Welcome to Creatively ADHD!

On ADHD, creativity, and the intersection between the two

If ADHD has ever complicated or undone your creative process, or if you’re simply intrigued about its influence on creativity, I’ve made this Substack for you. And me.

I’m Kate—a writer, developmental editor, and certified book coach with a special interest in working with writers with ADHD. I’m fascinated by the neurobiology of ADHD, the nature of creativity, and the interaction between the two. I’m hooked on questions such as: Where do creative impulses come from? What drives the making of art? How can we better tap into our innate creativity? That’s why I’m launching this Substack, in hopes of developing a vibrant community of artists equally interested in exploring these questions and indulging a similar curiosity. Creatively ADHD, then, is a place to chat about creativity in general and, more specifically, the advantages and disadvantages associated with making art with an ADHD brain.

Certainly all artists face challenges to realizing their visions and finishing their creations. But for people with ADHD, the obstacles can derail their efforts and cause them to abandon their projects—even their ambitions. While they may get a boost from ADHD characteristics such as out-of-the-box thinking, enhanced problem solving ability, pattern recognition, and an ability to hyperfocus, that lift isn’t always enough to counter decision paralysis, procrastination, perfectionism, rejection sensitivity, time blindness, and inertia. It can be hard to get started and hard to keep going when the excitement fades. There’s self-doubt, mental fatigue, overwhelm, and imposter syndrome. It’s a lot. For many of us, the effort to persist can be exhausting.

We may try again and again to fit the neurotypical mold, which was never meant to contain us. We wonder why the strategies that work for others don’t work for us, even if we know at some level they aren’t compatible with the way our ADHD minds work. So Creatively ADHD is for writers and other artists who are done trying to contort themselves to conform to neurotypical ways of thinking and doing, and equally done beating themselves up for not fitting in. It’s for anyone who wants to learn and share strategies for working with, not against, our strengths and gifts—for anyone who recognizes we’re not broken, we’re different.

But I haven’t always been one of those people. For years I assumed that my failure to fulfill my creative aspirations, despite working exceedingly hard, was the result of a personality flaw, some diminished capacity, a lack of the will to persevere and succeed. The way I saw it, it was simple: I was just a screw-up. And it seemed to me that all my missteps and washouts supported that thesis.

When I was in the first writing course of my freshman year of college, the instructor handed back graded essays to all the other students but me. She stood over me and was silent for a moment. I’m a wallflower who shrinks from any kind of attention, so I quaked with dread. Then she read the comments she’d written on my paper: “I’m so proud of you I could kiss you.” And she did. Kiss me. Right on the top of my head. I was in equal parts thrilled by her praise and mortified by all the eyes on me, and if I could have, I’d have scurried under my desk and rolled into a quivering ball.

It’s not a memory that comes to mind often. It’s been crowded out by the recollection of an experience from the year before—one that played on repeat in my head, loudly, down through the years. At sixteen and in my last year in high school, out of my mind with boredom, I’d spent more days at home reading than going to classes. (I was lucky to have an indulgent father who dispensed permission letters no questions asked and credited my teachers’ failure of imagination for my self-directed foundational education in literature.) Toward the end of the term, I was summoned to see the guidance counselor who upbraided me for my dismal attendance and my failure to thrive in the academically-enriched courses I’d been enrolled in throughout high school. She waived my standardized test scores, saying, “These prove you could achieve anything you set your mind to, but if you keep going the way you’re going, you’ll never be more than a gifted underachiever.”

As you might have guessed, I kept going that way. And the shame of that moment has stayed with me ever since. The counselor’s words ricocheted in my mind for decades, during which I believed I fulfilled her prophecy at every turn. I’d dream big dreams and fail again and again to sustain the will or the motivation or the focus to achieve them. I’d pass up some opportunities for fear of rejection, and blow others due to procrastination. There’s no telling how many horses I changed midstream when an impulse drove me to explore some shiny new idea and abandon whatever project so engrossed me the day before. I let rejection, or the fear of rejection, erect massive roadblocks. I applied, for example, to a prestigious film school because I wanted to write screenplays, but once accepted, I wimped out and took the critical studies track, which I hated! I persisted and got the graduate degree and then did absolutely nothing with it. I flitted from one interest to another, rarely giving any of them a chance to incubate. Time and again, my creative dreams shriveled like the plants I could never remember to water.

It’s not that I achieved nothing, but more often than not, I failed to stack the ladder of achievements that seemed to come so naturally to others. Like the time I was invited by a major educational publisher to write a healthcare book. Despite hobbling procrastination, I managed—due to the urgency of a deadline and the crushing threat of having to pay back the advance—to finish the thing. It was very successful and I was able to live on the royalties for the better part of a year, yet I wasn’t able to sustain sufficient interest or attention to parlay that win into further wins—more rungs on the ladder. And I managed to carve a career as a journalist and editor, but it was like a shadow career—not quite the one I’d hoped for, because I didn’t have the courage or the wherewithal to take creative leaps and act on my aspirations.

For all those decades—for fifty years!—I let my guidance counselor’s words ring in my ears. I accepted the label of underachiever while mostly rejecting the gifted part. But the diagnosis of ADHD changed all that. It’s clear that with education, support, and self-compassion, it’s possible to reimagine those dreams. And I hope to connect here with others on that same path—with those who’ve figured it out and those still struggling.

What you’ll find here:

• articles and essays on the nature of creativity and how ADHD influences the ability to create

• tools, resources, and inspiration

• conversations with experts and leaders in both ADHD and creativity who can shed more light on the relationship between the two

• and interviews with writers and other artists with ADHD about how they use their ADHD brains to create

I hope you’ll lend your voice to the conversation! I look forward to learning more about you.