Podcast: The ADHD Writer’s Guide to Getting Unstuck
With Rachelle Ramirez & sue campbell
Are you an ADHD writer struggling with traditional writing methods? In this episode, ADHD coach and developmental editor Rachelle Ramirez shares proven strategies to help neurodivergent writers move from blank page to finished manuscript.
Key topics covered
Rachelle's personal journey with ADHD diagnosis
Why traditional writing systems often fail ADHD writers
Task initiation vs motivation — understanding the real challenge
The Interest-Based Approach to writing: Making writing more interesting
Adapting strategies when they stop working
key takeaways
Your brain isn't broken — traditional systems weren't designed for you
Organization strategies for the ADHD mind
Practical techniques for task initiation
Four ways to reignite interest in your writing project
resources mentioned
Mel Robbins' 5-4-3-2-1 technique
ADHD Writer Accelerator Program
Free ADHD Writers webinar
Subscribe for weekly writing insights at https://pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
transcript
Anne Hawley: Writers with ADHD, this one's for you. Stop forcing yourself into neurotypical writing methods that don't work. Today, we're breaking down practical, ADHD friendly strategies that will help you get from blank page to finished manuscript.
Sue Campbell: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Write Anyway podcast. I am Sue Campbell, a mindset and book marketing coach with Pages & Platforms, and I am here with one of our fabulous developmental editors, Rachelle Ramirez, and we wanna help our ADHD writer friends today. Rachelle is an ADHD coach as well, and she actually has ADHD herself.
So all the stuff we're gonna talk about today is not just a theoretical framework. This is tried and true information specifically from someone, not that you speak for all neurodivergent, ADHD writers, but I do think it lends to your credibility that you are talking about something that you've personally experienced.
So Rachelle do you wanna talk a little bit about your ADHD before we dive into how to help ADHD writers get unstuck?
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah. Like most women, I was diagnosed by a friend, and then a very caring friend, and then self-diagnosed and then went to a psychologist and got a very late life diagnosis , you know, mid forties. And from there, there was kind of a grieving process of "oh my gosh, what kind of writer might I have been? What kind of professional might I have been in general had I had this diagnosis earlier?" A lot of women go through that process in general with the late diagnoses, and a lot of the writers that I work with are women. So naturally ADHD writers started coming to me for some help.
I struggled personally with overwhelm. I would sit down and I knew what I needed to do. I had a system. I trained as a developmental editor. I have developmental editor friends, and, and you as a marketing coach. I mean, I know what to do and I can seek professional advice as needed at the ready, and yet I would have the information and I would just get absolutely overwhelmed.
So, deciding what to do next, being able to see the giant project all in my mind was important to me. How can I hold all this information of this novel in my head? And it really overwhelmed me, and I would just shut down and not write at all. So I totally get the struggle for the ADHD writer, and I'm so glad that that you have a care and interest in helping ADHD writers as well.
Sue Campbell: Well, I, I have to say before we started all of this, in 2018 when we started Pages & Platforms, I knew very, very little about ADHD. And learning with and learning from ADHD writers has been really, really fun. Like ADHD people, if you're gonna paint them with any sort of stereotypical brush, they're so passionate and so fun and so creative. And one of the things that I wanna help eradicate is all of the shame that people with ADHD carry with them because their whole lives, they've been shamed about who they are and how they're showing up in the world. Because our system is built for quote unquote neurotypical people, right?
We're not set up to honor all of the amazing gifts that ADHD people have because of all these societal demands. So you and I, when we work with ADHD writers, I think that's one of the first things we try to get to is like, there's nothing wrong with you. There are things that make it challenging in the current systems that we're in, for sure.
But oh my God, you have so much to contribute and that you've already contributed, and we wanna help you just feel better about it and unlock some habits that can just get you where you wanna be.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I mean, what, what we hear over and over again, even with writers that we've been working with for a while, and we need to go back and remind, revisit over and over is the idea that this process. How you are doing it is wrong. How you are doing it isn't fast enough because teachers, mentors, if we had any, parents have often told us, no, you need to do it this way, you need to do it this way. What's wrong with you?
