Josephine Moon's Blog, page 6

Your Questions Answered About ‘Let’s Write a Novel in a Year’ Program?

Are you keen to join the ‘Let’s Write a Novel in a Year’ program but have a few questions? Here are my answers to some frequently asked questions!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Do I already have to have started my story?

A. Absolutely not, though it’s fine if you have.

Q. I have several ideas. How do I know which one to write?

A. We’re going to help you decided that in the first workshop.

Q. How much time will I need to do this course?

A. We meet live online six times a year for a half day workshop (4 hours each workshop). But all workshops will be recorded, so if you miss one, you’ll be able to catch up. I will give you ‘enrichment activities’ to do (I won’t call it homework because that term is highly triggering for many people) but everything is voluntary. You are in charge of how much you want to do.

Q. What if I don’t finish the novel by the end of the year?

A. The point of this course is to set you up with the knowledge for how to write novels, beyond our time together. Some people will finish their book, some won’t. It’s all good. Your pace is your pace. There’s no right or wrong. No one is going to be assessing your work or disapprove of you if you need a little more time to finish. You cannot fail!

Q. Will there be group work?

A. At times, it is helpful to break into smaller groups to brainstorm and discuss different ideas. We can do this online in breakout groups. I will provide a structure for you to follow to support the process. 

Q. Will you look at what I’m writing?

A. There will be a couple of opportunities for you to send me samples of your work. I will give you more info on this as we go.

If you have other questions, please feel free to email them to me. 

Ready to Book? Here’s the Link.BOok your place here

I’m looking forward to working with you. I will be in touch with you with more information after you’ve reserved your place. 

Here’s to a happy writing year!

Write a Novel in a Year With Me

Have you always wanted to write a novel? Have you been writing short-form pieces for a while now and want to try a long-form project? Have you recently started a novel but then got stuck and couldn’t move forward?

Whether you haven’t even tried to write a novel yet or this is your third attempt (which is super normal, by the way) this course is for you.

Together, let’s write a novel in a year.

Over six half day online workshops, you will learn the craft of writing a novel, from beginning to end at the once only very low, introductory price of just $80 per session. (That’s $480 in total and that price will rise next year.)

Your novel can be any genre. The building blocks of writing a novel are pretty much the same regardless of whether you are writing crime, romance, uplit, fantasy, adult, children’s, YA, contemporary, mystery, steampunk, sci fi or anything else. All genres and diversities are welcome in this class.

NDIS clients may be able to use their funding for this course. Email me for more info.

YES BOOK ME IN NOW

Genre
Word counts
Characters
Plot
Structure
Narrative voice, narrators, point of view, ‘head hopping’
Tense
Pacing
World building
Dialogue
Editing your own work
Ensemble casts
Description
Research
What makes a best seller
The publishing industry
Giving and receiving feedback, writing buddies and writing groups
How to manage fear, procrastination and rejection sensitivity
Query letters
Synopses
And other random topics that arise along the way!

You will also:

receive lifetime membership* to my private coaching/mentoring/assessment email list, with exclusive content just for this group.receive lifetime invitation* to a quarterly Zoom call for all my students, where you can ask me anything, and also (if you want to) connect with other writers who might be writing similar stories to you. (Writing buddies are the best! You might find one in this group.)All sessions will be recorded so if you cannot make one, you will be able to access the recording.

* “lifetime membership” and “lifetime invitation” means for the duration of the time that I am offering these services… which is hopefully many years yet.

Each workshop will be recorded so if you miss one, you’ll be able to catch up.

Dates for Let’s Write a Novel:

All workshops will run via Zoom on Sundays mornings from 8.30am to 12.30pm (Qld time)

26 February
2 April
21 May
2 July
13 August
24 September
5 November

Yes, I’m In. Let’s Write a novel.

Let’s do this!

Jo

Mentoring, Coaching and Manuscript Assessments

Calling all writers or aspiring writers!

Lovely ones, I am for the first time ever opening my doors to mentor, coach and assist developing writers. Why now? Maybe because The Wonderful Thing About Phoenix Rose is my 10th book, which has a nice feel to it. Maybe because I’ve been in this game for a long time now (with a string of bestsellers, international publications and never out of contract) and, ridiculously, it’s only just occurred to me that i could share my skills and knowledge and others might even appreciate it (Yep, I’ve been the queen of imposter syndrome and have just realised how wrong I’ve been.)

