Maya Angelou

Join us for the Find Your Path Writing Retreat

Spain - September 19-25, 2026

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Ever wonder what it would feel like to have a writing practice that reflects how you think, how you best work, how you create, and one that honours your natural rhythms? Our retreat is about reflection, honesty, space, time, nature, and you.

I’m curious, does this sound familiar?

You have the opening chapter rewritten seven times, a folder full of abandoned drafts that each felt urgent, then suddenly didn’t. You have no shortage of ideas; in fact, your brain generates new ideas constantly, so many that you feel overwhelmed about what to do with them, if you can even find them. You have days when the words pour out, and weeks when sitting at the desk feels like a punishment. Your writing routine feels random and inconsistent. What used to feel energising is now exhausting because finishing feels like one more item on your to-do list.

Then this retreat is for you!

For one week in southern Spain, eight writers and two writing guides will come together to rethink their relationship with their craft, not to write faster or better, but to discover (or rediscover) how to write in a way that actually feels compatible with how your mind works and where you’re at in your life. We’ll explore what a sustainable practice looks like when it’s built around your rhythms: maybe that’s high-focus sprints, wandering days, the need for solitude and recovery, and the curiosity that pulls you off track but might actually be part of the process.

Early-bird prices start today and run until June 7, 2026

There are eight places — intimate enough that everyone gets real attention and spacious enough that you’ll never feel crowded. Early-bird pricing is available from May 7th to June 7th, and room preferences are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information about prices, click the registration link.

If something on this page made you feel seen, join us! We are building a supportive community of writers who want to explore creating a writing practice that makes them feel good.

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What’s included

• All accommodation (private rooms; two of those private rooms will share a bathroom — book early for your preference)

• All meals and non-alcoholic drinks throughout the week

• Morning tai chi sessions

• Morning workshops/discussions and evening gatherings

• One 1:1 coaching session with Kirsten or Lisa

• One cultural excursion

Optional add-ons

• Additional 1:1 coaching sessions

• Time at a nearby spa

• On-site massages

• Further cultural excursions

Getting there

The retreat is located two hours from Málaga airport in the Alpujarra, Andalucia region. You will stay in a 400-year-old, 10-bedroom house, with sunny terraces and spectacular views. The house is stylish, comfortable, and the perfect place to gather and write. The surrounding nature is lovely for walks or just a wander.

We will organise one scheduled group transfer from and back to the airport, included in the registration price. Details are shared upon registration. If you’d like to arrive early or stay on after the retreat to explore the region, Lisa can help you arrange accommodation and travel logistics. Just ask!

Take a long, slow breath. And exhale.

How does the week unfold?

Mornings open gently — with tai chi (optional) to ease into the day before the mind gets busy. A delicious, nourishing breakfast. From 10-12 each morning, we gather for guided discussions on building a practice that moves around your own obstacles and patterns, the full arc of the creative process (the dopamine phase, the messy draft, recovery, editing, sharing), and what it means to write sustainably over the long term. These aren’t lectures. They’re conversations.

Afternoons are for writing. Unstructured, unhurried time to focus, to rest, to create, as you wish, at your own pace.

Evenings are for coming together. Shared meals, good wine, and the kind of exchange that only happens when writers are in each other’s company. Some evenings we’ll gather around the table to share work or reflections. One evening takes us out to explore the culture and flavours of southern Spain.

Woven throughout the week: long walks in nature, open time for wandering and rest, and one private coaching session with Kirsten or Lisa — a dedicated hour to look at your own practice, your blocks, and your next steps.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is this retreat for? This retreat is for writers at any stage — whether you’re working on your first book or your fifth. It’s not necessary to have a work in progress; you can also be writing short stories, personal essays, or a memoir. What matters isn’t where you are in your writing journey, but a willingness to look honestly at your writing practice, what you would like it to be and feel like, and an openness to try something different. If you’ve ever felt like conventional writing advice just doesn’t stick for you, you’ll fit right in.

