Showing up to write is a struggle. Actually writing even when you do show up feels almost impossible. And if you do manage to write, so many words spill out of you that you feel you’ll never finish your work – and definitely not at an appropriate length.
You’ve read the productivity books (Atomic Habits, Deep Work), the ADHD books (How to ADHD, ADHD 2.0) and the writing craft books (Story Genius, Reading like a Writer)… So why is nothing working?
It’s not because you’re lazy or broken. It’s because no one taught you ADHD writing strategies that actually work for your brain.
The best ADHD writing strategies are those that improve your writing routines, focus, motivation and creativity – while staying flexible enough that your ADHD brain won’t resist. So, let’s talk about how to write with ADHD.
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Why generic writing advise doesn't work for ADHD writers
If you search online, you’ll quickly find hundreds of thousands of pages of writing advise. But many of those tips and tricks don’t really work well for ADHD writers.
When your writing strategies are too prescriptive, what I call your inner rebel tends to come out. That means it can be difficult to take anyone’s advise at all, without adapting it first. (The flexibility I mentioned in the introduction.)
The ADHD writer’s brain
But that is not the only reason why generic writing advise often doesn’t work for ADHD writers. A normal productivity or writing strategy will tell you to be consistent, assumes your brain works in a linear way, and assumes you that when something is important, you’ll feel motivated to work on it. And none of that is true for an ADHD brain!
ADHD writers are divergent thinkers (read more about this in my blog post on 5 Reasons why writing is so hard with ADHD). We don’t think in straight lines, but we start with one idea and see how it connects to everything else.
What’s more, we are motivated not by importance, but by interest. That means that when you sit down to do some work, your brain will believe that things that feel new, urgent, or challenging are the ones to focus on. Not what will have the biggest impact on your life. (You can read more about how ADHD affects writing in practice in this blog post.)
And normal writing advise takes none of that into account! Luckily, there are strategies that work for ADHD writers. So let’s go into those ADHD writing strategies that are actually built on how your brain works.
ADHD writing strategies for building a writing routine
The first thing most ADHD writers ask me as their ADHD writing coach is how to actually build a consistent writing routine. And that’s logical! Everyone online has told you that if you want to be a writer, you need to be consistent.
However, for us, consistency is incredibly hard to achieve. And whenever I give out writing tips for ADHD adults, I never mention consistency at all.
When something becomes a habit, your brain gets bored and starts resisting. So you don’t want to do it anymore! That’s one of the reasons why it’s so hard to build writing routines for ADHD adults.
But that doesn’t mean you should give up! Instead of consistency, try to build a writing routine around sustainable progress instead. This blog post on the 4 mistakes to fix in your routine will tell you how.
In that post, I also talk about why it’s necessary to choose a time and place to write. To do this, a themed schedule can be incredibly helpful. That’s why it’s one of my favorite ADHD writing strategies! By grouping similar tasks together on the same day, you’ll make sure you don’t constantly have to switch tasks, while also removing the need to constantly CHOOSE to write. This makes showing up easier and saves your mental energy for what’s most valuable: your writing.
ADHD writing strategies for focus and time management
As an ADHD writer, there’s one reality you have to accept: you’re always going to get distracted. The real task is not to avoid all distractions, but to make sure that when you do get distracted, you don’t lose a whole day to it. The best way to do that? By setting timers. Whenever you start a session, set yourself a goal, then set a timer. When the timer goes off, ask yourself: “Am I still working on the right task?”
Now, if you are familiar with popular productivity strategies, you might ask, “So you’re telling me to do the Pomodoro technique?”
To which I would say, “Yes, but with a caveat.”
Like most productivity strategies, Pomodoro needs to be adapted.
When your timer goes off, see if you feel frustrated, satisfied, or exhausted. Based on that, you will be able to decide how to write with ADHD using the Pomodoro method. You can read exactly how to do that — including which Pomodoro length suits your brain on a given day — in this post.
ADHD writing strategies for motivation
I already told you that consistency is the number one thing most ADHD writers ask me about. The second? Motivation.
It can feel so frustrating to know you should be writing, to constantly have a voice in your head tell you so, but still not being able to do it. That’s why it’s so important to feel you can summon your motivation whenever you need it. That’s why understanding how ADHD motivation actually works changes everything!
Sadly, the way we have been taught to summon motivation – by being hard on ourselves, talking ourselves down, and scaring ourselves with the consequences if we don’t do it – can actually make it harder to write. Especially when there’s no deadline looming! (You can read more about this in my post on The main ADHD motivation mistake that leads to burnout.)
