#159: How to Finish a Big Project (Like Writing A Book) with ADHD

if you have adhd and a creative dream whether it's writing a book launching a business or finally finishing that big project this episode is going to light you up Steph sits down with writer, academic, and fellow ADHD-er Wendy Robinson, who wrote an entire novel in just six months while working full-time and parenting. Yeah, I know. But...

This episode isn't about pushing through with willpower. It's about building the right systems, understanding your brain and learning to keep promises to yourself.

They talk about executive functioning struggles, perfectionism, and why so many smart, high achieving women go undiagnosed until adulthood. You'll hear about Wendy's game changing tools like the parking lot and forward. methods, how rejection-sensitive dysphoria shows up in the creative process, and why ADHD women are masters of doing everything for everyone else except themselves.

If you've ever felt overwhelmed, unfinished, or like you're letting yourself down, this conversation is your permission slip to try again, but differently. You ready? Let's do this. Today I'm sitting down with Wendy Robinson, who is a writer and an academic, and Wendy wrote a novel in six months during a writing group that we were in together. Now if you aren't a writer or even a creative, I think there's something for you in this episode.

Because not only are we going to talk about what it takes to write a book in a short period of time when you have ADHD, But we're going to talk about the ins and outs of executive functioning challenges for ADHD women and how to work with them when you're working on a big project, whether it's a creative project, something for your business, or maybe even something that has.

to do with your family and home. Wendy is going to share the things that she's learned that help her work with her ADHD brain as she took on the monumental project of writing an entire manuscript in six months.

We're also going to talk about rejection sensitive dysphoria and how it impacts women with ADHD when they are trying to launch their big idea into the world or start a new business. So stick around and listen to what Wendy and I have to say about what happens when smart, good girls with ADHD try to write a book.

hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the mother plus podcast i am steph springer and i have my wonderful writing friend wendy robinson who was in a writing group with me i had the extraordinary pleasure of Watching Wendy write an entire book in what, six months? Do you know how many months it took you to write it? I had worked on it once before as a short story and then loved a novel idea as a short story and then...

entered the writing group and decided to try to convert it into a novel in that process. So I think it went from being a short story, which is a great head start because they kind of knew the narrative arc of it, to actually being a shitty first draft. Not super shitty, but a little bit shitty. First draft of a full length manuscript in about six months. I feel like it was six months. And so every week our writing group would get to read another chapter.

of wendy's book and we were just unapologetically like we refer to it as our drug like we were addicts like give us our fix if we had a week off we were like no we need to know what we got so invested in the characters like it was such a joy to read it and also

being an ADHD person, it was like a kind of lovely to be like, you are going to read one chapter a week of this book that you actually like, like kind of a brilliant way to read books if you are a person who gets too distracted to read. But I read this book.

that i loved that if someone had been like oh my god i have your summer beach read i would have been like this is so amazing i can't put it down and yet it was someone in my writing group that i got to witness it like i can't express how special it was um And also, like I've said this to anyone who will listen, like, this is going to be a big thing, this book.

It's so good. I believe in this book so much. But so what we're going to talk about today, because so while Wendy was writing her book, I can't even remember where I was in my manuscript. And Wendy has since been a fantastic beta reader for me. She's read my whole... i can't even remember which revision it was of my manuscript and so that's kind of what we're going to talk about today is the fact that we both with adhd with

perfectionism with whatever we bring to our unique cocktail wrote manuscripts and we're at you know various stages of this and so what is it like to write a book when you are not a neurotypical person and How do you go about completing this big project start to finish? And then what happens if you get stalled at a certain place? And then what happens at the end? And then so we're going to talk about some of those like executive functioning challenges that go along with completing a long.

project. And then we're going to talk about the emotional aspects as well, namely rejection sensitive dysphoria, which we've talked about a lot on this podcast with Dr. Rebecca Ritchie, which is something that I don't know, has characterized my life for as long as I can remember. And I didn't know it had a name. And I didn't realize how acutely it impacted me.

And so, Wendy, before we talk about your book, I want to talk about your brain first for a minute. Like, I want you to tell us everything you want us to know. When you did your presentation, it was like... Completing a long-term project for people with ADHD, perfectionism, or a spicy brain, right? So tell us about your spicy brain. Yeah. So, you know, I am one of the... many women that I know who was diagnosed with ADHD later in life.

And it's really funny because so I actually, in addition to being a writer, I'm also a full time nerd academic. And so I have been working in higher education in a lot of ways for like 25 years, including several years spent working.

directly in a college program that was designed to provide learning support and social emotional support for students who had ADHD and other learning disabilities and other attention challenges. And so I had like this professional exposure. I spent years reading psychology. educational evaluations and, and all this stuff never occurred to me that I had ADHD because I was a good girl. I wasn't hyperactive. I, you know, did well in school because I'm.

nothing if not a people pleaser and i want all of the praise and affirmation all the time and school is an excellent way to get that um and so i you know i i had i had been told that i was a daydreamer when i was a kid um i knew that i could get lost in my brain really easily like which was wonderful sometimes because i would you know i'd read a book and i'd blink in four hours head

past and I was in that world. You know, so I there's lots of things in hindsight. I'm like, oh, right. That makes sense. And then I had a child who is very, very, very much like me. in a lot of ways. And he was diagnosed with ADHD when he was in third grade. And it still didn't kind of click for me like, oh, this child who is very much like me and struggles in a lot of the same ways that I do, has ADHD that has known genetic component.