(It’s also highly possible that the introduction of ADHD medication has finally given me the energy, focus and capacity to do a heap of things I am passionate about but never had the energy to do. But, I digress…)

It’s certainly because I remember how difficult it was when I was a writer who was past ‘the beginner’ stage but not yet at the ‘accomplished’ stage (a truly awkward and at times isolating experience). Maybe it’s because I am a homeschooler now and there’s something about homeschooling that makes you think differently about, well, everything. And it’s certainly because my ‘teacher genes’ have been re-activated over the past year. And as much as I remember that awkward ‘in between’ stage of writer development, I have huge passion for beginning writers too and in homeschooling I’ve become exceptionally sympathetic to the plight of writers who simply don’t believe they start, better their work, or finish a work. (Newsflash, you can.

If you’re a writer and would like some help, please do check out the four programs I have put together (just to get us started…. because spending weeks of website maintenance is really not my favourite thing to do and four was all I could manage right now!). And because I am committed to helping you long term, you’ll find I’ve built in long term support past your initial package. (See this example.)

If this is the year you want to write or you want to move to the next level of writing, I am here for it. I’d love nothing more.

Raw beginners through to published authors are welcome, as are all ages and abilities.

(Also, if you are an NDIS client, you may be able to claim your investment. Email me for more details on NDIS.)

I hope to see you soon!

Jo

If Ever I Needed Evidence that I am Actually Autistic…

…then, crikey, here it is. This was a ‘10 things about me’ list from before I knew I was Autistic, from an early newsletter I sent to readers in 2015. Honestly… The Tism is bleeding obvious if you know what to look for!

The sleep issues (sigh… I’ve been averaging 4.5 hours a night for weeks now ); the panicked rigidity when someone ‘springs’ a suggestion on me; slow processing speed (need time to think things through); not liking surprises but actually being quite accepting of ND behaviour (I didn’t yet know my son was ND but I could clearly see he needed the sensory experiences, which makes me feel good that in some ways I knew how to honour his needs even without any contextual knowledge); being “all too much”; being extremely uncool (i.e. nerd, geek, weirdo, bullied… typical Autistic high school experience); my Taylor Swift special interest; and my panic when plans are changed.

Also, we could add to this the excessive honesty and over sharing nature of this newsletter and also the fact that I am a writer (one of the common artistic expressions for ND female identities), special interest (obsession) with horses and animals, and needing to live in the country because even the suburbs are too much pressure for me.

Folx, I give you Joey’s presentation of The Tism!

23 Bookish Things to Do: Free Gift for You

Subscribers to my LOVE LETTERS are getting a free thing I made (with doodling illustrations, too… it’s my new thing… I’m crediting my new ADHD medication).

Anyway…. I’ve made a guide of 23 things you can do after closing the book to keep the love going. Perfect if you have a book hangover and you just aren’t ready to let the story go.

Sign up now to make sure you get yours! Hurry! I’ll be sending it out soon!

In Praise of the Crappy Gingerbread House

Loves, I made my first ever gingerbread house from scratch and it really, really elooks it I think the world is breathing a sigh of relief right now that I became a writer and not an engineer because this house is held together with determination and a half kilo of spakfilla!

The recipe quantities were wrong so there were last minute ‘recipe rescue’ emergencies, AND it’s gluten free (which always adds a difficulty factor of 150), and I had to use paper stencils rather than cutters. But… it is really yummy!

The point of the gingerbread house is that I made it with my kiddo and it was fun and he got to see that things go wrong (quite a lot!) but we can work through it and we can still be proud of our efforts and progress. Progress is something I think we should be applauding far more than we do. We tend to celebrate achievements and ‘the best’ of everything, the top academics and the fastest runners (which is absolutely worth respecting and valuing) but I’d love to see a world that ALSO champions effort and progress and the courage to mess up and try again.

So, yep, I’ll be serving up this gingerbread house on Christmas Day because it too is an achievement of which we can be proud. (And also ‘cause it took hours to make so there’s no way we aren’t going to enjoy it! )

What is A Writer’s “Voice”?

