ADHD and Procrastination are both hurting and helping my authoring…

About 2 years ago, my doctor told me I have ADHD. That I’ve probably had it my whole life and never knew it because mine is the kind that makes me hyper focused and able to complete tasks. However, when mixed with my anxiety, some tasks that should be quick and easy feel vastly overwhelming.

Editing is my nemesis.

Some stories take me a lot of time and concentration that my ADHD and anxiety don’t want to focus on completely. Other times, they help me write an entire trilogy in a week. It’s weird that I don’t know how or when it triggers for certain things. I do know when it wants to trigger for writing almost every time though… EDITING. I love to hate editing. I don’t mind editing my friend’s work, or my students. I’ll even do a few read through edits of my books before I ship it off to my editor. It’s when I get the editor notes back that I run into the ADHD/anxiety that leads to hard procrastination, but also helps me continue writing a different book. For example, I have Ceramic Chemistry back from my editor, ready for me to rework and then publish. It’s not due until October. So, plenty of time to read through the notes and fix stuff. Until I see all the notes and my anxiety kicks in and goes: NOPE! Too much to fix, I’m a failure!
Enter ADHD, who steps up to the plate and goes: ya know…. you still need to finish writing The Witch’s Spell. You could just work on that until you are confident enough to work on edits! So, naturally, that’s what I’ve been doing. I have been able to get through 2 chapters of that book (each chapter is at least 5k), and have the rest of the book pretty well outlined. This issue is also preventing me from doing rewrites on Reaper 2, and my second Shifter novel. Eventually it’ll calm down and I’ll get it all done. And when I do, I will have a bunch of books ready to publish!

Do you suffer from either of these? Or do you just get overwhelmed with tasks like I do sometimes? You aren’t alone. I feel like it’s a taboo subject and no one wants to talk about it. No one likes admitting that they aren’t the BEST at what they do. I’m no where near the best writer, editor, anything really. I’m good at a bunch of things, but not great at any one thing. And that is okay. As long as I love what I do, then it doesn’t matter. As long as you love what you do, then you are doing an amazing job! Don’t gauge your success on the success of others. We all get there on different paths at different speeds. There’s no right or wrong way, unless you just give up. So, don’t throw in the towel. You aren’t alone!