Where could that have come from? Who knows? And then in my early 40s, I was about to start a new job that I was really, really excited about. Also really terrified because the job would involve sitting still for a really long period of time in like very, very dense meetings talking about. educational policy and in a situation where I would be in public and potentially called on to testify on camera in the state legislature. And I was like, I don't.

know if i can do that like i don't know if i can sustain the kind of attention that i need to to be able to be ready to respond to questions when they've been talking about something else for like two hours um and so then i started kind of diving in and you know, ended up getting tested for ADHD. They're like, yep, you sure do have it. And of course, once I knew it clicked on a whole bunch of things about.

how, why some things had been easier for me, why some things had been hard for me, why, you know, it made me, by that point I'd already finished my dissertation and it made me really reflect on why some things about my dissertation went the way that they did. Anyway, so it's been it's been a really it's been I've been diagnosed for about six years now. And it's been it's been really good to have that knowledge about myself and to think about.

both a lot of pride in the fact that before I knew I had built some really good scaffolds and some good systems that were doing a lot of heavy lifting to like compensate for my ADHD. And also then like getting on some medication and being like, oh. Is this how this is like? It can be quiet. It can be quieter inside my head. It can feel differently than it feels. Yeah, it sure did. And so, yeah, so that's kind of where I'm at now. And I've been thinking a lot, you know, like I have.

I had the experience of completing a dissertation without being medicated, without knowing that I had ADHD. And now I'm working on completing this novel. it's been interesting to like sort of hold those two experiences and think about like you know what i learned from doing it From raw dogging to doing it now and, you know, and being in a position where now all of this sort of past professional experience I had working in that world of ADHD and learning challenges and can be like.

okay, how do I apply that to my...

to my own life. So that's kind of where I'm starting from. Oh, I love this. And your story, so many of the people that listen to the show or have been on the show, that's it's the same story. We weren't on anyone's radar. We weren't on our own radar because we were good, smart girls.

We were high achieving. We might have been in the GT programs. We lived for the affirmation and the praise. School was a great way to get that validation. So, yes, totally relatable. And I again, you say like your kid was diagnosed and you.

still missed it mine weren't diagnosed until after I was I had the opposite story because so many people have the my kid got diagnosed and it clicked and even and I was also like I was in special education I was a music therapist like how immersed do we have to be And still we didn't see ourselves in this paradigm. And.

i mean there's a reason we didn't see ourselves in this paradigm we have not been included in this paradigm there has not been a paradigm for this type of woman girl with adhd and i love what you said about how you just sort of intuitively subconsciously were coming up with

these compensatory strategies. Because I think you're right. Once we do, we adjust the lens, we can see ourselves clearly. And it's like, oh, that's why I've always done this. I mean, things make so much more sense. And that validation of a diagnosis. can be so illuminating. Yeah. Yeah. And it was interesting because when I was going through the process and I was talking to my husband about it and my, you know, my husband is one of my biggest cheerleaders and my biggest fan. And he also.

He was he was probably the only person who felt surprised that I was diagnosed with ADHD because he's like, you're so organized. You have he's like, you know, you've got your monthly planner and your daily planner and your quarterly planner and your to do list and your weekly. to-do list and your daily to-do list and I was like yes I had to like I have to or else I am like you're seeing the scaffolding and you're not seeing the

thing underneath it. That is why I need the scaffolding. Brilliant. That's brilliant. Oh my gosh. I want anyone who's ever had their family members be like, what really? Are you sure? Yes. If you're seeing the scaffolding, of course we present. like we've got it together or we're organized or not struggling. What you're not seeing is the reason for the scaffolding. That's like, I've never heard anyone present it so brilliantly. Oh my gosh, that just made my brain explode.

And, you know, and I would have to say, like, I'm also somebody who is like my default setting is cheerful productivity. Like I am, you know, I was very much raised in.

religious good girl culture. My parents are literally Calvinist. That's the religious tradition I came into. So you can't get more Protestant work ethic than what I was raised in, who I am as a person. And so I think the other thing is... when people don't sort of have that association with like if they're expecting you to be hyperactive or if they're expecting you to sort of be procrastinating in a way that sort of looks a certain way they can't see it's like sometimes yeah like i'm

super productive because i can't stop um i'm super productive because like that's where sort of some of that energy is going and also sometimes i'm engaging in productive procrastination which means i'm really busy i'm doing stuff but it is not the stuff i'm supposed to be doing because the stuff i'm supposed to be doing i am freaked out about doing i am

afraid that I'm not gonna do it right or I'm like oh like you know all all of that stuff but like on the surface it is a like look at that woman she's getting so much shit done Yes, that is such a brilliant way to put it. And well, you've read my manuscript. That's my act busy part. Like, oh, look at me. I'm acting busy. I'm doing things. I'm being productive. But like, I'm avoiding the thing I don't want to look at because I'm afraid I'm not good at it or I don't know.

what I'm doing, or it scares me. That performative productivity, I think, is a real hallmark of overachieving good girls with ADHD, right? That like, watch me do this. And also like a lot of our... like productive procrastination or they act busy because we are good girls is in service of other people. That's what it is.

