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elfsIt has become clear to me over the past couple of weeks that my writing methodology has become dysfunctional.
I have attention deficeit disorder. I have it badly enough that it overlaps with Asperger's, although I'm not an aspy according to my doc, I just have really annoying ADD. I mean, really annoying. We joke about it, we ADD folks, calling it Leonard Da Vinci Syndrome, but it's really what it is: annoying. I have tried to cultivate the intense desire to finish something, to get a thrill from being done, but frequently what I feel is more a "Thank the gods that's over with!"
In order to deal with this, my strategy has been to rotate my stories: once the "ooh, shiny" wears off one work, I can turn my attention to another existing work, re-read the existing story to pick up the thread, and cackle gleefully that I now have something perfect with which to mess up the characters' lives even further.
This worked great for most of the least fifteen years, where I rotated between two or three short stories. It does not work well when I have hundreds of them, and "picking up the thread" involves sometimes reading through 20,000 words. I'm not sure what to do about this other than narow myself down to just one novel and a two or three shorts, never leaving the novel long enough to quite forget where it was going.
Because concentrating on just Caprice was driving me nuts. But the lashback has been brutal: the huge torrent of things I suddenly want to write is so huge I'm having the ADD dysfunction of being unable to choose one and do it, so I retreat into the more comforting realm of reading or watching TV or just geeking.
I have attention deficeit disorder. I have it badly enough that it overlaps with Asperger's, although I'm not an aspy according to my doc, I just have really annoying ADD. I mean, really annoying. We joke about it, we ADD folks, calling it Leonard Da Vinci Syndrome, but it's really what it is: annoying. I have tried to cultivate the intense desire to finish something, to get a thrill from being done, but frequently what I feel is more a "Thank the gods that's over with!"
In order to deal with this, my strategy has been to rotate my stories: once the "ooh, shiny" wears off one work, I can turn my attention to another existing work, re-read the existing story to pick up the thread, and cackle gleefully that I now have something perfect with which to mess up the characters' lives even further.
This worked great for most of the least fifteen years, where I rotated between two or three short stories. It does not work well when I have hundreds of them, and "picking up the thread" involves sometimes reading through 20,000 words. I'm not sure what to do about this other than narow myself down to just one novel and a two or three shorts, never leaving the novel long enough to quite forget where it was going.
Because concentrating on just Caprice was driving me nuts. But the lashback has been brutal: the huge torrent of things I suddenly want to write is so huge I'm having the ADD dysfunction of being unable to choose one and do it, so I retreat into the more comforting realm of reading or watching TV or just geeking.
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Date: 2008-05-19 12:48 pm (UTC)You may have already tried something like this, but would it do you any good to put together a short synopsis of the important details per episode, so you only need to read one or two thousand words, instead of 20K+?
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Date: 2008-05-19 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-19 02:50 pm (UTC)I find my ADHD responds well to a "reset" periodically where I somehow break the treadmill I'm on (and tired of) and do something else entirely for a bit. When I come back I don't see a gerbil wheel any more -- I see bits of tasks, many of which no longer seem relevant at all.
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Date: 2008-05-20 07:03 am (UTC)