project readings in December

So in a year that was one of the darkest in my (our) timeline, I feel pretty good about that shit. 

I don't know what this year will bring. Hopefully not a Fascist takeover. Really got my fingers and toes all crossed we avoid that, y'all. Every year I have to find new things to motivate me, to get me moving and kick me from dreaming to creating. Dreamers create, but also sometimes we just drink coffee and think really hard about it, then wander off and pet our dogs. 

Speaking of pawfect dogs of 2020, this is my dawg Gentle Sir Nugget and he is perfect and wonderful.

Anyway, around this time every year, I create super lofty goals for the year but honestly, I just throw ideas at a wall and see which one sticks. You do what you can do, when you can do it.

Dreams for 2021

• Werk werk werk on my novels (work on my fear about those novels, too)
• Prepare and publish August project Chapbook
• Maybe a few live poetry readings? YT live or FB live? questions, questions
• Collab with at least one fabulous human
• Consume craft-related podcasts & essays etc., etc
• Maybe another poetry-month project?
• Maybe work on that ridiculous queer space opera podcast

IDK, felt cute, might not accomplish any of these later. 

As always, if you like (love) this content and want to support my writing outside of the big bad projects, and read supporter-only content, you can buy me a cuppa at ko.fi. You can also purchase my chapbook & audible of poetry, a record of night at Amazon. If you're so inclined, you can also follow my author page at goodreads or follow me on Twitter. 

Please show me some love and leave a comment, review, or rating on any of these platforms! Have an awesome day, my friends.