Do I need to be working on a specific project to attend? No. Some participants will come with a manuscript in progress; others will come with an idea they haven’t started yet, or simply a desire to begin or reconnect with their writing. All of that is welcome. The week is as much about building the conditions for writing as it is about the writing itself.

How much writing will we actually do? Each afternoon is set aside for your own writing, and you’re free to use that time however serves you best — drafting, planning, resting, staring at the ceiling. There are no output expectations. This is your time to experiment with what working in your own rhythm actually feels like.

What are the accommodation arrangements? All rooms are private. A small number of rooms share a bathroom between two guests. If you have a preference, we recommend booking early — room allocation is on a first-come, first-served basis.

What’s the food like? All meals are included throughout the week, from breakfast to dinner. We eat together — long, unhurried meals that are very much part of the experience. Please let us know about any dietary requirements when you register, and we’ll make sure you’re taken care of.

How do I get there? The retreat is located approximately two hours from Málaga airport. We will organise one scheduled group transfer (included in the price) — details will be shared upon registration. If you’d like to arrive early or stay on after the retreat to explore the region, Lisa can help you arrange accommodation and travel logistics.

What is a 1:1 coaching session? Every participant receives one private coaching session with either Lisa or Kirsten during the week. This is a dedicated hour to look at your specific writing practice — your patterns, your blocks, your goals — and map out a way forward that actually fits you. Additional sessions can be booked as an optional add-on.

Is this retreat suitable for beginners? Yes. We welcome writers at all levels. The focus of the week is on building a sustainable writing practice, which is just as relevant if you’re just starting out as it is if you’ve been writing for years.

What if I’m not sure it’s right for me? Feel free to reach out before registering — we’re happy to answer any questions and help you figure out if this is the right fit. You can contact us at info@kirstendonaghey.com or lisa@intralingotravel.com

Why only eight people? Intentionally. A small group means real conversations, genuine attention, and the kind of ease that lets people actually relax and open up. It also means spots go quickly — which is why we encourage you to register during the early-bird period if you’re feeling called to join us.

Still here? That’s usually a sign. Come write with us!

Register now and claim your early-bird spot

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Building a community one share at a time:)

”So, what is the best way for a writer with ADHD to get a draft done? I don’t mean hacks or working with my current situation. I mean, if I could design it and then do it?”

This is what one of my clients asked me last week. I must admit, it took me a minute to respond. A big part of my coaching philosophy is to meet the person where they’re at and help them move forward and get words on the page. Did she mean, in an ideal world, where there are no distractions, emotional baggage, or trouble transitioning from task to task? But I guess ideally, there wouldn’t be other tasks.

I have thought about this a lot. I manage my life – the interruptions, the demands, my moods, the rise and fall of energy, of dopamine. I have become quite good at it, to the point that some days I wonder if I have cured my ADHD through training and strategies. But of course, I haven’t. I’m just managing it better. But I have been thinking about what is ideal, not what can be managed.

I also think, with a lot of envy, about what it meant to be a writer fifty years ago, a hundred years ago. All that was required of a writer back then was to write. No self-promotion, no building an audience on social media, no adhering to an overload of genres created to sell books. And no going at it completely alone without an editor to check in with. Now, many of us are squeezing in time to write, while having full-time jobs, or raising kids, fighting addictions to our screens, creating online identities, and still feeling isolated, unmotivated, and uncertain about the reward for all the effort.

“What exactly are you asking me?” I responded.

“In your personal opinion, with your professional expertise about ADHD and writing, what is the best way for me to get my book done? Let’s say I had the power to start with a clean plate.”

“How about I tell you how I would do it. What my ideal scenario would be based on everything I have learned about myself and reflected on about writing a novel with ADHD.”

She agreed this was a fair starting point. What follows here is a cleaned-up version of our discussion, and hopefully a bit of a template for you to discover what your ideal situation would be.

What do you crave regarding your writing? That’s where the desire lives. Desire is mandatory to stay motivated with your book. Some ADHD specialists might say dopamine comes from interest, but think of it as a crush – will interest alone keep you coming back?