Yes. So, you know, I'm like, I'm both really busy and I'm really busy doing stuff for other people. So they're like, look at her. She's so great because look at like, she volunteered for this committee in this club and she's making dinner and she's doing all these things. And in my heart, I'm like, I am doing.

these things and i'm not touching my manuscript because i am afraid of it i'm also like putting myself last on my list again because this combination of like social conditioning and my adhd brain like joining forces in a really bad alliance for my own creativity.

Okay, beautifully said. And that is a terrible alliance. And that people pleasing, that social conditioning, that's what I think people don't understand. And they might look at you or me and say, like, you're not, you haven't been conditioned. You're just doing your...

No, no. Like if we're doing anything right, it's in spite of our conditioning, not because of it. Like that's the invisible thing that they don't see. And when you said our procrastination doesn't present in a way that people are used to, it's because. I think for this type of ADHD woman, the procrastination, the hyperactivity, whatever struggle we have, it's not going to affect other people. We're not going to disrupt the class, disrupt the meeting, let our boss down, let anyone...

down the consequences of the procrastination, the consequences of the mental hyperactivity. It's all internal. We are the only people feeling the effects of our ADHD.

That's why they're not noticing it. We're doing it, but we're doing it to ourselves. It's like an autoimmune disorder, right? Yeah. And I think one of the things that changed for me... so like first of all i always feel like there should be like a little sort of standard disclaimer on these discussions like you know neither of us is a doctor we're not anybody no right this doctor like all of the stuff is going to present different ways for different people um and you know like

The choice of whether or not to be on medication is a really individualized choice. The choice of whether or not to get therapy is an individualized choice, though everybody probably should. I feel like that's true. A little editorializing. But, you know, like, I think there was a, so I, you know, part of my journey was also doing years of therapy to sort of start decoding some of the good girl training and the perfectionism. And I always tell people, like, I have this moment that I've...

I had the world's most patient, wonderful therapist. God bless him. I remember him once telling me, mentioning sort of offhand about me being a perfectionist and telling him like, no, actually I can't be a perfectionist because I'm not good enough at anything. Do you hear it? Let's zoom out. Let's have some medic cognition about this. In addition to therapy, one of the things that helped really change...

me in terms of the productive procrastination piece and i'm still like i'm a work in progress i still struggle with that sometimes was the idea of like what would i do if i trusted myself to keep my own promises to myself? Like, what would I do if I treated the commitments that I made to myself with the same level of seriousness that I treated the commitments that I made to other people?

because I realized I was not doing that and like if I tell you I'm going to show up for you I am going to show up for you but I was like not showing up for myself a lot of the times and was feeling the time that I would have and you know I have a job I have kids I have a full life like you know I already have sort of and I have ADHD time blindness right so like my to-do lists are sometimes still

wildly aspirational um but when you fill up that time with the procrastination in service of other people the deficit like you're not going to keep your own promise to yourself about your attention to your work and for those of us who have either you know have an executive functioning disorder have perfectionism have whatever other you know blocks that we might have around our

engaging in our own creative work and especially sustaining that for like a longer term project. Attention and time matters. Right. And it is really easy if you. We are what we most commonly do. So when we stop doing our own work, we become people who are no longer doing our own work. And so, you know, I think that's a, like a really big thing for me was like, I have to.

I have to stop engaging in this productive procrastination sometimes and I have to be a person who keeps my own promises. But I also had to figure out some systems to help me do that because my brain is not wired to do that organically. Right. And I want to talk about those systems next. First, I have to say one thing that you said, I don't know, five minutes ago that I loved when you were talking about the things about ADHD that make your life better or worse, like make you.

I think we should pause for a moment to acknowledge the fact that ADHD really is a superpower when it comes to creativity, right? Like we're going to talk about some of the strategies to like help with these blocks and obstacles. But part of the reason that you were able to... this amazing book and that we as adhd writers are able to create meaningful good manuscripts or essays or whatever it's not in spite of our adhd it's it's because of it because we are very creative we are expressing

and we can hyper-focus. We can sit down and write for hours and hours. And so there's a lot that needs to be, quote, overcome or managed about ADHD, but that outpouring of expression. That's the flip side of this, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think as a, you know, and I do lots of writing, you know, I have two different sub stacks and I've written a lot of like freelance stuff and personal narrative and, and all that. And I.

You know, the joy of ADHD for me is like, I'm never short of ideas. I've never, I've never once thought, oh, I want to write.

a book but what would i even write about i'm like oh here are the 13 things i've thought about since i started this sentence um and so yeah like that that the novelty seeking part of our adhd brains means we're going to have fun along the way when we're in the zone because we're like, we're going to give, we're going to take that part of our brain off the leash and say like, go.

go find me some fun stuff like go find me something new to think about um and so yeah like a hundred percent i i am the writer that i am both sometimes in spite of the adhd You know, there are two sides to that coin for sure. Absolutely. And I love that. Like letting your brain off the leash, that part of your brain that just wants to run wild. I love that. So, okay. So talk to us about what are the systems? What are the strategies? How did you...

