How an autism + ADHD diagnosis helped me reclaim my love of writing

I was 10 years old the first time I stapled a stack of white computer paper together and wrote on the cover, “My Story”.

I remember feeling such a sense of relief in that moment like I finally knew what to do with the chaotic and confusing mix of thoughts, emotions, and sensations I was overwhelmed by daily. Those pages became my first journal, a place to record my experience, my questions, my dreams, and my fears. Today in a closet in my apartment is a brown rubber bin with more than 30 years worth of journals that I’ve somehow managed to carry with me despite moving more than two dozen times.

I’ve always known I wanted to be a writer. What I didn’t understand is that all the traditional advice about how to discipline yourself to write consistently and produce new work would never work for me. So, for years I struggled to finish even a short piece of work. I could not understand how I could have moments of hyperfocus when I completed a project usually when there was an external deadline involved and yet when it came to other projects I would start with a burst of excitement and inspiration and then my motivation would take dive off a steep cliff into a bottomless pit never to be seen again. Meanwhile, I watched my peers write book after book, publish articles and launch popular blogs where they produced new writing weekly. I couldn’t figure out why not me. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t finish a book? Literary agents and editors would take an interest in my work. I leave a lunch meeting with them promising to submit a draft of a book proposal in a few weeks only to hit a wall before I finished the proposal and end up ghosting the agent and losing the opportunity.

I wanted to be a serious writer so in my undergraduate writing program I focused on literary non-fiction. I thought writing personal essays help me make sense of my past. I wanted to understand the confusing patterns of disruption in my home life and try to fill in the empty gaps in my memory. I felt sure that I could reclaim the past my life would make more sense. It would make more sense. I would spend years trying to finish one piece feeling a brief momentary sense of accomplishment when it was published before I was back struggling to rally interest in a new topic enough that I could write another piece. At one point, I thought the issue was that I needed more time and routine to write daily. So when I finally had a flexible work schedule and could I prioritize my writing. So I dedicated three hours every morning to writing. I no longer had anything in the way of my writing. But each morning I’d wake up, start the day with my memoir manuscript open, and promptly fall asleep at the computer. It was the strangest thing I had ever experienced. Every time I sat down to write I would feel drowsy and ready to fall asleep.

I could not convince my body to write.

It wasn’t until I was well into the process of being formally diagnosed with autism and ADHD that I realized why despite how much I loved writing and reading I could not muster the sustained interest needed to complete the work. The fact was I just wasn’t that interested in writing literary non-fiction. And when it comes to Autism and ADHD interest is everything. My body has to work 90 times hard to produce the same amount of dopamine—the neurotransmitter responsible for focus, attention, and interest—to stay engaged in any activity. Comedian Hannah Gadsby says that being diagnosed with autism was like “being handed the keys to the kingdom of me”. My final diagnostic interview was a revelatory day. It was like I was being fully seen for the first time. While reviewing the results of my assessments my doctor said, you mask at such a level that you probably felt you were having an identity crisis, and she was absolutely right. That’s exactly how I felt in the last few years before my diagnosis.

I’d often be out socializing always with a glass of wine in hand to numb sensory overload, confusion, and discomfort that I felt in public spaces and observe the way I was talking to people, the things I was saying, the ways I would mirror the tone, and emotional expressions of the people I was with. How would shape my identity in the moment around what I thought would work best with this group of people even as I felt like it was never quite right and think to myself, “who the fuck are you being right now?” It was the same with my writing, I wrote to appease others. To tell the story in a style and tone that would make me appear like a sophisticated cultured writer capable of nuance and complexity that would one day make me wanted by the literary world. But the day I realized that I was autistic I began to shed the expectations of others and began to focus on the special interest that I’ve had since I was about 12 years old, romance novels.

Suddenly I was writing every weekend and I was excited about the work.

It sustained my interest fully. I wrote 30K words of my first novella in two months, read blogs and books about romance novel structure, character, conflict, and continued to devour the novels that have been of the few things to sustain my interest for the last 30 years. Then armed with this new understanding of my own neurology I began reading the genre through the lens of neurodiversity. I had already found the work of Talia Hibbert and Helen Hoang autistic women writers writing about Black and Asian autistic characters. Through their work, I was finally able to see myself on the page. Quickly became fascinated by how other writers were writing neurodivergent characters and I had so much to say about it. I wanted to write about why it’s so important for us to see ourselves represented within the romance genre. It’s so rare to see good representations of autistic women anywhere. On TV it’s always a white man or boy whose autism is excused because of his superior intelligence. But writers like Talia Hibbert and Helen Hoang are writing autistic women of color who have agency and self-determination and they’re falling in love with people who accept them for who they are.

So welcome to my blog. On these pages, I will write about my own process as an autistic + ADHD writer and discuss neurodivergence in the romance genre. I can’t promise that I’ll post on some consistent schedule but I promise to try to make each post worth your time.