I often crave solitude.

I crave uninterrupted time – not a few hours, but days. Weeks. I have fantasised about a whole summer. A well-known published writer once told me that she spent a summer in a camper, parked in a field, to write her second book. Sometimes in the evenings, she would go into town for a drink. This has stayed with me, like a challenge, a curiosity, a longing.

What do you know about yourself? I know I need a clear plate to write. I need to have no open-ended tasks lurking in my mind. They unsettle me. I know stopping and starting is hard for me. With nothing else on my plate, writing wouldn’t feel like stopping and starting; it would feel like living inside it and taking breaks sometimes.

What do you currently miss about writing? I miss the days when I could feel inspired to write just from taking a walk, listening to people talk in a café, hearing the stories of friends, or encountering something beautiful, old, or artistic. My mind was forever applying meaning. There was a time when things shifted in me, and I would stop to write in my notebook or rush home and type out a story. I would often say, I see life like a short story, the story arcs just present themselves to me in everyday life.

What do you believe you need for your brain to be in a creative state, for words to flow? I believe with my whole being that I need space for my brain to flow like a river, sometimes rushing, sometimes meandering, sometimes moving gently. No restrictions. No meetings. No dinner plans. No phone calls. No conflict. No one needing something from me.

What do you love about your brain that helps you write? I love how my brain makes connections. I love how my brain sees patterns. I love how I have strong emotional reactions to life, and this shows up in my writing.

What kind of environment would feel like a luxury to write in? A cosy apartment in the city, where I can go for walks and have a coffee and stimulate my brain after bouts of concentration. Somewhere I feel safe. Aesthetics are important to me. An amazing sofa for afternoon naps. Lots of sun but also drapes if I feel overstimulated.

What are my non-negotiables? I must have time alone. Uninterrupted for as long as I need. An aesthetically pleasing environment. An empty plate.

What am I afraid of? That my perception of solitude is vastly different from the reality of solitude.

What feels unmanageable? Putting my business on hold.

The bonus? A writer whose work I love and respect, who would give me feedback every so often.

The knowing? To know that I don’t have to join the real world again until my draft is done

Would you like to continue this conversation? Book a free Discovery Call. Or join me on a Writing Retreat in Spain this September. This retreat was created by a neurodivergent writer for any writer who craves a practice that feels less like performance and more like coming home to themselves.

So, I have this workshop coming up next week. I’m teaching it. It’s online. I’ve never done an online workshop before. I’m worried about being able to talk for an hour with no interaction, just a screen of hopeful (hopefully not bored) faces staring at me. I can talk, I mean, c’mon, I have the girl-type, hyperactive ADHD. The hyper on the inside, but highly controlled on the outside. The nervous fidgety, I’m going to explode, I’m so restless, kind of ADHD. So, when the opportunity arises, or the dopamine sees an exit route, words tumble out.

I just glanced outside and saw that I left my coffee cup sitting on the air conditioning unit, and the winds are substantial. It could smash on the ground. If I leave my desk, I might end up somewhere else for a significant period of time. That puts this at risk, the thing I’m doing instead of finishing the slides for my workshop, not to mention actually finishing the slides. Bravo, I stay.

I have been thinking about this a lot. For years, if honest, I would say decades, I come to my desk to do something, write my novel, create a blog, send emails, finish editing a project, and my body suddenly feels like a bull is sitting on my chest. I mean, the weight of it is a lot. Sometimes it makes me very tired, not the struggle to get the metaphorical bull off my chest, but the defeat of knowing I can’t. My only choice is to try to work with him, sitting there. ‘Stay with me,’ I hear McDreamy yell in my ear. ‘Stay with me.’ And then he turns away, but I can still hear him, ‘we’re losing her.’

