Starting new phases of projects when you have ADHD can be a challenge for a few different reasons, but task paralysis for me, is one of the most challenging. Especially when it comes to something like editing a manuscript. When I started this project, everything was exciting and new and I had tons of inspiration to go along with all the newness. That makes the initial writing process super easy.

But by the time I get to the end of the manuscript, I’m usually running out of steam (or completely out of steam), and while my inspiration for the story itself may not have faded, the “newness” factor has worn off by this point. Those of you reading who have ADHD, you’ll know that something being new or exciting is a huge factor in finding the motivation to actually work on it. Without that newness, tasks often become monotonous or boring. And in the world of ADHD, boring is a death sentence.

Momentum is also often a key factor in getting things done with ADHD. Once you get going on something, you can keep going. It’s the starting that’s the hardest.

These two things combine for me in the task of editing. Not only has the newness of the project worn off, but my brain sees editing as a separate task from writing, and so to begin the process of editing, I need to overcome executive dysfunction all over again. But without the newness factor to help me get started, I struggle and usually end up spending a lot more time thinking “I should really be editing right now,” rather than actually editing.

I will find other things to do to avoid starting the editing project (things like writing a blog post about it) and continue to put it off until the shame and guilt of abandoning my project finally propels me forward, or I abandon it forever.

So what do I do to get myself out of this cycle of shame and guilt? In the case of this project, it has a lot to do with expanding the world building (to help re-new the experience) and adjusting my idea of what counts as editing.

When I started my rough draft, I had a lot of the world of the story built already, probably more than I have with most other manuscripts I’ve written. But it was by no means complete. There were still plenty of areas left to explore, aspects of the cultures to unveil, and situations that might change once the characters are applied to them. That’s where I’m starting my edits. Not with the text itself (a document 550 pages long that is well deserving of it’s working title The Behemoth), but with the intertextual details.

Since I started using Campfire for the task of world-building, it has gotten easier to see this as a concrete task, since I can actually go into my Campfire file for this story and build things out through the various charts and forms the software provides.

The harder part is reframing my idea of editing to include these tasks. In the same way that I often struggle to count prewriting as a part of the writing process, I also struggle to count this sort of tertiary work as a part of the editing process.

Logically, I know that this is obviously an important part of the writing process and that my manuscript will be stronger for having done it. But there’s always still that little voice in the back of my head telling me that the only real writing is words on a page.

Maybe someday I’ll be able to leave that voice behind, but for today, it’s more about continuing despite that voice.

Right now, I’m spending my time, plotting out the areas of this world that are a part of the story but not actually in the story. A lot of this is really boring, like deciding the branches of government and layers of power within that government. Other parts are more fun, like teasing out the details of different cultural practices.

What sort of holidays would a pagan farming community celebrate, for example. And within those holidays, how do they celebrate? What are their traditions?

To do this work, I get to look more into my favorite subject: folklore! I get to spend a lot of time researching the folklore and practices of cultures in my area and then imagining how those practices might evolve over time if there was a sudden and massive upheaval of society.

To explore this, I’ve spent time studying the way the practices of immigrant families change after coming to America. Many things were lost as families struggled to “fit in” in their new American home, but we still see little pieces of older traditions sneak through. In the area I live in, for example, it’s very common to see what they call “barn quilts” as you pass by farms.

Although the tradition itself is a distinctly American one, it’s easy to see how the art style has its roots in northern European folk art.

Though warped, there are still pieces of an older culture bleeding through to today.

That’s the sort of details I’m working on adding to my story. What sort of distinctly Minnesotan practices would survive if everything we knew today were destroyed?

I’m hoping that in following these sorts of rabbit holes, I’ll stumble upon enough “newness” to get started on the actual line edits for my manuscript.