From Chaos to Cohesion: How I Get Started on Revising while Battling ADHD

It's back to school season.

The time of new autumn leaves, fresh school (writing) supplies, and a massive uptick in productivity content.

A lot of people, from beloved CPs and betas to those in my Discord hangouts and on Twitter, have asked me how I revise as meticulously as I do without losing steam. For those who aren't aware, I'm a huge plotter—I've even made a Notion template just for various novel outlines. My revision notes are color-coded and, in some cases, so meticulous that Notion struggles to fit them all without slowing down.

Organization is my passion: I am at peace when my life is easy to navigate, and that requires meticulous prep work on my part.

Why? Because I have severe ADHD, with both hyperactive and inattentive symptoms. I was diagnosed at the age of 26, meaning that I've been developing coping strategies for most of my life without any outside help. Before, it was a nameless struggle with motivation, fear of failure, and the constant shadow of executive dysfunction.

Many people, I'm learning, are dealing with the very same.

ADHD is a constant battle — and a lonely one, too. Writing with it can feel counterproductive at times and downright frightening at others. But you are not alone. I am a strong believer in community, and while I won't wave away the severity of ADHD with positive sentiment, I believe that the sharing of knowledge is integral in ensuring the success of both ourselves and others.

So, without further ado, let me dive in!

DISCLAIMER: These are strategies that work for me. People experience ADHD in near-endless ways: what works for me may not work for you, and that's okay! I hope that readers of this post can find something positive to take away from the experience. If you have additional strategies you would like to mention, feel free to reach out by commenting on this post or contacting me on Twitter.

Why It Can Seem Impossible to Begin Revising At All

If you're anything like me, the idea of revising a novel has the power to stop your brain in its tracks.

It's no secret: ADHD brains crave dopamine. They run low on it, and so people with ADHD seek it out in other forms: namely, instant gratification. That quick caffeine fix, that simple sugar rush, that impulsive spend. No judgement here: I've done it all.

That's why the Shiny First Draft is so alluring to us. Words bloom onto the page from our very hands—and how cool is that?! We've created something from nothing, taking pure imagination and throwing it onto the page. Creation is a rush like no other, and beholding a finished work is tremendously gratifying.

And when that gratification ends, another realization follows on its heels. Writing is revising, as so many say: by now, I couldn't tell you the source of the adage, so often is it repeated (and if you know, let me know). The vast, VAST majority of writers hoping for traditional publication must undergo at least one round of revisions after the first draft.

But therein lies the problem: it's not shiny anymore. No longer are we creating, manifesting a story from nowhere but our own thoughts and hearts. Now, there's expectation: not only do we have to be creative, but we have to know what the f*ck we're doing. There's a certain connotation with revisions: that this is it, this is the real push, this is the Big Scary Thing standing between us and eventual success — but only if we get it right.

The other common association? That it sucks and people hate it. Filter that one through an ADHD lens: the same disorder that steers us clear of emails, phone calls, dentist appointments, friends we've forgotten to reply to, chores, sometimes even basic hygiene. Those things are all obligations, must-do's on our lists, and revising as a process is no different. It's little wonder most of our brains try to take flight at the mere mention of revisions.

My secret? Fill the process with as much dopamine as possible. Here's how I do that.

First: Celebrate!

I mean it! YOU WROTE A WHOLE NOVEL!

Look at you! And maybe you left a lot of it in [first draft brackets to be looked at later], and maybe you pantsed the whole thing and your plot took a turn in the middle — but those pages are YOURS, and this achievement is yours, too.

SO CONGRATULATE YOURSELF!

So much of ADHD is time blindness, and this can be especially true for a process that can take years. It's hard to mark milestones other than "I started" and "I'm querying," and so I make sure to celebrate EVERY step. Draft done? Reward. Revision outline made? Reward. Chapter revised? REWARD.

This process should be joyful in EVERY phase. The more time you take to celebrate what you've done, the more confidence you'll have going forward. And, not for nothing, the more dopamine you'll have to help your brain with.

Make It Visual and Tangible

You're going to need to look at what you've done — no, really.

Many people with ADHD have short working memories, and so we can sometimes forget what we've written that day, never mind months or years ago.

In addition to the aforementioned time/progress blindness, this makes it imperative that we all have some tangible way to experience our first drafts. Whether this is one massive compiled Google Doc (I split my first draft into 5 Docs because of the lag), one Word document, or (for those with the means) a printed copy of one's first draft, I personally cannot move forward until I've gathered everything I've already done.

Plus, it's a necessary step for my next tip!

Take Stock of What You've Got

AKA: Highlighters Are Your Best Friend.

AKA... This is the BEST THING I DID for my revision process, and I couldn't recommend it more.

My printed copy of my first draft, plus the seven mildliners I used to mark it all up.

Once the first draft of SOUNDLESS was done, I knew I wanted to go through and remember half the stuff I'd already written. I was one of those drafters who, even though I'd had an outline, changed direction in the middle of the book—twice. Including an abrupt switch from third person to first person right around the third act's beginning.

Needless to say, I needed to remind myself of what I had done, and you're probably the same way if you're reading this. Yes, you're going to need to read your entire book again, and probably before you do anything else.

I stocked up on Mildliners when I finished my first draft. Seven, in fact. I dedicated each color to a specific type of note/concern: Cut (red), Worldbuilding (orange), Theme (yellow), Character Arcs/Development (green), Plot (purple), and Romance (pink).