A writer’s “voice” is a difficult thing to explain but you know it when you hear it / read it. Compare the voices of Jane Austen, Anh Do, Liane Moriarty and James Herriot: all of them are very distinctive. They’re the kind of voices you might guess easily if you started a new book with no author name on the jacket. 

So what is it?

The voice is the way the words are constructed (syntax). It’s the words that are chosen or left out. It’s the tone, it’s the style, it’s the dialogue, it’s the humour (or not), it’s the spareness or the abundance of words, it’s the details that are fixated on or overlooked. It’s the content, too. It’s the themes, pace, punctuation, familiarity or formality, local/regional dialect and so much more.

It’s very much about authenticity. It’s also a big part of your ‘band’; it’s that thing that will shape your reading audience (draw people to you or not). A consistent voice allows a reader to trust you and relax into a story with a feeling of trust in you. Your subject matter can change, of course, but your voice will carry through across the body of your work.

The voice is the thing that makes you the writer YOU are and it takes time to develop. You find it by writing a lot of words. Short stories are a perfect place to practise your voice. Your voice might change over time, even after you’re published, and that is normal too, though it would be unusual, I think, to have vast variation in voice. But if that was the case, you would probably choose to write under a different pen name so as not to alienate your dedicated audience.

These days, I have a pretty good instinct about when I have slipped out of my voice, when the words just aren’t hitting the page in a very ‘Jo Moon’ way. The voice is the thing I’ve come to trust, even if it’s taking me to places in the story that scare me. I’ve come to know that if I follow my voice, I’ll be okay.

Free Webinar. Reimagining Autism: Myths, Autistic Truth, Empathy

What IS Autism, anyway? Do Autistic people lack empathy? What do Autistic people look like? Isn’t everyone a little bit Autistic?

My website has been getting a lot of traffic to this post recently, which I’m glad to see. We need more people to be interested enough to learn what Autism is really about, rather than accepting the narrow, limited and often-incorrect stereotypes that have long flooded our media.

I am inviting interested people to join me for a FREE webinar on ‘Reimagining Autism’. This is a presentation I created to run in August this year at the Brisbane National Education Summit in the ‘Diverse Learners’ symposium and I would love to share it with you too.

The session will run on Monday 28th November at 7.30pm (Brisbane time). (That’s 8.30pm Sydney and Melbourne time. For other locations in Australia, check here.)

To join me, all you have to do is sign up to my mailing list. I don’t have fancy tech to manage workflows and send you automated reminders etc. (those things are pricey!) so I highly recommend you write it in your diary or put reminders on your phone or whatever other witchcraftery time bending gadget you prefer. Please don’t rely on me to remind you: I’m an AuDHDer and lose my keys, wallet, phone, medication and shoes every single day

Info:

Sign up to my mailing list.Check your email (try your spam filter too if your settings are high) and look out for my newsletters. The webinar link will go out in my newsletter.Set yourself reminders to come along!Bring yourself a cuppa, your curiosity to learn and your friendly faces.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Jo

How To: The Pathways to an Adult ADHD Diagnosis

I often get asked how to get an ADHD diagnosis in Australia so I put some info together here that might be helpful. Firstly, this is serious stuff. It needs attention. And you deserve help. You do not need to struggle every day, wondering how you can be so well educated and capable in some ways, and yet able to roll over in bed, pulling up the blankets, only to lose your grip and punch yourself in the face, making your lip bleed. Yes, I’m just that talented. (Just wait till you get to the bit about my car.)

Honestly, after my identification as Autistic I really didn’t think I could be taken by surprise again but then along came an ADHD diagnosis. Never in a million years would I have thought I was ADHD because, just like with Autism, we’ve all been fed a narrow stereotype of what ADHD looks look. You know, the kid (a boy) in the classroom that can’t sit still, can’t stop talking, causes trouble, gets suspended etc. But as one of my diagnosticians said to me, if you think of the cast of Winnie the Pooh, everyone can recognise Tigger as the ADHD one, yet it’s more helpful if you realise that EVERY character in Winnie the Pooh is ADHD… yes, even Eeyore.

