Some advice on how I got myself to enjoy writing:
So I used to hate writing when I was in High School, and I think it's probably mostly because schools just kinda fucking suck at teaching you how to write. Especially if you got ADHD, all the advice you're going to get is very neurotypical minded. Teachers I think, also tailor their lessons to work under the assumption that it's already clicked for you, how exactly you put your thoughts onto the page, because most of them never struggled to find it, and they also just, don't have the time to work individually with students to find out what works for them and their thought process. It feels like they're just trying to build a structure that's rigid enough it supports you to passing the rubric instead of teaching you how to get there yourself.
So I thought I'd share how I got over it, in case it might help someone else (though I'm probably preaching to the choir given that this is the textposts and fanfiction website lmao).
I used to think I hated writing, because I thought I was terible at it for the longest time.
I don't actually hate it though, and I'm also not bad at it (and I'm betting neither do most of the people reading this).
What I really hated was being forced to write like someone else.
I hated the formal prompts, I hated the way I had to bend my thoughts into unnatural shapes. I hated the outlines, the routines. Being forced to ignore my stream of consciousness to fulfill a requirement, I hated color coding my sentences. I'd constantly have writers block, I wrote stuff that felt very stiff and inhuman, and over and over again I'd hate it when I was told "just write something" because I just couldn't. No one was ever checking to see if I actually understood the point of anything I did, just whether I met the rubric.
But then, something just kinda clicked for me.
I can just. Not do it like that. . .
I noticed two things really.
First, was I had discovered video essays, and I was starting to consume a lot of them. The more I read though, the more I realized they sounded nothing like anything I had ever been taught to write, even when speaking in an academic register about the same kinds of subjects I had to write about for school. It seemed like their thought process was just completely different from anything I'd been taught, it felt more, organic, more authentic.
Like, what I noticed more specifically, was that text messages were effortless to me. They're like talking but with words on a screen. They're also infinitely more creative with the ways you can add extra meaning to your words using the vocabulary of the internet. To me it felt distinct from writing everything else, because it was just, conversation.
But then it dawned on me, it's not actually different.
That's just what writing is.
I don't need to be agonizing over perfection, I don't need to treat it like a problem to be solved, or an answer I need to get right. I could just, reuse those pathways I already have for speaking and communicating in other ways, to write anything, and suddenly just, overnight, it made perfect sense to me, I could do it effortlessly.
This is just like, infodumping, but the words get recorded and you can revise them and add citations to it after. Like holy shit, this is actually pretty cool.
I wasn't trying to fill out an outline anymore. I stopped giving a shit about that formal hook -> topic -> transition -> claim -> evidence -> reasoning -> conclusion, and all that bullshit that just makes me freeze in my tracks.
I just learned a lot about my subject, and simply, spoke freely about what I thought, but just, code switching it to be in a more formal register. I wrote as if I was dictating my thoughts. I listened to my gut and what felt right, made sure I covered what I needed to cover, and tightened it up and rearranged it later. It was like I had suddenly learned to harness my endless stream of thoughts into doing something I wanted.
It wasn't as neat as following the lesson plan, I wrote a lot more bullshit that got deleted for the second draft, but it didn't sound like it was written by a STEM major anymore.
Once it clicked too, I realized I could help others who had the same struggle I did by actually just having them literally dictate to me. I would tell them to just, not even try to write anything, just have them speak freely about what they thought about the subject, and I would write it down for them and sometimes make suggestions about how to translate it into something academic. Something about just, saying it out loud to a peer, it forces you into using the pathways you have that are already strong.
Around then is when I got my first ever perfect score on an English paper, and I was so fucking proud of myself for it.
The structures and outlines actually started to make a little more sense too. I could see how they'd be useful in organizing the word vomit on the page, but the secret was I actually needed to get the word vomit there first. So I still mostly disregarded them and did things my own way.
It feels like that's the secret really. Not trying to do it someone else's way, letting myself be weird and ADHD and Autistic.
Now I actually really enjoy writing, I love yapping about things, sharing my ideas. It feels like a very natural medium for my expression. So much so that I had a very similar epiphany by journaling, and I actually kinda stumbled into keeping one by accident.
I go over it in more detail here: https://www.tumblr.com/auroras-void/776055272532852736/journaling-lpt?source=share
Now, the one achilles heel for me and using this technique though. Is what I write now has to be authentic, or I get stuck. I struggle when it comes to writing about stuff I don't care about, or when I have to use a register so formal I can't speak freely, it's really hard for me to bullshit canvas discussions or write emails for example. (Especially if I need to lie about what my thoughts are just to meet the requirements.)
Fiction too. I still haven't figured out how to write fiction. I think part of that is 'tism for me,,, I struggle with authentically writing someone else's perspective, because my instinct is to just to imagine myself and my ideas in their shoes. If I ever tried to write an OC, it'd just inevitably turn into a copy of me.
Hopefully someday that'll click for me too though.