How did you work with your system to get this giant thing accomplished? Yeah. So, you know, I think. I think, first of all, for everybody. Like whatever ideas I share, like if they fit, they fit. If they don't, they don't. That's fine. I think a lot of it first starts with doing some really honest self-reflection and trying to bring some self-awareness.

Am I somebody who is more motivated by rewards or by the threat of punishment? Does the Pomodoro technique work for me? Um, where I, you know, I set a timer for 20 minutes and then take a five minute break. It does not work for me at all, but it does for some people.

Like, you know, what are like, am I some, is, is hyper-focused part of my toolkit? It's not for everybody who has ADHD, but it is for a lot of us. And if so, what are the conditions that I can create that will help me get into hyper-focus? Cause I know that that's. when i can be my most productive um i think and then thinking about so i guess

starting from the beginning, like I realized about myself that hyperfocus is definitely an important component for me. And I thought back to when I was writing my dissertation.

That I wrote most of my dissertation in a cabin in the woods in Wisconsin by myself. And that part of it was, and I wrote, I finished most of grad school in hotel rooms by myself because I cannot. right at home because home is where stuff is. And there's always something else I can be doing at home. And knowing that I'm a productive procrastinator.

I live in a home with other people. There's always something that needs to be cleaned. There's always something that needs to be organized. There's always something else I can be doing. There's not in hotel rooms. There's not in cabins in the woods. And so.

sort of recognizing about myself like i am i'm not going to ever be the person who writes 15 minutes a day and makes progress that way i am going to be the person who needs to go away somewhere and have three days where i'm just in the thick of it and in it obviously that's like requires a certain amount of privilege both in terms of like i have kids who are not

little anymore i have a really supportive spouse i've got some you know economic ability to do that but it doesn't have to be expensive either like this afternoon i'll be going to a coffee shop and doing body doubling with somebody who is somebody else who's writing and we're going to sit in a booth together and we're going to write together

And I can get it done at the coffee shop in a way that I can't at home because, again, home is where distraction lives. So sort of knowing that about myself, I think also recognizing... what my, I think we all have what I call our garbage time activities. I love that language. Which is, you know, the things that we do that at the end of it, we're like, oh. i don't feel amazing about that and like and i think you know we

Like if I was introducing myself to somebody and they said, oh, what do you do for fun? I'd be like, well, I write and I read and I train for triathlons and I love to go to the pool. And if somebody said, well, okay, but honestly, how did you spend your time yesterday? I would not feel great about being like, I was on Reddit for two hours. And I did not do all of those things that I told you I love because I was on Reddit for two hours. So like, I can't have TikTok on my phone.

Or in my life, like TikTok is, I had it for like a week and I was like, oh, this will, this will ruin my entire life. And so for me, it's like, okay, why? I can't have Reddit as an open tab when I'm working on stuff. I can't have TikTok on my phone. So I try to be aware of my garbage time activities.

set up some rules and some structures around that. I also try to make it easy for myself to have, like I have a go bag so that whenever I want to go, whenever I have an opportunity where I can go, knowing that I write better when I'm away from home.

When it's time to go, I've got a backpack that's got a charger for my phone, a charger for my computer. I've got a package of good pens. I've got paper. I've got snacks. All I have to do is slide in my laptop and I can be out the door to the coffee shop in two minutes. Brilliant. And I keep it by my desk so it's always there and it's ready to go. I also think that a lot of ADHD people...

you know, we have, we have stuff blindness. So if we don't see something, it stops existing to us. And so like my. My manuscript is in a very big orange binder that lives on top of my desk and it never gets put away anywhere because I will forget that it. I don't know where my manuscript is right now. It's not orange and I don't know where it is. Damn it. And I also think for me, like my manuscript is printed for a reason because I can't edit on the screen in the way that I can.

Like I need, I need the tactile. Yeah. Different colored highlighters notes to yourself. Yeah. And, and also like there's a, there's a validation of like seeing my work printed and it's like a nice thick. stack of paper and being able to look at that and be like, that's the thing that I did. So those are like just some of the structural pieces. But I think the thing, there were two things that I think made it possible for me to finish.

this manuscript and one was the parking lot which i know you love the parking lot so i'll talk about that parking lot and then the other one was adopting a first draft approach that i called forward only yes but so for me the parking lot was a really critical component and that was knowing that i have a brain that's like squirrel um that it is you know as i'm writing or working on stuff i'm having

I have the part of me that's doing that. And then I have another part of my brain that's on a walkabout and is thinking about different ideas or, oh, you need to come back to this or you need to do that. Was saying like, okay, brain, I hear you asking that question. I hear you making that observation.

I'm not going to follow that path right now, but I'm putting it in a parking lot and my parking parking lot was a written document. It was in a Google doc. So I could work on it. I could add things to it no matter where I was at. That was like, okay, later on. come back and add this or answer this question or follow up with this. Because I know that, you know, once I'm down a rabbit hole, I'm down a rabbit hole. And I didn't want to lose the fact that, like, because...