The common thing of you're not quite living up to your potential. I can see that you're smart. Why aren't you doing this? And well, it's because systems were not set up to help, everyone in the classroom. Parenting classes don't cover, if someone was even to take a parenting class, how to work with an ADHD or even identify an ADHD child, especially female child.
So, by the time writers come to us, they're already stuck. They're already saying, look, I need help. I'm overwhelmed. This is really important to me. This process of writing this, finishing this book, or these set of stories or even, you know, blog posts. Starting a blog, starting a website can be absolutely overwhelming when all the little pieces don't make sense in the whole, or they're trying to hold all the information in their head at once, which, we always say that the brain is a really terrible place to store all information. It's a great place to free up for creativity and you wanna get as much out of your head and into a computer file or a notebook or even shoe boxes.
Chapter one is shoebox one. Chapter two is, you know, shoebox two. Whatever works for you, whether you print it out or not, or it's all sticky notes, and napkins from restaurants and whatever it is, having it stored in one single place. No matter what mediums it's in, having it stored in one place, all the digital files in one place, all the paper ish tangible files in one place, can make a huge difference to start letting that information that you're trying to hold-- every single scene development, every single character development, everything I wanted to do, everything I've changed since I started. If you're holding that outside your brain and in someplace else, it can really free up the ADHD brain, any brain really, for creativity. So step one is often: you are not broken, the system wasn't set up for you, you are not doing it wrong.
But maybe there are some things that we can add to or remember, check in with ourselves and get to, to move that. And then the second is the organization piece, which is often, I've done all this writing, I've created all these pieces. I don't know where these pieces are. I hear that a lot and even if you think, oh, it's gonna take me a month to put it all together, it's not. Even if it's gonna take you a week. Let's, on the extreme, it actually takes you a week to gather all the information and put it in one place. Even if you have to learn a new file system like Scrivener or Obsidian or something like that, to organize all your files, it's worth the time that one week invested would be well worth the time.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, I totally agree. One of the things that I wanna cover here at the-- towards the beginning, is this idea of, oh, well you're not living up to your potential, you're not motivated. And one of the things that you always emphasize so well is like, it has nothing to do with motivation. Can you talk a little bit about that sort of misdiagnosis of what the problem is when it comes to getting ADHD writers to write?
Rachelle Ramirez: Right. Yeah. I hear this a lot from ADHD writers. Oh, you know, if I could just get motivated to do this, if I could just get motivated to do that, in terms of writing. And it's not actually, when we break it down and look at it, motivation, ADHD writers actually have a superpower of motivation.
It's actually what they're focusing on. Which is not, it's just misdiagnosed problem. They have a lot of motivation. They wanna do the work, they wanna write, whether it's the muse inside of them or some sort of goal they put together, like a legacy project or a memoir that they wanna write, or an academic assignment or, you know, something like that.
They have motivation. The problem isn't motivation, it's task initiation that's the challenge. So getting from, I'm motivated to do this, to actually doing it is the challenge there. And finding ways to bridge the gap between, I'm motivated to do this and I wanna do this to initiating the tasks are a great idea.
So Mel Robbins has this great suggestion and it's very, very, very small. So I can share it within this context of a short interview. She says that if you just count to five and do it, so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Do it. There's no six, there's no pause after five. It's do it. And I use this every day to get up out of bed, to get to the coffee, to get to the meds, to get moving, to get the dog out to the, to the bathroom.
I use it to get in the shower. I use it to sit down and open my computer. That's one step. Sit down, one step. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Open the computer. If I'm still needing something, it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 open the file. And if I still need, you know, at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, open the notebook. 'cause I hand write before I add things into the computer.
I am actually using those steps on days where it's very, very difficult for me to sit down and actually get the writing done. And while we're on that topic real quick, you don't have to be motivated or feeling like working to sit down and write. I, I know that that sounds like a. "Oh sure, Rachelle, whatever you're just saying that. Sounds great. Right? But that doesn't work for me." Parts of writing, not all, but a very large chunk of writing is sitting down and showing up for the work. And if you can do 1, 2, 3 4, 5, sit down, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, open the computer or the notebook. And sit down to do the work, something will happen. You know, if you have to set a timer, always say, 13 minutes is great. Set a timer for 13 minutes and keep the pen moving. Don't stop. Write crap. Give yourself permission to write garbage, whatever it is, and just keep writing, because when you show up for the work, already, the motivation that you have will start to help you once you get the task initiation piece started.
