Sanity-Saving Tips for Writers with Attention Deficit Disorder

Like many writers with ADD, I'm often overwhelmed with the number of ideas pouring through my brain. Choosing one to focus on is difficult enough, but then comes the real work: developing and organizing it into a salable article. Suddenly, the great idea is too big, too complicated, or needs more research. If you're a content producer, writing to earn a living or a part-time income, Attention Deficit Disorder can seem more like a series of insurmountable obstacles than a bottomless well of inspiration. Here are some of the techniques I've developed to get around ADD's weaknesses and take advantage of its strengths.

Instead of struggling with non-existent abilities, look closely at the weaknesses that are holding you back and figure out how to work around them, and make them work for you. Even if you lack self-discipline, organization, and the ability to keep to schedules and meet deadlines, you can still be a successful freelance or creative writer. 99.9% of the articles about freelance writing emphasize those abilities and can give you the impression that your scattered and distractible ADD mind disqualifies you from any chance of success.

Brainstorming and Organizing

Whether you use outlining software or prefer to work without a net, you need to capture your ideas as you think of them. Some of your best ideas will come with the first flush of inspiration, but others will come to mind while you're reading topics that seem to have nothing to do with your current writing project. Keep adding words, phrases, even short paragraphs, until it looks as if you have enough material for an article. Now it's time to get organized, pushing the material around the screen until it begins to take on a logical order. Copy and paste, or drag and drop-they're digital blessings that might have been created just for the terminally disorganized writer with Attention Deficit Disorder.

During this process, you'll find that some of your brainstormed ideas don't fit the article under development. Don't trash them! Many of them can be the start of new articles and should be saved in one of two files: future topics, and undeveloped beginnings. The rest of your organizing should combine ideas that belong together, and filling in the gaps with some research. Be ready to add in new ideas that pop up unexpectedly, and always be on the lookout for new perspectives that will enrich the article by giving it more depth.

Concentrate on Evergreen Topics

Working for clients, or writing about hot but short-lived subjects, isn't your cup of tea if meeting deadlines is a major problem,. Concentrate on topics that will remain interesting and useful for a long time. If you avoid subjects that go stale quickly, it won't matter if it takes weeks or even months to finish an article. When you burn out or get stuck, as people with Attention Deficit Disorder usually do, start another, or tackle one that's been waiting for completion. Don't despair because you have fifty articles in various stages of development. Be glad that there's always something in the hopper, because when you lose your focus or run out of ideas, an evergreen article that you've neglected for a long time may now look fresh and inspiring.

Delights and distractions of research

If you don't have access to a good library, and can't afford tons of books (who can?), there are hundreds of thousands of valuable resources on the Internet. And for the writer with Attention Deficit Disorder, that can be an enormous problem. The ADD mind is like a butterfly, flitting from one link to the next, always moving further away from home. Suddenly, hours have gone by unnoticed, and you realize that what's currently showing in your browser has nothing to do with your article.

The solution? Keep the writing and research separate. If you can't beat distractibility, use it. Call your Internet wanderings "research" and put the writing aside for a while. All those interesting resources may be sidetracks for the current article, but they can be the foundation for the next one-and the next one.

It was probably someone with Attention Deficit Disorder who coined the phrase "Think Different." There's no law that writing has to proceed linearly from point A to point B to point C, that one piece has to be finished before the next one can be started, or that it has to be done within a predetermined time span. All your writing career requires is that you turn a disorder into a difference.