The medical community is playing a massive game of catch up right now. For nearly a century, the narrow view of what ADHD looks like has left behind girls and women, people of colour and gender diverse individuals. This is why we are now seeing a sharp rise in ADHD (and Autism) diagnoses: there is a huge backlog of work to get through. As an aside, there is a HUGE overlap between Autism and ADHD. You might like to check out the rather fabulous Megan Neff’s posts on Instagram. She shares a ton of info that you will likely find helpful if you’re querying your neurodivergence.

I shared a post a while back on SOME of the ways ADHD was playing out in my life, without me or anyone else realising it (until my husband started saying, ‘I think you’re ADHD’, and I was like… What? No, I’m not! You are! LOL. That’s funny because he is ADHD. He got his diagnosis first and after many months of getting treatment and learning about it he was able to recognise it in me. (And I am SO grateful.) But as is so common, he presents in a very classic (i.e. stereotypical) ADHD way: he talks fast and all the time, he has energy to burn, he loses his keys almost every day, he cannot sit still… etc. As for me, I wasn’t so obvious. However, after my hubby started telling me that fatigue could well be my signature feature of ADHD, I sat up and listened. Fatigue?! Isn’t that the opposite of what ADHD looks like? And there’s the problem. The stereotypes of Tigger have left everyone else behind, especially those of us who might look like more like Eeyore.

ADHD can look very different on different people. The way it looks on me is very different to my husband and could be very different on you too. It’s tricky!

Okay, so you’re thinking you might be ADHD. What do you do? Here are some things to know.

You’re going to need to get a referral from your GP to a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists are the only ones authorised to issue ADHD medication to adults in the first instance. (NB: this might differ from state so check out your state’s regulations.) After a certain amount of time, they can hand over to your GP but there is loads of red tape and paperwork. ADHD medications are S8 medications: highly, highly restricted, monitored and controlled. (No one wants to see them on the black market.) You’ll also have to do a drug screen and other preliminary health screens.You might prefer to get a referral to an ADHD diagnostic psychologist. There are pros and cons to this. I went straight to a psychiatrist but I think if you went with a psychologist they would be able to spend a lot more time with you talking it through and coaching you on how to understand ADHD and manage it. I think my psychiatrist is wonderful but they definitely don’t have as much time as psychologists do. You might also choose this path first if you are unable or unwilling to take medication. But if you do want the medication, your psychologist will likely have to hand you over to a psychiatrist anyway.There are long waitlists for ADHD psychiatrists (I was on a waitlist for about seven months and I’ve heard reports of up to two years) and the assessments are expensive. You can ask to go through the public system but the wait times will vary and of course you will need to have access to the hospital (which is pretty tricky if you live in remote areas). Sadly, many people who want and need a diagnosis are unable to get it and the resultant medication and help they need because they cannot afford the fees or don’t have access to the specialists. You won’t just see the psychiatrist once or twice. They are the specialists in brain medication and they are going to want to monitor you for a long time to make sure you’re on the right type and dose. (That’s a good thing.) My husband had a pretty straight forward experience with medication (he tried it, it worked, happy days) but my journey has been more turbulent. When my meds are in balance, I simply cannot believe I’ve managed to live this long without them, and I can’t believe this is what other (non-ADHD) people feel like all the time. (Lucky ducks!) But I am still working through it all to find the perfect combination of treatment. Sometimes, that can be rough. For some people, it just takes longer to get the right balance.