I know I only have a certain amount of time on this earth, yes, that’s also an issue, driving that sense of urgency, to make up for all the years when I was undiagnosed, and unaware, but still aware, of my ways. I mean, I only have a certain amount of energy time each day before all the spoons have been consumed (coaching jargin for how much energy you have in a day). I work in the morning to get my best hours. I must figure this out soon; it’s 11:00 am. By 2:00pm I am done with creative thinking. Rational thinking takes over and I become a task rabbit at that point. I set my timer to finish off this post in 15 minutes. If I’m not finished, will I come back to it? If I leave it open on my screen, another tab. Ha ha. Yes, hahahahaha.

I am an ADHD coach. I know all the ‘whys’ and ‘wise’ behind what my brain is doing. I know that I get tired when I try to work on a big task like a workshop that unnerves me. What if I draw a blank mid-workshop? What if my content is boring? What if I don’t finish writing the content and must wing it?

So what? My wiser self tells me. So what. It’s not the end of the world. Just get through it. It’s going to be totally fine. And 60 minutes is nothing. You coach all the time for 60-minute sessions, and you are good at it. Yes, but the client does half the talking.

I am running out of pep talk. When I am done with the slides, I can meet my friend. We can have a celebratory drink in the centre of Vienna. Tomorrow will be sunny, and I don’t want to be at my desk all day tomorrow. But my brain is smarter than that, I’ll have the drink anyway, and I’ll go outside tomorrow. I have free will.

So, here’s the thing. I know I will get the workshop done because I have a deadline. I know it will be fine because I know the topic, inside and out. If my voice gets tired, I’ll drink some tea. I know that afterwards, I will say, ‘What was all the fuss about?’

And now I feel better. The bull has shifted and is no longer crushing my lungs. And I got a post written. How cool is that? I was thinking about all the things I got done this week while I wasn’t doing the THING – I was amazingly productive. And the THING will still get done. It always does.

A final word, so you’re not disappointed, and you don’t go away muttering, so WHY don’t we just do the THING? And you’re right, the why is important to be able to understand what your ADHD brain is doing.

So, there are two important reasons: the first is the delayed reward. You know the task is important, but the reward that comes with finishing the task doesn’t carry any immediate reward, and it won’t really feel complete until you give the presentation, finish the book, post the blog, etc. So, dopamine doesn’t kick in. And we need dopamine to stay motivated.

An ADHD brain avoiding “the thing” isn’t being lazy—it’s basically running on a motivation system that only accepts payments in immediate dopamine. If a task is boring, slow, or only rewarding in the distant future, the brain files it under “absolutely not urgent,” even if you know it’s important. Meanwhile, the part of the brain that’s supposed to press the “just start” button is buffering, so intention doesn’t easily turn into action. Add in a strong preference for instant gratification and a low tolerance, and a heavy avoidance response for tasks that feel overwhelming or dull. This is why reorganising your entire desk, researching something random, or deep-cleaning your kitchen feels far more “doable” than the one important task. So it’s not that you don’t want to do the thing—it’s that your brain is unable to start.

When you’re avoiding “the thing,” your brain is basically running two conflicting programs at once: one part knows you should do it, while another part is resisting. That tug-of-war creates mental load, which burns energy even though you’re not making progress.

There’s also a stress component. The unfinished task sits there as a low-level threat (“this is important, don’t forget me”), which activates mild but chronic stress responses. That keeps your brain slightly on edge, and over time, that background tension is tiring.

And finally, constantly switching to other tasks to avoid the main one adds cognitive switching costs—your brain keeps reorienting itself, which is surprisingly energy-intensive. Many of my clients know this from our discussions on the difficulty of switching tasks.

So in a nutshell, the fatigue comes from a combination of:

• internal conflict (“do it” vs “don’t want to”)

• low-level stress from the unfinished task

• lack of rewarding feedback

• and mental energy wasted on avoidance strategies

One of the intentions of coaching is to help you understand how your ADHD brain works, to the point where you are able to pause, step back and view what’s going on, instead of slipping into reaction mode. Sometimes the process stops at the observation phase, but it increases your chances of being able to step in, in a way that moves you forward.