The problem is that ADHD motivation is interest-based, not will-based. Instead of forcing yourself to write, it’s often a lot more effective to entice yourself to write instead! That’s exactly what I explore in my post on ADHD writing motivation without discipline — including what to do instead when the deadline is nowhere in sight.
ADHD writing strategies for managing energy
ADHDers online talk a lot about managing time (and especially how we struggle to). But you know what we don’t talk about enough? Managing energy! Still, it’s one of the first levers you need to play with if you want to be more productive.
Why? If you’re tired, all your ADHD symptoms get worse. It becomes harder to take care of yourself, to focus, to motivate yourself… And trying to do all those things will cost more energy too, meaning exhaustion can quickly become a downward spiral.
So if you want to spend less time procrastinating, getting distracted, struggling to get started… Energy management is probably where it’s at. The first step towards effective energy management is to treat it like the limited resource it is.
If you want to get intentional about managing your energy so you can become a more prolific ADHD writer, you can read more in this post.
ADHD writing strategies for getting unstuck
Being “stuck” can look like many things. Literally staring for hours at a blank page, is, of course, the most traditional one – one that’s often caused by overwhelm. But you can also get stuck revising the same sentence/paragraph/chapter for weeks or months. Or get stuck throwing out drafts and starting over. And whatever it looks like for you, it will make you feel like you will never finish anything. (Most ADHD writers do!)
Now, the good news is that you don’t need to be a neuroscientist to solve the problem of being stuck as an ADHD writer. But what you can do is borrow some of their attitudes.
If you are stuck right now, you’re not failing. As Edison said: you just found a new way NOT to make a light bulb. The trick is to see your stuckness as a sign that what you’re doing isn’t working, and using it as inspiration to make a change to your writing life.
Getting unstuck rarely comes from pushing through. It comes from changing something — anything — about how, when, or where you’re writing. If you’re not sure where to start, these 15 ADHD writing experiments will give you plenty of ideas to play with.
ADHD writing strategies for the writing process itself
So let’s say you’ve overcome all the ADHD challenges so far. You’ve successfully built a writing routine, motivated yourself, and the words are flowing out of you. That still leaves us with ADHD challenges in the writing process itself!
ADHD writers might struggle with organizing their thoughts, in a productive way. We also often find that all the tasks they need to do to bring their text to completion start blending together. And, most of all, we struggle with perfectionism.
The one big tip I can give you there is: embrace the concept of the first draft. You probably were used to finish all your writing at the last minute, right before a deadline. That means you never internalized the radical idea: bad writing can be fixed. As a result, every sentence you write needs to be perfect right away.
But you can overwrite that belief! If you are ready to shake your perfectionism, you can read here how the shitty first draft can silence it forevermore.
ADHD writing strategies for accountability and support
This one, you may not have thought of before, and may not have actually been looking for. But you do need it!
In our society, we have this idea that a writer is someone who works in total isolation, in an attic somewhere, with no one to talk to but the muses.
But actually, it takes a village to get your writing done. And for ADHD writers doubly so.
When you are part of a community of ADHD writers who share the same challenges you do, writing becomes easier and you’re much less likely to get stuck in negative thought spirals. You could do it alone, but you don’t have to!
One of the best examples of this is body doubling: working on your own project, alongside others who are also working. There are many reasons why body doubling might be effective for ADHD writers. But in the past few years of hosting body doubling sessions, I’ve seen that whatever the reason, it really does work!
When you write alongside others, motivation becomes easier, sitting still becomes easier, and you even get less distracted. What’s more, having an appointment with someone to start working makes it so much simpler to prioritize your writing and actually show up.
Final points on ADHD writing strategies
None of these ADHD writing strategies will work perfectly every time. And that’s not a flaw in the strategies — or in you. It just means that writing with an ADHD brain requires a different kind of flexibility than the productivity books ever told you about.
The good news is that you now have a map. And if you’d like something more concrete to take away today, my free ADHD Writer’s Toolbox gives you five tried-and-tested tools for the most common challenges ADHD writers face — from staring at a blank page to running out of focus halfway through.
You can download it for free below.
Talk to you soon!
– Susanne
5 Simple tools for ADHD writers
Start building your ADHD writers toolbox for free! In this PDF, you’ll find five strategies that can help you overcome your ADHD writing challenges. Just fill out the form below and I’ll send it to you!