My Tips for an ADHD Diagnosis Pathway

Because those of us who don’t look ‘typically ADHD’ probably don’t know what ADHD looks like outside of the stereotypical, we might not know how to respond during assessments. (I did ZERO prior reading or research and turned up completely ‘cold’. I don’t think that’s a good strategy.) Prior to my diagnosis, if you had asked me ‘Are you impulsive?’ I would have said no because in my head impulsivity looked like shoplifting, or eating a whole cheesecake (okay, there might have been shades of that in there), or the boys who fling things around in the classroom, or who jump off a bridge into the river below without first checking for hazards. But then my diagnostician asked me if I’d ever impulsively gotten a tattoo … and I burst out laughing. Also, there is a long history of starting jobs, quitting jobs, starting businesses, dropping businesses, burning bridges … and literally every animal in our home was an impulse decision on the spot with no prior thought. Another example of this misalignment between the ADHD assessment questions and my lived experience was about hyperactivity. Did I relate to hyperactivity? I would have said no. But then, I didn’t realise that hyperactivity doesn’t always look like that kid in the classroom who can’t sit still or be quiet. Hyperactivity can be internalised. That can mean: the mind that won’t stop racing, the endless rumination and rehashing of conversations past, the constant second guessing, the lifelong teeth grinding, the fact that I can’t sit through a whole movie, or that there is always some part of me that is twitching, or the lifelong insomnia. (Please, GPs… I have asked for help for lifelong sleep disorders more times than I can count (sleep disorders since a kid in primary school) and no one ever thought to think, hm… maybe this is something else… rather than telling me to try some chamomile tea, do some progressive muscle relaxation and hand me some medication). Anyway… if you are struggling with the assessment questions, I encourage you to ask for help to understand.A really important tip! I am paraphrasing Glennon Doyle here (because I can’t find the exact quote online). She gives this very sage advice: When you make an appointment with your psychiatrist it’s usually because you know you need help. So you make the appointment and then you have to wait. And during that time you feel better again, so when you get to the appointment and they ask you how you are, you say, all good, thanks! What we need to do it WRITE DOWN how we feel and TAKE THE NOTES to the appointment. In the two weeks prior to my ADHD assessment, I simply wrote down everything I was struggling with. As in, specifically that things that caused me woe each day. (Like, I got out of the car one day, on a hill, and FORGOT to put the car in Park and didn’t put the brake on… and so the car rolled backwards down the hill and nearly over the edge of the mountain, and was only saved by one brave gumtree that stopped it. I’m not even kidding. (Like, HOW can you drive a car for almost 30 years and forget to do this?!?! Um, ADHD, as it turns out.) I had no idea if what I wrote down had anything to do with ADHD but I thought, hey, I’m seeing a psychiatrist, at the very least it would be great to chat about this and see what else it could be. I am so glad I wrote it all down. I saw two assessors and as soon as I started reading out some of the things on my list, the first one was nodding with understanding and could explain exactly why that was happening (as in, literally what was happening in my brain) and IT WAS ADHD. So, Glennon Doyle, if you ever stumble on this post, THANK YOU. I would never had remembered what had been a struggle for me without your advice. (Also, I love you and your books. Please keep writing forever.)Lastly, if you go and see your GP and ask about ADHD and they dismiss you on the spot because you ‘don’t seem ADHD’ or because ‘you have a job and a family’ or ‘you managed to get here on time with clean clothes’, please get up, walk out that door and FIND ANOTHER doctor. Okay? Far too many doctors dismiss people on the spot for arbitrary reasons. Talking to you for 10 minutes IS NOT AN ASSESSMENT. That is an opinion and possibly an ill-informed, outdated one. (Please note, I have some fabulous GPs. There are good ones out there.)

Okay, I hope this post has been helpful. For me, my advice is that if you think you might be ADHD, do not ignore that. (Did you read the bit about my car?!) It could save your life. I know it’s a long process: it’s worth it. I know it’s expensive (but so are panel beaters).

Jo x

I Am An Author Who Cannot Read

Part 1: Why reading is difficult for me.

I have been a professional author for 10 years now, with my 10th book coming out next year, yet I am an author who cannot read.

It is only recently that I have come to fully accept this as a potentially permanent situation and learn to heal the internalised shame of this particularly frustrating dilemma. But to explain how this happened, I’m going to have to go back in time.

I learnt to read early. I was an enthusiastic reader. I had very specific interests in stories, especially anything with horses or animals or fairies and magic. I can decode text. I am not dyslexic. I was a good student and, generally speaking, excelled in almost everything (until senior years when I had exceptional highs and lows and nothing in between (I was never going to be mediocre, only top or bottom… but that is a completely different story).

However, despite being a good reader, I was always baffled at how quickly other (good reading) kids finished books. I distinctly remember thinking at a young age and beyond: I’m a good reader so why can’t I read as much as the other good readers? I was an accurate reader and I had high comprehension but I was not fast. I realise now that I compensated for a lot of this by being the best student. I did all the work. I spent whole days working on one project. The moment I didn’t get a near-perfect mark, I was asking for tutoring. I made copious colour-coded notes and taped them all over the house. I read out and recorded my study notes onto a cassette tape and played it back to myself while I slept. (I’m not even kidding.) In short, I worked and worked and worked (setting up a lifetime pattern of burnout).