There was good ideas and good suggestions and good thoughts that I was having that if I don't write them down, they absolutely will not exist for me. later on exactly can we talk about that for a minute because i think i think many writers live in fear of the word baby coming into your brain and then losing it but an adhd writer that is different um

And those are good ideas. And so that's why the parking lot is, it's so essential. Like some of my best friends and I, we get together and it's just motor mouth. Everyone's interrupting everyone else. And a lot of my friends are neurodivergent. It's almost like I want a parking lot for life too. It's like, I can't. contain all the ideas in my brain and only some of them can be released in an appropriate way whether it's into your manuscript or into the conversation it's almost like

My friends and I always say, oh, put a pin in that. Put a pin in that. There's no putting a pin. No. The pin doesn't work. What was that pin again? It's almost like you need to have a notebook where you literally write down everything you think. Like that's what it feels like. The urgency of these ideas that you can't keep up with and there's no place to put them. Like that's an intense experience that I think a lot.

of people don't understand yeah for sure and i have you know i have my i have my parking lot for whatever my big project is right now i have a another google doc that is a list of like possible topics for one of my sub stacks that i might want to come to another time i always have a notebook in any bag that i have so i can you know write something down as it comes to mind um but you know for

Yeah, because we, and like sometimes I do write it down and later on I'm like, what? Like cantaloupe, question mark, banana? Like I don't, was this a grocery list or like a phrase? I don't know what that is. But so on the parking lot, I would always try to give myself not just like a word or a phrase, but a little bit of.

like a little bit more of context so i could come back to it later on but the parking lot also like when i actually finished the first draft and i moved into the editing phase was great because it also gave me it became an editing to-do list right of like looking back through um and you know

And that was really critical because for the other thing that I did, which was my forward only approach. Yes. I know that one of my forms of productive procrastination with writing would be that I would start. Every time I would sit down to write my, especially when I was writing fiction, I would open my document up to the first page and the first paragraph and start reading from there. And I would probably have edited the first chapter.

17 times because every time I would start it, I would like play with it and I'd rework it a little bit. And I realized, like, I am never going to get this done if I keep doing this. And so I made a decision that I was going to be forward only, where every time I opened my document, I just picked up where I left off. And I did not let myself go back and read.

anything that i had written before and part of why this worked for me is that i tend to be a pretty linear writer um my husband's also a writer he doesn't write in that way and so this probably wouldn't necessarily be an approach that would work for him but i tend to like i'm i start at the beginning and i end

at the end and i'm following and because it started also with a short story i knew the narrative well it's fiction yeah it's fiction too you're writing a novel that's yeah and it's still like i still surprised myself along the way and there was stories that emerged um but

But because I was like, I'm not going to let myself rearrange the deck chairs over and over again. I'm just going to get to the end of this first draft and I'll fix everything after that. Because one of the things that was really important to me was like, I just. I don't need it to be good. I need it to be done because in my brain and in my soul, I was like, if I don't ever finish this manuscript.

I am going to feel incomplete in a way that is really, really uncomfortable. And I would rather have a bad first draft than a really polished, really perfect one quarter of a novel. That's beautiful. I think we need to like pause and let people take that in because we write for different reasons. Like whatever type of creativity you have, there's product and there's process. And we all like Julia Cameron talks about that.

you know, journey, not destination, blah, blah, blah. That's great. But that product, we do want it. We are driven by finishing this work and having it. But then I think there's a deeper thing that you said there. It's not like your end goal isn't.

It's polished. It's I have an agent. I have a publisher. It's a it's a, you know, Reese's Book Club book. It's I would feel incomplete. And I think we. dismiss or minimize the impact of yeah it's not just the process it's not just the act of creating it is it's this book it's this thing but it's not because this is the ticket to my fame it's

I don't think I'm going to feel complete if I don't finish this creation I started. And I think that frequently we deprive ourselves of that satisfaction, of the enjoyment. You wrote this book and it's good. And it's not to minimize like what's going to happen next. But we don't give ourselves that gift of just enjoying our talent or our work. Well, and I think.

i think you're 100 right and and part of you know i i do feel like um with this project with my novel i think it's a great story and i love my character so much that i also was like i need to see them through to the end of this because i like i love them and i care about them and i i think the story is a story worth telling um but i think you know

I am an achievement oriented person. Right. I have I there's nothing about the life that I've made for myself. That was inevitable. You know, I was not. I was not raised to be professionally successful. I was, I mean, my therapist and I, we sorted all this out, but. I am in a position where I look around my life and I am incredibly lucky in a lot of ways. I've, you know, I have a wonderful family. I have had some professional success. I get to do work that I.

in my professional life that I feel like is really meaningful and important and I'm good at it. I get to talk on stage a lot and I am an extroverted Leo eldest daughter. So like, please applaud for me always. But I kind of had this moment of like, for all of these things, which are really wonderful and I'm so, so grateful for, if I got to the end of my life and I'd never finished a novel.

that would be the thing that i felt like was missing right yeah but what was hard was initially it's like you do have that part of you that's like i want to go to target and I want to see my book on the shelf. And I do want it to be the Reese's book club or Jenna's book club or something book club. And I want book clubs to read it and to like it. And I want, you know, I want to be interviewed on TV talking about my book.

