For the fire tower/lighthouse book, I'm trying to record notes of my entire process so I can eventually turn the notes into a "how I navigate being an author with ADHD and Autism and here's my process" type tool. But. Like. In doing this, I'm realizing I have very much reached the stage of "I've been doing this so long, I no longer know how I do it, it just kinda happens."
Where'd that idea come from? I dunno. My brain is just constantly running a "yes, and?" process in the background and eventually I'll get a little idea ping that I have to frantically scribble down before it drifts away on the ADHD river. Somehow that eventually turns into a book.
To be clear, I get where people are coming from with the whole "that's just how autism/ADHD thinking works!"
But also...no. No it isn't. I worked fucking HARD to get to this point, y'all. It is not innate. My first attempt at college fucked me up BAD creatively. Digging myself out of that hole was a very intentional choice that took a lot of work over multiple years. I had to completely rewire how I looked at, approached, and shared my creative work, both writing and illustration.
That effort has paid off in the ability to successfully do a LOT of stuff. I work at a rapid pace that most people cannot keep up with, but what most people don't know/see is just how much of a foundation I had to lay to be able to do that.
It's...okay, let's continue with the foundation metaphor here. Plenty of old houses were built without foundations. And they were beautiful! They stood for a long time! But they required a ton of maintenance as they shifted and cracked and settled, and sometimes they just straight up collapsed. That's the sort of creator I was in college. I had built myself a pretty nice house! But it was NOT steady and, frankly, not safe. I spent more time patching up cracks than I did making new things.
I could have just knocked down the house and walked away, given up on creative pursuits, or tried to start over from scratch. But the house I'd already built DID have value, it just needed stabilized. So instead of knocking it down, I invested the time and effort into lifting it up and installing a brand new foundation underneath. Then, with the new foundation built, I patched the last of the cracks, put up pretty new wallpaper, installed better lights. Now I've got a house/creative process that I LOVE and that works so, so well for me.
I went through all of that alone, just flailing out in the dark and trying to figure it out one piece at a time. Couldn't afford therapy or meds of any sort, didn't really have any friends at the time, so I was just raw-dogging it. I don't want other people in a similar boat to me to have to do it alone, which is why I have been considering doing something like this with one of my books for awhile now.
Sometimes, a house is fine without a foundation. But if you want to put one in, it's nice to have some blueprints.
Actually, I have more thoughts.
This is why the "autism/ADHD/whatever is a superpower!" shit bugs me so much. Because it ISN'T. That stupid idea is just the grown-up version of when we all got stuck in the gifted and talented program and then never actually learned how to study, causing us to struggle later when we did need to study.
Yes, my brain approaches things differently. Yes, I can make connections in a way other people can't. Yes, I'm a good problem solver. Yes, I can usually absorb basic processes pretty quickly. But without practice, without intentional effort, those connections are just a tangled knot of a thousand pieces of yarn. You might still end up with half a sock in there somewhere, maybe a chunk of blanket, but really learning to knit? Crochet? Weave? That doesn't happen accidentally, and expecting it to is just doing yourself and everyone else a huge disservice.
Things take time and effort and, in this obnoxious age of AI, I think it is more important than ever that we understand that. That we embrace it and learn to enjoy it. There's no superpowers involved.






