As an adult, I’ve always been truly confounded by readers who say, ‘Oh, I loved it and finished it an a day.’

A day?! What?! How?!?

For me, even if I LOVED a book as hard as you could LOVE a book, to finish a novel in TWO WEEKS would be a fast rate for me.

Then I had my son and it all ended. I couldn’t read anymore.

What I didn’t know back then, which I do now, is that I am Autistic and ADHD and knowing what I know now, here is what I think happened. When I had my son (and I got book contracts, and I had to move house and renovate a house and wind-up a charity and lots more), my poor brain’s less-than-optimal executive functioning skills were pushed to levels they’d never been to before. Our brains are very clever, though, and mine worked this out and made the choice for me: my son was the priority. Essentially, my brain shut down a whole lot of other pathways in order to prioritise my child. Reading was cut from the list. I also now know I was in Autistic burnout, which I had been for most of my life since the age of 15 and burnt out brains have no qualms about dropping your hard-won skillsets.

For the past ten years, I have essentially convinced myself that this is a temporary problem. But reading ability has never recovered.

Reading and ADHD

Difficulty with reading is a common ADHD complaint. Every AuDHDer is different but for me, these are some of the ways reading poses challenges for me.

I have ADHD impatience but I also have the strong Autistic need to finish something I started and do it really well (preferably perfectly), but having a slow reading rate means it simply takes me too long to get there and those conflicting drives create stress.The AuDHD brain craves novelty and keen interest. If the content hasn’t grabbed me by the second chapter, I’m out. I simply CAN NOT go on. (I do want to make it super clear here that often people think ADHDers have a choice in their behaviour… that if they just tried harderor if they just focused more they could get it done… but it doesn’t work that way. That’s a longer conversation for another day, all about transmitters and dopamine.)Inertia: once I get interrupted, it is difficult (sometimes impossible) to initiate the task again.My sensory processing difficulties (e.g. noise, smells, temperature, clothing, body position) are such high distractors that I can lose focus and have to start again.I can’t read off a screen. (I don’t know why exactly but I just can’t.)If I do get distracted, I need to go back and re-read passages or pages over and over because I need to feel that I have read it deeply and properly (I do not skim read!). This becomes tedious and fatiguing.Unfriendly font types and lack of white space are a problem. I have been reading about dyslexia-friendly fonts lately and exploring those but I don’t feel I’m knowledgable enough about them to say more about that at this stage.Having to be still is a big problem for me. Until recently, I had NO IDEA how much I fidget. Something is always twitching. This is challenging for long hours of reading. (I also can’t sit through an entire movie.)I will finish with a final (but exceptionally important) challenge, and that is that I am a highly visual and sensory reader. If there is trauma on the page, I don’t read that in a theoretical sense with a bit of sympathy… I FEEL it. Literally. In my body. In my organs. And I SEE it in minute detail in my head and it NEVER GOES AWAY. So often, I am traumatised by fiction and simply cannot read on.

Non-fiction books

I have been able to read more non-fiction in paperback form than fiction, which I think is largely due to the amount of white space, bullet points and diagrams that break up long-form text. It’s also easier to put down a non-fiction book (whose content is grouped in chapters and sections) and then pick it up again later because the next chapter doesn’t necessarily depend on having read the previous chapter, whereas reading fiction requires that you keep a lot of story-world and character information in your head in order to link earlier information to later information to make sense of the whole story.You can also often flick through non-fiction books and skip the bits that don’t have high interest, unlike a novel, which requires you to read all of it. 

A Hereditary Problem?

We know that ADHD is highly heritable. Interestingly, both my mother and maternal grandmother were also great readers until they hit a point in their life where they said they simply couldn’t read any more. I’m guessing this was about when they hit burnout and their executive functioning took a long walk up a mountain to rest.

So What Do I Do?

