ADHD Brain Diaries: I forgot I wrote a book
When you have so much on your plate you forget to step back and take stock of your accomplishments, you have a problem
This is ADHD Brain Diaries, part of my newsletter about my life, interests, and work, including my books, writing, and classes. To show your support consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. For $5/month or $50/year, paid subscribers get access to my full archives. I hope you’ll also check out my Substack personal essay publication Open Secrets, which publishers an original essay every week.
Welcome to my new column, ADHD Brain Diaries. I got the idea for this column while I was visiting Portland, Oregon last week, where I had multiple conversations with people about our various ways of dealing with ADHD. There were a lot of Aha (not the band A-ha) moments that made me feel less alone, so I figured writing about some of my ADHD issues and how they manifest in my work and personal life might be helpful to others.
In many ways, writing about this goes against the whole point of a newsletter, in my opinion, because instead of telling you about my shiny, exciting, fun new offerings like classes and books and bylines, I’m going to be sharing the much more chaotic process behind how I create them. I’m not even sure if I’ll continue to send these columns via email, or just post them and link to them later, because it feels awkward to even be opening up this door, let alone bringing it into your inbox so blatantly.
Even saying “process” feels a little fake because most of the time, my process feels like triage, or duress—working on the next thing on my list, or an occasional frantic burst of inspiration. I keep hoping I’ll become someone who will write 750 words each morning when I first wake up. Maybe that will happen soon, but for now, I write when I either absolutely have to for a deadline or when I absolutely have to because a topic won’t leave me alone, invading my mind when I’m trying to do other tasks.
Which brings me to forgetting that I wrote the nonfiction guide How to Write Erotica, which was published on Valentine’s Day 2023 (I actually just had to look up the publication date because in my head, I remembered it as having come out last year). Now, when I say I “forgot” that’s a bit of a misnomer. Memory loss is a real and devastating issue I don’t want to make light of. So I haven’t officially forgotten; it’s one of the first things I add to any professional bio. But what I say “I forgot I wrote my book” it’s a two-fold self-deprecation.
One is that I immediately downplay the accomplishment, because I wish I’d devoted more time to it, because it was hard to write, because I was recovering from Covid toward the end of the editing process, because not every erotica writer will find it helpful, because it’s not whatever my notion of “perfect” is. So in my head, all that negates the part where I still wrote it anyway despite being busy and sometimes depressed and having impostor syndrome (because despite having edited close to 800 authors in 70+ anthologies and written and published dozens of erotic short stories across many sexualities and subjects and taught erotica writing classes for over a decade and consulted with dozens of authors about their own erotic writing, I still haven’t written a full-length novel, which is one of those things like having a graduate degree I consider this huge marker of respectability that I hold myself up against).
The truth is, no matter what I wrote in that book, I would probably still find ways to nitpick it and tell myself it’s “not good enough” because of the many ways I believe I’m not good enough. I forget to give myself the grace to acknowledge that, given unlimited time and no other deadlines, it might have been a stronger or different book, but that I did the best I could and I’m proud of the result. I’m truly grateful the book is out there and that I was able to include not just my erotica writing experience but the many different voices of my interviewees from various publishing backgrounds and approaches.
The second part of “forgetting” about the accomplishment is perhaps more insidious. Because I have 10-11 income streams at any given time, and am the kind of person who loves brainstorming and coming up with new projects, some of which I launch, like
, and some which never see the light of day, once a project, especially a book, is out in the world, my mind moves on. How to Write Erotica was published just a few months ago, but in that time so much has happened. I’ve taken on new projects, written various articles and essays, been swept up in the rush of a national TV interview, dealt with personal dramas, the friend I was closet to died and I’ve taught writing classes, edited new anthologies, and been working on my solo collection of short stories coming out next year.The upside of having worked for myself since my magazine job layoff in October 2011 is that I run my own business and can and do work from anywhere and make my own hours. The downside (or perhaps better said, mixed side) is that to make my business work, and because I enjoy wearing multiple professional hats, I’m always thinking about the next thing on my list (and usually things, plural). In all these years of self-employment, I’ve never done the thing real businesses do and scheduled time each month or quarter or even year to analyze the past time period’s setbacks and failures, to pause and formally congratulate myself on my successes while mapping out future strategies.
I never feel like I have time to list my accomplishments or bask in them because there’s always something else urgent that needs my attention. So in that sense, I didn’t forget my book, but it got buried in my mind beneath all the other things I still want to do. I didn’t hold a book party or even an online launch for it. That day was like any other Tuesday. I worked at my part-time job and posted a selfie and around that time did some podcast interviews about the book and that was that.
That’s not to say I need to think about the book every day. It’s a creative project I completed, one I’m happy to have as a resource to my clients and aspiring authors, one that I now have more knowledge about some areas of since writing it, but what’s in the book is done and can’t be changed. In my mind, I’m more excited about my book of short stories and a nonfiction book project I have percolating that I hope to see come to fruition. But whether it’s ADHD or just the busyness of business, I don’t want to forget to pat myself on the back, and want to encourage you to honor your own achievements.
It’s also important to keep in mind that any one goal isn’t going to save you or be a reason to not keep moving forward. As I’ve learned
and Gannon’s book The Success Myth: Letting Go of Having It All, we all need to find our own peace with our work product without confusing ourselves with that product. Gannon writes in the chapter “The Arrival Myth:”There is an assumption that once we reach a big life or career goal, we will finally be version 2.0 and we will stay there. You will be different, better. Then the disappointment sets in. We realize the fictional ‘destination’ doesn’t exist.
I’ve 100% experienced that, and continue to. So this column will be a place for me to peel back the layers of how I accomplish what I do, and often, where I go awry, like having way too many tabs open or figuring out through trial and error how to complete just one thing when I have 10 things clamoring for my attention.
I’m aiming to post a new column every Wednesday (save for this first one). So stay tuned, and if you have any ADHD hacks or thoughts or anything else to share, please do so in the comments.
I got diagnosed with ADD late in life and it was a revelation: it explained EVERYTHING that got me into trouble when I was a kid. When I'm having a highly symptomatic day I try to weaponize it: I get all the housework done. While writing, if I'm having trouble focussing on my current project I just jump over to another one and work on that for a spell.