My Creative Process, or How I Live With Writers Block

Currently, I have a love/hate relationship with the very idea of a creative process.

As if something so ephemeral can be written down and quantified.

For some, I suppose, all they have to do is apply themselves to their work, then voila! In a month, they have a novel. Or a short story. Or whatever. I know there are people like this because the writing section in the bookstore is filled with this advice. Right?

For me at the moment, writing each first draft – it doesn’t matter what I’m working on – is a struggle of will. It takes all I have sometimes to be able to write these words that came much more quickly when I was young.

And I don’t know why I struggle with it.

I struggle with taking an idea – character, scrap of plot, etc. – and developing a story out of it. Even when I’m given the questions to help me develop my idea, I have difficulty answering them. It’s like I’m afraid to pin what happens down

I have a friend who says to know the ending before you start developing your story. I don’t always know the ending immediately. That being said, before I go to write something, I try to know where I’m going with it.

Pantsers out there, and my god, there are a lot of you, are shaking their head and groaning now, being all like, “I don’t wanna know nothing about my story before I write. I just dive in and write!” Yes, that’s sarcasm. My brain doesn’t work like that, unfortunately.

I am starting to be the epitome of the plotter where I want to know what’s going to happen before I write it. That way, I know where I’m going when I write.

So, my creative process is kinda wack.

I sit down to my desk in the morning and fumble back and forth all day on a word here, a sentence there, a couple sentences here, while every so often my brain dials to another frequency and I shift my thoughts to something else.

Then I come back to what I was writing and do it again.

I can’t focus on writing very long before that focus wanes and heads back to Facebook to doom scroll or Google to look something up that I have to know right then. After a few minutes of that, I’m usually back to my writing with a couple words or perhaps even a sentence… oooh, a sentence, a sentence!

And then I write until I don’t know what to write and I’m off again into the bowels of the Internet to look for something to give my brain some dopamine.

Because dopamine is what drives me, first and foremost.

At least at the moment in the unexamined life I’m leading.

I believe that all this has given me a singular goal to help me get moving and that’s a push to learn to focus longer.

I have ADHD. Always have. ADHD is a weird thing, you know? When I was younger, I had a lot of the same problems, only I had no problem hyperfocusing on books as well as writing because that’s just what I did.

I always had a book in hand when I was young and I always dreamed of being an author and telling stories to the world. Not that I really knew what those stories would be.

Now, I sit behind a computer instead of lounging on a couch or in a recliner. I have a thousand-million different possibilities to decide upon, so, of course, my brain wants the new stuff. I dive into politics and see what the batshit insane people we call our congress-critters are doing today. Politics is all one big soap opera, just not focused on romance.

But, I am taking a couple steps in the right direction, I hope.

I am starting a meditation practice with the help of Sam Harris’s Waking Up app on my iPhone. So far, I’m almost just as distracted, but it’s getting a little… easier? More bearable? Meditation is HARD for me because of my ADHD but I’m going to do this. I think it will help me overall in the long run. We’ll see. I’ll keep reporting back and let you know.

How’s your creative process? What tips and tricks do you have for extending your focus?