But I can't control that as an outcome. And thinking about that as an outcome and knowing like. that's really like, that's super unlikely for the vast, vast majority of us. And if that was what I defined as success, I would never ever have finished this because the, I would know I'm smart enough to know.

what the odds are around that kind of stuff. And I also know, you know, a million things have to go right for all of that to happen. So one of the things I did do was reframe was like, okay, I am not writing a bestselling novel. I'm writing. a shitty first draft i'm writing a manuscript that and i am in control of that and nobody's like i don't have to worry about rejection because i get to be totally in charge of that um you know one of the next steps on my journey is to to

you know, to get an agent. I'm not in control of whether or not I'll get an agent or not. What I am in control of is, is writing a query letter. So that's my, my next goal is not getting an agent. My next goal is write a query letter. The goal after that will be send out that query letter. And so for I'm going to ride the.

trail of all the things that are in my control for as long as I possibly can because there will be a certain point where all of this becomes outside of my control if I think like traditional publishing Reese's Book Club is the only end goal that will satisfy me. Right. But there are a lot of I can get a pretty good distance on my own.

with my own permission and with my own like building out my own scaffolding and my own support network around that. And so I think that really like releasing the idea of having a published novel as the end goal. really, really helped because it put it back in my control. And it became, once again, a promise that I was making to myself, not something that I was... had to have somebody else's permission or validation to be able to reach that particular goal. That's brilliant.

whether you're writing a book or not, like that is just such brilliant advice, just life advice, project advice, dream advice. I love that. I'm going to be thinking about that for a while. So, okay, so we've got the parking lot. We've got forward only. We have that shift of first draft.

manuscript complete um we've got the knowing what works for you are you someone that wants the 20 minutes on five minutes off or are you going to use your hyper focus um did is there anything else on the list of strategies i mean i think

the other thing for me was figuring out for me having an external some sort of external deadline is super important because I am a rule follower and because I you know like And I started recognizing like, okay, if my tendency is that I know that I'm better at keeping promises to other people than I am to myself, well, I'm going to promise my writing to other people. And so for me, like being part of that writing group, I don't.

I would not have finished it if I had not been. I mean, I would have finished it, I think, I hope eventually, but in the speed that I did, knowing that I had a safe, trusted group of people that were waiting for me to send them something every week.

was super, super helpful for me because I have never missed a deadline. I've never paid a bill late. That's how my brain is wired. And I've experimented in the past with other kinds of like... reward things like okay if i do a certain thing i will like buy myself this whatever buy myself the whatever just because i want to like let's be honest about that like i'm not i'm not great it's not gonna work um i don't like shaming myself is not

an option for me at this point. It's not, not going to work. I'm not going to punish myself by like, okay, I can't do something else until I have this done. And it like, it's, you know, again, I'm like, a midwestern nice girl and so it's a little hard to say out loud but like i like when people tell me i'm good at things and that when people like and having people having a group of people who i knew would both give me um

good things to think about but also be like yes keep going yes keep going yes we're enjoying this yep it's super super helpful for me um and i and i suspect you know i suspect it probably is for other would be for other people as well. I think so too. I think that we just, there's not enough positive things that can be said about the accountability group, about the writing and community, about body doubling, about showing up, about having that external accountability.

present. And I think you're right, finding out what it is that works for you. But I think so many of us need that external motivation, we need the person who's waiting for the next chapter, or the deadline. So I think that's great advice. And for a lot of this, like for creative work, that's not paid. Nobody, nobody will care if you don't finish your manuscript. I mean, you will care and hopefully people who around you will care, but there's not, you know, you're not going to.

if I never finished this manuscript, I'm not losing money. I was not on a deadline to anybody. And so it was, you know, I think it was like, okay, I have to create a system where there is some sort of a deadline and where somebody does care.

about it. And I think you know, beta readers and people to read your finished draft are amazing. Again, that takes a lot of sustained focus. And so I think the idea of like sending people something small on a weekly basis, I agree a lot more powerful for some folks than waiting till the end.

and having a cluster of readers who will give you feedback at that point. So I think if people can find, you know, and it doesn't have to be other writers. If it's just somebody who's like a trusted person in your life and that you can have. Cause I think the other thing, you know, in terms of the, the emotional side of this, I think you also have to like, I just need to know that somebody else has it and is looking forward to it. And, and, but like shaping, like.

if you do want some kind of feedback, set up the scaffolding around like what feedback would be helpful. Yep. That's great. And what's great advice. And this is where, again, if you have. Some of us have those communities organically. Some of those have those like longstanding. Sometimes like this is why you can pay to join a writing group. It's why you can pay to like connect with a writing coach. Like that is something that you can like.

and it's not, it's probably less expensive than you think it is sometimes. And if it's something that gets you fulfilling that part of yourself, like I would rather spend, you know, a couple hundred dollars to join an online writing circle or to work with a writing coach then like

whatever i would waste a hundred dollars on because i'm feeling sad that i'm not working on my product i'm not working on the thing that is like central to the heart of who i am at this moment and i have definitely like we like you know yeah it's easy like you can instead of writing you can scroll instagram and buy something on that and for the same price that you probably would have yep that is that is such a great point i love that so