That's the challenge.
Sue Campbell: Can you walk us through some other ways if a writer with ADHD, or even if you suspect you have ADHD. All of these ADHD solutions work for neurotypical people, but neurotypical solutions don't work for ADHD people. So everything in this episode is relevant for everyone, really. Can you walk us through how to get unstuck?
We have the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 from Mel Robbins, but what are some of the other ways to think about getting unstuck?
Rachelle Ramirez: Well, I think a lot of times if it's not the overwhelmed-by-organization piece or the telling yourself I'm doing it wrong, if you're past that, then looking at maybe "I've dwindled in my interest in this project. I'm just not feeling it anymore. There's an idea that you can work with, which is the interest based approach versus the importance based approach.
So for neurotypical people, for how we grew up in school, for a lot of times how we were raised it's, if it's important, you'll do it. That is not the case for people who are just naturally rebels or or have ADHD. We can push aside important tasks until they fall off the calendar or consequences come in to be so significant that we have no other choice and/or we suffer the real consequences of those actions, right? So saying, oh, it's important, I'll do, it doesn't work. And everybody who has ADHD who's listening to this is like, yep, yep. So the interest based approach has four key pieces to it.
If you're stuck, quote, not feeling it, you're gonna look to see, can you make the project more interesting? Is there something that you can do to connect back to that feeling that you had when you first started writing this project? When you first thought about it, when you first carved out time for it?
What can you do to connect to the characters themselves? Interview your characters. Find ways to let yourself ride off into what you call a tangent or something. Find ways to invest yourself in this project, again, specifically by making it more interesting. Because if you think about it, if it's not interesting to you, well, how interesting is it to other people?
And it can be not interesting to you a day here, a day there, and you sit down and you do the work, you put your big girl pants on and you do the work. But generally, to have this project be interesting is incredibly important 'cause otherwise it's not gonna be interesting to your reader.
The second thing is, if you're stuck, maybe you need to make it more challenging. For me, this is a big one. This is why I do a general, very, very sketchy outline for something, so I know kind of what I'm writing toward. But I don't detail out that outline, because then I've solved the problem. And once I've solved the problem for the story, I don't need to write it anymore. I know from experience, I have multiple books where I'm like, that works, good, two thumbs up. That's a great outline. But I don't give a S-H-I-T about writing it because I already solved the problem. So how can you make it more challenging?
Is there something that you need to do to maybe do multiple storylines in one book? I mean, you can complicate writing out the, you know. Complications are not the same as challenging, but what can you do to just push outside your comfort zone in terms of skill? In terms of, of you know, opening your mind to a new idea? In terms of letting a character put themselves in serious danger or emotional, psychological, you know, our characters should suffer for us.
That's their job, right? So, the other thing is, the third thing is, is how can you make it more novel? It's a little different than challenging or interesting. What can you do that's absolutely different? That could be as simple as writing in a different space. That could be as big as painting your office a different color and putting out candles and having a specific tea for when you sit down to write.
It can be changing your project to something else. Maybe you've lost interest in a project for good reason. Maybe it's just not where you need to be spending your energy and your time right now. That's, you know, as adults, that's what we get to do. We, we get to choose that. And it's a challenge. Just because we said we're gonna finish a book doesn't mean we should.
Maybe what you learned when you were writing that was that your time and energy is best spelled elsewhere. Maybe you've learned some skills there, or you've explored an idea that you've exhausted. It's okay to put a, put something down and start something new.
And the fourth thing is really important. If you're, say, a rebel or if you have ADHD, how can you make it more urgent?
Urgency is critical, and urgency generally does not mean, "oh, I told myself I'd finish this by the end of the day," or, "oh, I told myself I'd sit down and write from 11 to 12, and it's 11," right? It might mean that for you, if you have a lot of practice doing this, it might be that simple to you. But for me, urgency generally means making it more, I'm more accountable to someone else. So I have deadlines, so that could be you promised something to a critique group or an editing group for the next week or the next month.