So next time you are avoiding the thing, remind yourself what is going on in terms of your ADHD response. This will shift your mindset to a more powerful place where you know you’re not being lazy. Try a strategy for task shifting, such as doing the smallest possible contribution to the task, telling yourself to work on it for 5 minutes, or finding an accountability buddy.

Book a free Discovery Call

— Annie Lamott

Many ADHD writers have internalized the message, push through. Produce. Sit down again tomorrow, no matter what. So when your body asks for space, you override it. When the words stop flowing, you call it ‘blocked’. When your energy dips, you assume something is wrong, or worse, you’re doing something wrong.

Nothing is wrong. In fact, if you listened carefully to your mind and body, you would hear: I need recovery time. Don’t you understand it’s part of the process?

I used to be that person, berating myself for not being able to write every day, for feeling exhausted after a day of hyperfocus, for sometimes not being able to concentrate on my writing for more than 15 minutes at a time. My ADHD brain would kick in, Googling to find out what was wrong with me. I thought if I knew why I couldn’t show up for my work this way, then I could fix it. I tried hacks to increase my output. I bought into the idea that consistency meant every day. I tried to motivate myself with measurable goals. It never worked for more than a few weeks.

My training as an ADHD coach helped me so much with my writing. I learned that my brain hates routine and needs novelty. My brain loves ideas, connections, and exploring. Forcing myself to work in a certain way is just work, not pleasure. It’s hard. And it makes me really tired. Even working in a way that feels more authentic can leave me feeling drained. Now I work in a way that feels much more authentic - I work with my energy, I make mental space to be creative, I vary the environment. I work in bursts. I also know that if I build recovery time into my writing practice, I feel so much better.

Creative work isn’t linear. It’s more like a tree with branches, always reaching, extending, connecting. Writing asks that we draw on our inner resources - experiences, thoughts, memories, impressions, senses. Our nervous system, especially our attention, requires time to metabolize what we’ve created.

Recovery isn’t separate from writing. It is part of the process of writing. It needs to be integrated, not put on hold until the end.

Here are five signs your writing practice needs recovery time

You feel wired but not productive.
You sit down to write, and your mind is like a crowded restaurant, busy, indecipherable chatter. You are bombarded with fragments of ideas. You are overstimulated. Recovery helps quiet the noise. Without it, your brain keeps trying to process previous work while you demand new work today.

Everything you write feels flat.
The words come out, but in a mechanical way. You feel disconnected. No surprise. No aliveness. This isn’t a talent problem — it’s a saturation problem. When you don’t step away long enough to refill your sensory and emotional reserves, your writing has nothing fresh to draw from.

You feel unusually self-critical.
Rested minds are generous. Depleted minds are harsh. If every sentence suddenly sounds terrible, if you delete more than you draft, if you feel a tightening in your chest while you write, your system may be asking for comfort, not discipline.

You avoid the desk entirely.
Procrastination can be fear — but it can also be mental fatigue. If you find yourself cleaning, scrolling, snacking, reorganizing files, or doing literally anything else, your body may be refusing to re-enter an effort state without repair first. Avoidance is sometimes wisdom in disguise.

You feel resentful of your work.
Writing you once loved now feels like an obligation. A demand that never ends. This is a classic sign of output without replenishment. When recovery is part of the process, even hard work is accepted. When it’s absent, the overwhelm grows.

If these signs feel familiar, please don’t tell yourself to ‘push through’. Change your language to recovery language - ‘I don’t have to earn rest,’ or ‘Recovery is when my brain processes.’

Recovery can be surprisingly ordinary.

Walking without a podcast.
Slow reading for pleasure.
Chilling on the sofa with your cat.
Moving your body slowly.
Sleeping more than you think you “should.”
Letting your attention drift without trying to capture anything.

This is not time being wasted. This is recovery.