Firstly, I read almost exclusively on audio. If it’s not on audio, I can’t read it. (So please, publishers, can we have everything on audio at all times? It’s an issue of equity and access for all.) For example, with tremendous irony, I am waiting to ‘read’ Sally Rippin’s book, Wild Things (which is ALL about kids having difficulty reading, which my son does too) but I can’t read the book and so I am impatiently waiting to get it on audio at the end of this year. Oh, the irony

Over the years, several people have said to me that ‘audio books are cheating’ or that ‘it doesn’t count as reading if it’s not a book’ or that ‘it’s lazy’. Loves, this hurts.

Some people have very rigid beliefs and ideas. I mean, if a blind person listens to an audio book, would you tell them it was cheating?! No, because (a) what does that even mean?! (b) I doubt you are that rude and thoughtless because it is perfectly okay for someone to access a story in whatever way supports them best; and (c) story is story! It still teaches you empathy, history, culture and mood. (Hello, our Indigenous populations thrived for many thousands of years on oral storytelling.) You can still visualise the story in your head. You still cry and laugh and shudder and gasp. You’re still transported to other worlds, relax and get excited. Your brain is still working; it’s just working differently. (At which point, I’d like to refer everyone in the world to Chloe Hayden’s book, Different, Not Less.) To say it’s cheating or doesn’t count is such an ableist, elitist, privileged, crappy thing to say. Please don’t take away our joy, and don’t shame us for not being able to do what you can do.

Okay… taking a deep breath… and moving on.

Secondly, I HAVE pushed through a handful of paperbacks in the past decade in order to review them or support author friends but it is agony and NOT because their book is agony (their books are great!) but because it is just so difficult for me: it takes so much energy. It makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me, which I guess is how kids with reading difficulties feel too. Big, huge, warm, fuzzy hugs for all the kids struggling with this right now. It gets better, I promise.

Thirdly, in my book club, there are two of us who need books on audio (one of us with ADHD and one of us with vision requirements) so we will only choose books that are available in formats that suit us all. Easy.

Where to From Here?

I am now taking ADHD medication. Will my reading ability (as slow as it was) come back? Only time will tell. And maybe when I finally get hold of Sally Rippin’s book I will know what to do

I am learning, though, to be kinder to myself. Neurodivergent individuals hear, read and absorb a staggering amount of negativity in their lifetime. We become exceptionally good at taking on this criticism and turning it into our own internal voices.

I have been carrying a big load of shame about being an author who cannot read. I’ve also had to start saying no to requests for cover quotes for books (something I see as a tremendous privilege and honour, and something I know is extremely important to authors) because I simply cannot read the manuscript. (It can take me a week, or more, simply to read my own manuscript during editing phases.) 

I am learning that, as much as I might want to, I will never be able to keep up with a lot of stuff that goes on in the publishing world and that I will never be able to contribute as much in terms of reading and reviewing and talking about others’ work as much as I want to because I am atypical. And I’ll never be able to travel as much and speak as much and be as productive business-wise as I truly want to be. Honestly, that makes me pretty teary.

Difficulties with reading and writing (and learning disorders, ADHD and Autism) may contribute to poor self esteem but what I want to do more than anything is be a role model for my son, to help him learn to undo the damage that’s been done to his sense of self through the schooling system (side bar: we are now homeschooling) and know that some of us (actually, quite a lot of us in the world) do things differently because we need to and that’s okay. What’s not okay is that we don’t yet have full supports in place as normal access rather than them being ‘extra’ or ‘special’ supports. 

But I am nothing if not a hopeful person who sees a problem and tries her best to change it. So here I am, talking about the stuff I still find hard to talk about because as Glennon Doyle always says, We Can Do Hard Things.

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In #2 of this series, I will look at the ways ADHD has negatively impacted me as an author. In #3, I will look at the ways ADHD has positively impacted me as an author.

*Autistic burnout (Sidebar: I run Autistic & ADHD Retreats on Burnout on the Sunshine Coast, just in case you know anyone who needs a retreat.)

P.S. I’m just going to finish here by encouraging anyone who thinks they have a child with a neurodivergence of any kind to seek early assessments and support as soon as possible. It is much more difficult to rewrite your understanding of yourself and your brain, and learn what supports you need in life, and to avoid myriad damaging flow-on effects and co-occurring conditions when you are in your 40s than it is when you are still in primary school. We need to know why we struggle. We need to learn how to navigate this world.