Let's segue into RSD a little bit, because I really like what you already said about reframing your goals. Like if the only thing that was going to make me satisfied was being, you know, big five published, find my book at Target, like focusing on what's in your control. um and and how again you can't control whether you're going to get an agent but you can control am i going to sit down and write this query letter right um

So where I am at, I've done, okay, let's see. I started writing two Aprils ago. I think I wrote it in about nine months. I let it sit for a while. I wrote the proposal. I let that sit for a while. And then I've done a couple more rounds of revisions. then and in the meantime as i may continue revising there was no excuse

for me not to send out the letters and the proposal. And since mine is memoir, the proposal has to be done. And the proposal was maybe harder than writing the book in some ways. Right. And now I so I spent, you know, weeks dinking around on publishers, marketplace, finding people. What books do I like? You know, making a spreadsheet. And then it came the time when now I'm just I'm just sending them just said I probably have 20 letters out.

different agents and this is the part where you sit and wait for the rejection which for some of us rejection on any level feels like death yeah yeah and you know and i think like the rejection sense of dysphoria is really interesting to me because like a lot of things it's not as well studied or well understood as it should be um and i think it's really important Unless you're like an actual sociopath, none of us like rejection, right? But I think it is important to recognize that...

there's a spectrum to how we experience that. Right. And then there are people for whom it is like, Oh, that sucks. That makes me feel really bad. And there are people from it's like, it is like, physically painful to me and it is like you know an emotionally devastating experience that like there are people for whom if they have issues with being bipolar it can set off

episodes there are people for whom if they have issues with depression can lead to like as far as like suicidal ideation like it is legit and it's not because we're like these special snowflake creative babies who need to be coddled they're like they're Evidence so far seems to be like there's something structurally different in our brain where rejection is hitting the same centers as physical pain does. Right. Yes. And so I think, again, that caveat of if you are on the really.

tough end of that spectrum this is absolutely something you probably need to be talking to your doctor about because there are medications that that people can use it's definitely something you can be talking about with a therapist like if it is you know on the like debilitating mental health crisis side of things right right i'm i'm lucky that it's not i'm more toward the middle part of that spectrum i think um and so i do think for me it is

you know, controlling the controllable. And I love to control what I control about my own life. And so there's that piece of it. I think there's also kind of a little bit of a harsh truth.

which is you get to choose your pain here because not doing the thing is also going to be painful. And so not having tried is also going to be painful. And there, if you try and it doesn't. If you don't get an agent, it doesn't get traditionally published. That sucks, but it's an answered question. It's an answered question. And there's a next step.

And you can, and I think that's for me, part of it, like, I think one of the ways I handle that is the idea of trying to always have a plan B, like, I always want to know my escape route. And so even having like, well, if I can't do it, I can self publish, I could convert it to

You know, and I could convert it to a sub stack that I get to control and publish. I can like there are there are avenues. Make it a podcast. Find a small price. I mean, there are there are. Yeah, there is not one. There's ultimately like. I love the work that I've made. I think other people will like it. I want other people to have the chance to read it and to enjoy it.

And there are six different ways that that could happen. And there's one that I want the most. And there's one that sort of like has a little bit more of that prestige factor. But if that doesn't happen, that doesn't mean it can't.

happen in one of those other five ways. But, you know, I think about it, you know, so one of the things I do every summer is I do a triathlon. So I do triathlons and I do open water swimming because I am not fast, but I can do hard things for a really long time. Athletically speaking, which turns out to be a good metaphor for.

other things as well um but i was training once for the triathlon and it was like 95 degrees and i was like sweaty sweaty sweaty and on this bike ride and i got two flat tires and it was just all like just domino after domino of like

I'm physically uncomfortable. My bike's not working. I'm like two miles from home. I'm like, what am I going to do? And I had this moment of like, this is all optional. Like, I don't have to be doing this. Most people are not doing this right now. Like I have chosen to do this thing and I've chosen to do this thing.

Because the having done it is so damn satisfying. And so I will take the suffering and the risk of failure and the hardness of the training process. Because when I get to the day and I actually do it, I know how good it feels. to have it done and know that I'm, you know, I am crossing the finish line as a 40 something, you know, not exactly built like a gazelle mom and showing.

my kids and showing the audience or the spectators, like this is also what an athlete looks like. And I think there's like a metaphor there, not a metaphor, like the writing is the same, like this is optional. If the thought of rejection became too painful and I didn't want to do it anymore, I could stop at any point. But I think that the payoff was going to be worth it in the long run to put myself in that position of having... the risk of that rejection. I also think, you know, there are

I also give myself little treats along the way though, in terms of, because like, so I, like, as I mentioned, I have two sub stacks. And I don't know if you have a way to put up a link, but. Oh, no, no, it'll be in the show notes for sure. But if you're a writer who fears rejection, Substack is great.

Because I get to decide what goes in there. I get to decide if people leave me comments or not. I get to decide if I turn on the feature to let people pay me for it or not. And so, you know, the desire to have creative work that finds an audience. I am able to give myself little shots of that, little dopamine injections of that. I was about to say it's a little dopamine hit along the way. Yep. Because the thing about long-term projects is that, you know, there's not as many little...