Recovery for me comes in a variety of forms - 15-minute breaks of doing laundry or timed-scrolling throughout the day, longer walks in nature on the weekend, quarterly week-long, self-directed retreats close to nature. I also lower my expectations for a few days after I’ve had a super-productive writing day.

Track what leaves you feeling depleted

Knowing your patterns is the most useful information you have

Track what actually restores you — not what looks productive, not what other writers recommend, but what leaves you feeling able to start from a good place. Reflect further. What does starting from a good place mean?

For an ADHD brain, this can be:

• Interest in your project

• Your plate feels empty, or comfortably set aside for now

• Curiosity about your story

• You feel connected to the meaning of your writing

• Your mind may not be quiet, but that chatter feels manageable

A writing practice isn’t just about output; it’s about wanting to come back to your story.

Share in the comments what recovery means to you!

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Book a free Discovery call if you want to learn how to build recovery into your writing practice.

Book a free Discovery Call

I went to Canada for a month in February to celebrate my mum’s 85th birthday. It was wonderful. I landed in Toronto the day after a massive snowstorm. The city was buzzing with ‘snowday’ camaraderie. It was too cold to walk around for more than ten minutes, and the roads were a mess. Perfect weather for writing. This was my intention for February - visit my family, stick to my coaching schedule, and work on my book.

It felt right. That’s ADHD talk for ‘I have a plan’.

I opened my laptop half a dozen times, read through scenes, highlighted a sentence here and there, and changed a few words. I told myself I was “staying connected” to it. But the truth is, I didn’t do any significant writing. My mind was elsewhere. Getting around the city to visit people took a lot of energy, and all the catching up drained my mental battery.

I kept my coaching schedule because I am building my business, and it felt important to keep showing up. The visible, accountable work got done. The quiet, long-game creative work—the book—slipped to the side.

I told myself, it’s okay, family is important. My business is important. It can’t be helped. I’ll focus on the book when I get back to Vienna. But that feeling of failure had already set in. I pushed it aside. In the last week of my trip, a sense of urgency kicked in. I had to make some contribution to my book while I was in Canada. I was so close to the end. So I forced myself to write for 30 minutes every morning while my in-laws were asleep. It worked. I got words on the page. I cleaned up a few chapters. I vowed to keep the momentum when I returned home.

Jet lag. Laundry. Coaching sessions. My son moving out. The energy in my house felt different with him gone. I realized it wasn’t about time. It was about how my ADHD allowed me to move through the world. Intentions are affected by feelings. By energy. By the ability to protect time. And by my inability to prioritize things that were important but not visible or accountable.

There’s this feeling that ADHDers are way too familiar with –it’s a heavy chest, pressure, a mind that won’t calm down because it’s spinning out on rumination. Emotionally, it’s a combination of failure, shame, and fear that you’ll never get it right. This is how I felt when my book was abandoned for another two weeks after I returned.

I can’t count how many clients have come to me desperate to create a consistent writing practice so they can banish this feeling.

I returned to what I always tell them, to what I wrote about in A Novel Approach: Strategies for ADHD Writers, that ADHD brains do not do consistency, at least not in the way a neurotypical brain does. We are persistent in that we always come back to our books. But we don’t easily show up on a schedule, or to perform a word count, or to write for a certain amount of time. Our brains resist these enclosures. And that’s okay.

ADHD brains are especially sensitive to context shifts—travel, family, celebration, disruption, grief. All of these pull from the same mental and emotional resources your writing draws from: focus, initiation, the ability to hold a thread, and the patience required to tolerate discomfort.

When those resources are thin, the writing gets put aside so the self can recover energy. That’s not a discipline problem. It’s bandwidth.

So what do you do when life knocks your writing into a ditch?

You don’t need a dramatic reset. You don’t need to punish yourself with a schedule. You don’t need to “catch up” all at once.

You just need a thread.

For me, that thread looks like 15 minutes with the manuscript. To get back into it the way I did in the last week of my trip. In the beginning, I was literally just sitting with it, reading some pages aloud, making notes in the margin. I’m reminding my brain, this still exists, and it’s important.