But most importantly, I ALSO marked Good Job/Keep (teal).

I think that during revisions, it is just as important to mark your successes as your areas of growth. Every time I found myself smiling at my work or feeling that spark of pride, I used my teal highlighter.

And, reader: it was the one that I ran out of first (along with green, but that's fine). It reminded me that yes, my draft needed a lot of work. But also? I had done so many things well, and I deserved to feel a sense of pride.

REMEMBER: yes, your book needs work, but there's also a lot to love about it already. ADHD brains have trouble with emotional regulation, and remembering to congratulate yourself on how far you've come can help with feelings of hopelessness, perfectionism, and rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD).

Another Note: If you don't have a print copy of your first draft, using any program's highlighting features works just as well!

Break It Down into Manageable Steps

So much of an ADHDer's struggle is that revisions seem endless. But ultimately, they're not.

Every single step forward, no matter how small, is a step toward the finish line — and you WILL be finished, one day.

And suddenly, the finish line doesn't seem so far away. The fear of beginning fades.

The more you can break this process into smaller steps, the more you'll congratulate yourself when you finish (remember how I reward myself for every single chapter complete?) and the more dopamine you'll harvest for each stage of revisions. And remember: dopamine's the aim of the game here.

That's why I highlighted in the first place. Having a visual representation of what needed work (oh, hey, more than half of my highlights are in green, so my character arcs need deeper development for sure) took a lot of the guesswork out of planning my next steps.

What steps you choose to break your revisions into may look far different from what I did. I'm a plotter to my very bones, and so outlining was a crucial portion of my revision process (and an extensive one), but the intensity of that process might be different for you. That's okay!

What I did was:

• Read and highlighted my first draft. (see above)

• Created a reverse outline. Not what SHOULD happen in my draft, but what DID happen in my first draft.

• Dove into my characters and fleshed them out more. My biggest area of growth was giving my characters deeper arcs, and figuring out their emotional baselines helped me fall in love with them all over again. (You may choose to develop something else here, like worldbuilding or theme.)

• Altered my plot, reworking it into a new outline. Studying the three-act, four-act, and seven-act structures informed where my tension was inconsistent and allowed for me to see which chapters needed more intensity and which needed to... chill.

• Created a list of goals for each chapter based on that outline. Some chapters would need total reworks; others would only need line edits.

And for every step of this process — even for making the list of the steps of this process — I rewarded myself when I accomplished it. Breaking it down into these small steps took away my fear of beginning and also made me feel.. honestly? Quite grown up, quite professional. That rush of dopamine alone made it easy for me to begin revising.

Find Critique Partners and Friends to Lean On

ADHD is lonely, remember?

Well, revising is lonely, too. Before you send work off to betas, it can be just you and the page, countless late nights and near-endless caffeine (unless you're better about caffeine than I am, in which case: congratulations.)

Before I even send work off to betas, I'm in deep conversation with my critique partners. And for me, I don't even send my CPs finished work that often. More often, the partnership is built on a mutual want for discussion and reworking at the conceptual level, and this is intentional on my part.

Falling in love with a refined and reworked concept gives me the focus I need to write the concept out in its entirety.

And sometimes, my CPs and I are just there to commiserate. I am fortunate to have a group of CPs who meet weekly to discuss writing in general and to read excerpts of our work aloud to one another for quick positivity passes. It's just the morale boost I need to work through the difficult components of my revisions, and it also reminds me that I'm not alone in the revision cave. There are other writers, too, in their own caves, and they're struggling just as I am.

In addition to that critical feedback, morale boosting is an essential component of your revisions. If your critique partners aren't adding to the joy of the process, evaluate the partnership itself. You deserve to feel joy in this stage of your work — and, moreover, you need it. Medically.

Good friends and critique partners change the whole game. If revisions seem insurmountable, the wise words of a close friend often file down that mountain into something workable. Manageable.

Forgive Yourself — I mean it.

You can do everything right, and at the end of the day, you'll still have ADHD.

I mean it. You can wake up at 5AM every day, you can exercise consistently, you can have the diet of champions, you can practice yoga or gratitude, you can sit down to write every day — and you'll still have ADHD. Like so many other illnesses, it is something you and I will have with us all our lives.

There will always be the oops I hyperfocused until 2AM and now I have to go to work days. There will always be the blank page has driven me to tears and I can't do this, not today days. No matter what you do, our brains can be flighty and fickle things — and that's not something we can change. Not forever.

So forgive yourself.

You're not going to get it right every day, and neither am I. This has been a hard month for me, particularly. But if you focus on how your ADHD stands to get in the way of you and you hold it against yourself, if you blame yourself, this will always seem like an impossible process.

Let go of perfection. Embrace the chaos that is you and I and our low-dopamine brains. Many people with ADHD have written and revised novels, and many still will in the future. Enjoy the journey and all the chaos it brings, and lament about it with friends aplenty when it's not working for you.

Because ultimately, what is this process even for if all we're doing is making ourselves miserable throughout?

You wrote a book. You're committed to revising it — so much so that you've landed here. Those are things to celebrate. I can help guide you through what I do to make this process smoother, but ultimately, the enjoyment is up to you.

So go grab your favorite treat, put on some wonderful music, light a candle — whatever floats your boat.

Because this journey can be fun, if we forgive ourselves for the chaos before it even begins.

I hope that this list helped you. Again: this is what worked for me, and your mileage may vary. If you have any questions or comments, reach out here or on Twitter.

Thanks again!