I mean, you get the dopamine hits of like a perfectly writing day that went really well or like you unraveled a knot of that. But, you know, if you if you are somebody who enjoys getting dopamine from other people's response to your creative work, which is not. a bad thing like i create because i want to experience the thing that i've created yes and that's okay we write because we love to write but also we want to be read writers want to be read yeah and that's okay

If I didn't want to be read, I would just keep a journal, which I also do. And like, nobody better read that. But like, and again, I think that's that self knowledge piece of, you know, if and, and I'm also conceited.

I want to be read under my own name because I want people to know, Wendy Robinson wrote that sentence that you liked. Some people may be like, I just want somebody to read it and I... don't care if they know it's me or not and i maybe i want to publish anonymously because i don't want to take the risk of somebody telling me that they don't like it that's okay too again it's a lot of that self-knowledge and thinking about is the payoff that you think you're going to get for it

enough to balance the likely discomfort of like every writer is going to get rejected at some point it is built into the system there's no getting around that and so i i do think You know, if you are somebody who that sends you on a spiral that is like dangerous for your mental health or for some people, the way that rejection manifests for them might be sort of in external focused anger and rage.

If that is something that is going to impact your relationships with the people that you care most about, I do think you need to think about like, is the payoff? worth it for you? Or is a different kind of goal or a different way of trying to express your creativity going to be healthier for you and the people?

And maybe the focus is more importantly, why is this happening and how can I how can I work with it? Right. Right. And if I know that, like, what are the structures I'm going to put in place to keep myself and people that I care about emotionally? safe as i'm experiencing this part of the process and the truth is like on a longer form project you know like by books take years right and

But it's not going to be years of rejection if you framed it correctly. It's going to be years of you doing things that you are in control of. And then the possibility of rejection is going to be a it's going to be a shorter season. Yep. Then the rest of the creative process is going to be. What's hard is that, you know, you don't, it's, that's where you've let go of the control and you don't get to control how fast people get back to you. And, you know, you, all of those pieces, but.

Again, if you have a thing inside of you, and whether that's a writing project or an art project or something, whatever that thing is. that you know you are not going to ever live comfortably until that thing comes out of you in some sort of form yes that you that's the trade-off for

Like, choose your pain. Choose your uncomfortable. And that's, so what I've been working with my therapist forever and ever, that part of me that experiences the rejection, and it feels physical to me. It feels like someone has zapped. me with lightning or i'm about to leave my body what i'm working with is i've felt it i feel it feeling it didn't die right yeah like

oh my God, this feels awful. This feels like death. I didn't die, right? It's learning to tolerate that because as you said, the payoff is so great. And I know we're almost at the end of our hour and we all have ADHD and attention spans, but I do, something you said made me think of this conversation.

I had with one of my children who was crying about her boyfriend, even though there was literally nothing wrong in their relationship. That was the thing. Everything was right. She was like, listen, this is going to end at some point. I'm doing the math. I'm young. This is going to end. Maybe I should just. end it right now because I'm only gonna love him more and it's only gonna hurt more later and maybe I should just and I'm like

That is not the way we live. I would rather have the big, big love and the big pain than just to be right across the middle. That's not how we live. And so no. Don't end this great relationship because you know that someday you're going to be sad. We don't need to pre-grieve everything. We can make a choice to risk failure or breakups or pain because the payoff is worth it because we are living our life.

because we're doing the thing that we love. And I mean, also the idea that we can prepay grief is just nonsense. But I think, you know, the, I guess the thing that kind of resonated with me is we are so lucky.

to have the impulse and the desire to create right and we're so lucky to have brains that give us a playground to envision ways to tell stories like the the human impulse to want to tell stories is as old as human beings itself and so you know we have that impulse and we have a brain that is going to help us think of fun and interesting and creative ways to do that and

when you do the creative work that you are supposed to be doing, you will be changed by the process of that. And so whether or not I ever published this book, because I worked on it, I got to meet. people like you and i got to make friends and i got to experience like the joy of like creating this little world that I got to spend time in. And I, I got to meet Truman and Chuck and Juliet who I love. And I love them too. And, and if nothing else, like I wouldn't trade.

all of that even even if i get my you know and it will suck that someday somebody will decide that they don't love this book the same way that i do and that will be hard um but they are entitled to their wrong opinion and i will be the person who created the world that these characters live in and i wouldn't trade that

No. And like you said, it changed you. And I've said over and over, writing this book changed my life. I literally wrote my way out of one life and into another. I wrote a door and I walked through it. And yeah, at the end of the day. Any of the pain that follows will have been worth it.

i can't thank you enough for spending an hour talking to me about this i could talk to you for three more hours i love talking about adhd and creativity and growing up as a midwestern protestant good girl and um we may have to have future conversations as our book journeys evolve. And we have more information to share about what we've learned. But for now, thank you so much, Wendy.

Thank you for having me. This was a delight. And I'm going to put all the links so you can all find Wendy and you'll be following her when her book comes out. So it'll be in the show notes. All right. Thanks, everybody.