ADHD attention wanders. Don’t waste energy trying to train it not to wander. Give it space to wander and train it to come back to focus on this book that’s important. Your brain will need gentle herding, like a bunch of cats.

Life will get in the way again. The practice isn’t protecting your writing from life. It’s learning how to come back.

Welcome! This is the place where late-diagnosed ADHD writers can come to join a wonderful community of like-minded people to discuss all things writing. I am the author of A Novel Approach: Strategies for ADHD Writers, an ADHD coach and writing coach, and a professional editor.

What is my reason for getting up in the morning? Coffee is a given. But beyond that, it’s the idea of creating a vibrant community of ADHD writers where we can come together and share ideas, feel seen (so important!), and learn to trust our own personal process.

There’s something poetic about getting this going on these last days of 2025, as opposed to stumbling in with all those enthusiastic goal setters in the first week of January. Poo that, as my niece would say. I am sitting here on my very comfy sofa, in my flat in Vienna, sunny skies (rare here this time of year) to my right, and my sweet little Christmas tree in front. It’s quiet – oh, how I love the quiet. And I just decided, it’s time to get this going.

Maybe it’s an ADHD thing, or just a me thing, but I don’t do goodbyes in the formal sense. I won’t look back over the year with regret, and I won’t think ahead as to how I can make the next one better. I won’t promise myself to write more, to finish my projects, and I definitely won’t declare that if I just show up consistently, I will get my next book finished. I trust that my projects will happen because I have my own way of making them happen.

Instead, I will drift out of 2025 with a feeling of lightness, giving myself permission to continue doing what I’m doing because it’s working. And reflecting on what wasn’t working, so I can tweak the process. Sometimes this happens slowly. More slowly than my hyperactive internal restlessness would like, but I remind myself that baby steps will also get me where I’m going (do the smallest thing possible is something I live by on days when I feel unmotivated). I will arrive in January 2026 without a list of goals, but instead with intentions. Intentions are how we want to show up in the world.

I will remind myself that goals are the ‘what’, and more important is the ‘how’. And the how involves me knowing what works for myself, trusting my process, and continuing, sometimes by tiny steps, and sometimes by leaps and bounds.

I am fine. I don’t need to be better. I don’t need to be more productive. I don’t need to be happy every day. I don’t need to be the best version of myself. Boring. Boring. Boring. Sometimes I revel in being the worst version of myself.

So, what am I saying? What exactly is the useful takeaway here? Know what is important to you. What do you want to accomplish? How do you want to live? Know yourself. Know your boundaries.

Example: It is important to me to build a community of fellow late-diagnosed ADHDers who write. To give you a place to better understand how ADHD affects the writing process, so you don’t give up in frustration, so you don’t hate on yourself for not writing enough, or finishing fast enough, or getting overwhelmed. It’s important to me to learn from my readers and clients, and from myself, about what is actually going on when we write, or don’t write, and how to make it feel better. I know that my own motivation comes from interacting with like-minded people, from layered discussions about writing, from writing, and from reading. I know that my energy ebbs and flows. I know when I write all day, full of creative energy, the next day I will be exhausted. I know that pushing through is not a good idea.

As I continue to post on Substack, I will write about the issues that we ADHD writers face, such as:

• Why have I been working on my novel for years, and I just can’t finish it?

• How do I organize all those ideas on scraps of paper and in my phone that I truly believe contain little gems of magic?

• And what about that nagging voice that derails us over and over again, whispering, you’re not good enough, you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re wasting your time.

• And everybody’s favorite – how do I create a consistent writing practice? Hint: Change the question: How do I create a consistent writing practice?

These are all topics covered in my book: A Novel Approach: Strategies for ADHD Writers, but my content here will be fresh, because, as many of you know, ADHD provides a constant source of new ideas. And we learn as we go.

So, I invite you to subscribe. Send me a message or leave a comment about what’s going on with your writing. Let’s grow a wonderful community of ADHD Writers.