Or you've promised a friend or a beta reader, or if you need to manufacture something, hire a developmental editor. They'll hold you accountable for, you know, "you said you'd have chapter three by Wednesday. Let's talk about what's going on now that here it is Wednesday and it's not on my desk."
You've now spent the money for this editing call and you don't have the piece for me to read. So by next week to get the most out of your money, we're gonna have chapter three finished. But let's talk about why we didn't have chapter three finished. And so let's solve some problems here because obviously something got in your way.
And I, what I did was, I don't necessarily recommend this for everybody, but I paid the publisher, Luminare Press, actually the $2,500 to process and print and do the ISBNs, and format and all that stuff, before my book was finished so that I would send it. So I, I've committed to it, I have a time limit, they gave me six months. That was my time limit. That was my commitment.
So you can put in artificial pieces in there to make things more urgent.
Those are the four things: making it more interesting, challenging, novel or urgent. It may be any one of those four things, it might be all four of those things.
And if you can do that and focus really on what makes this project more interesting to me, that can help. That can go a long, long way.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, Rachelle and I work with writers in our ADHD Writer Accelerator Program, and I think it's somewhat sometimes disheartening for people to learn, like you try an approach and it works. It doesn't mean it's gonna work forever. Right? And especially with that interest-based brain, you're gonna be on to yourself on some level that this is a strategy that's working and then your inner saboteur is gonna come and like find a way for that not to work.
So we have to be willing to switch it up and not get demoralized when one solution stops working and just be willing to be like, okay, well what's gonna work now? How can I change this now?
Rachelle Ramirez: And one of the great things about that is that, yeah, maybe what you're doing right now was working. You were like, wow, this is great. This is awesome. You moved through that for three weeks and all of a sudden it's not working anymore. Try something else. Try something else. You will find a solution and then if and when that stock's working, you can go back to the thing that was working before and recycle it because it probably will work again.
So having a number of tools in your toolbox for, okay, well when this happens, I can do this and here are my three options here. You can recycle 'em. Just because they stopped working at one point doesn't mean you can't pull them out to make them work again.
And the last thing that I would like to say is that again. The challenges you're facing are not your fault, and you're not doing this wrong. There is no right way to write. It's your process. And think about what are you doing this for? Is it for money? Is it for fame? You know what? What is it?
No, most people who are listening to this podcast are writing because they want to write. They have a personal mission of a specific thing that they want to write. Or maybe they just love writing and tuning into that and not thinking about, oh, you know, this is gonna happen or this is gonna happen.
What do need to do to write today? Is the important thing. 'cause it's really all about the process. 'cause if you're not enjoying enjoying the process, why do it? Go make money somewhere. Go do something that will actually faster and more efficiently. Provide the other things that you actually need, right?
There are way better ways to make money or get famous than writing. So, you know, keep that in mind.
Sue Campbell: And the being proud of yourself every single time you show up to write, right? I think a lot of people, just in our culture in general, it's like, oh, I don't get to feel good till I make it to the goal, till the book is done, till it's out in the world. Then I get to feel good and proud of myself.
And no, you get to feel proud of yourself for every little step forward. For every little scratch note you put in the shoebox because you found it somewhere. For every step of organization, for every word you write, for every idea you come up with, if you feel proud of yourself in that moment, it's gonna help you have the motivation to get to the finish line.
Rachelle Ramirez: And keep in mind that if you're waiting to reward yourself or appreciate the process until you're finished, that finish mark is so fleeting.
Sue Campbell: Yep.
Rachelle Ramirez: It's one day or one dinner or a few days of celebration, and then that's gone and you're like, the pressure is on to do something else and to write today.
So, making every day a sort of mini celebration of, I sat down to write today. That's my job, or that's my break from the world. However you wanna look at it. Might be really helpful.
Sue Campbell: Well, fabulous. Rachelle, thank you so much. If you are watching on YouTube, I will put in a link where you can watch a webinar that Rachelle did for ADHD writers so you can learn more strategies if you are an ADHD writer. And thanks for watching.
Rachelle Ramirez: Thank you.
Anne Hawley: If you'd like a weekly dose of writing insight and mindset and marketing tips in your inbox, subscribe to the Write Anyway newsletter at pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
And that's it for this episode of the Write Anyway Podcast. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.