My old nemesis in my mind

Writing saved my life after I had a complete breakdown in 2009. It's been a lifesaver every day since.

But it has one source of frustration, and it's not about getting published. It's the slow pace of my writing. You might have read here I have tried various changes in technique, but my writing speed remains glacial. I'm not being over-demanding on myself either. I'm left with one answer, and it's been under my nose--actually behind my nose-- all the time.

It's my ADHD. I think I must "leak seconds" as I write. I caught myself just now between sentences, sitting with my mind wandering about events today. That might be somewhat appropriate if I don't know what I'm writing, but I've spent months since 2009 frustrated because I knew where the plot was going, I couldn't get it into the PC for months. I think this is what happens: if coming out with a certain sentence baffles me, my mind will wander first before solving the problem. Sometimes I'll go back to previous paragraphs and start alter them.

Now that I suspect it, I caught myself today during conversation having my mind drift away, and it wasn't because it was boring. It was because I didn't know what to say. I imagine doing that now hundreds of times a day while I'm writing, and I think that must be the problem. It would explain why I could write so fast sometimes, but write so appallingly slow overall, because it's a sporadic problem. 

There's two solutions here: one is to raise my medication to liver-choking levels. The other is to simply try to stay aware. I could do what I do with reading and set a timer every five minutes with the goal of reading seven pages over that time. That works beautifully with reading, but I'm not sure anything similar will work with writing. Reading is traveling a paved road. Writing is cutting through an unexplored jungle with a machete.

(Found myself wandering again! This is it!)

Children with ADHD are known to be slow and that was true of me all throughout school. I remember it like a nightmare. (Went away again!) Not only did I have my mind drift during tasks, but I had to double check everything to make sure I didn't mess it up, and then check again to make sure I did the double check right. I had all kinds of hitches to translating instructions to actions. Things coaches would say about throwing a baseball, "Come over the top," made no damn sense to me. Didn't I come over the top? I discovered what they were talking about as an adult. Then couldn't stop experimenting with throwing for a whole morning.

The odd thing about attention deficit is that it's not a matter of not having attention. No, I could get obsessed with watching ants (and killing them) for whole afternoons. I could get obsessed with dice for days. The problem was I couldn't direct my attention. It had a mind of its own and went where it wanted. With untreated ADHD, I learned what it was like to have no choice about my life, because something so basic to my conscious thoughts guided me. I would compare it to being possessed.

Leading researchers are now defining ADHD as a "Deficiency in the executive function of the brain."    That might sound abstract, but it covers all the symptoms. Inability to plan, distractability, failure in working memory, impulsiveness, all of it. It's definitely a real disease. It might be difficult to spot in borderline cases, but it's symptoms are very clear in profound cases.

From the way my life went with the symptoms untreated, I would tell any parent do not leave ADHD undiagnosed and untreated. Its symptoms are not difficult to spot. Don't assume your child will outgrow it. You'll sentence them to a hard life even as adults. And absolutely don't rule out drugs as the treatment.

I see my psychiatrist on Wednesday. In the meantime I'm going to see how well I could address this without the meds, but there isn't too much time. Or maybe there is if my mind wouldn't wander.