I got the idea here. I was reading a good article by a novelist with ADD who was writing about getting stuck due to his disorder and not getting the novel written. He included a link to this site. I seem to have temporarily lost the article, but if you have adult ADD, this is a great website for articles. They offer more than the usual coping with low self-esteem, impulsivity and disorganization stuff you get sick of reading. It's like the authors just want to rub it in again, "I'm organized and I was able to write this book. You'll never be organized enough to finish that kind of demanding, multi-faceted task." Or maybe it's just me being hypersensitive.
So I am so going to write a book about adult AD/HD (ADD), and I'm starting today and every day this week with 1,000 words a day. The rules for the badge say you only have to write 1,000 words (or how ever many you choose) six days a week, but I'm going for seven of course. I'm nothing if not ambitious except when I'm on the couch with my Chocolate Covered Mint Oreos (when I'm lucky enough to find the mint version), watching TV and feeling guilty because I didn't write that day but I was full of good intentions.
It's a secret what kind of book it will be exactly because nobody has done it yet and I want to be the first. I am hoping to get enough written to send Hazelden, the big recovery publisher, a book proposal soon. I would consider self-publishing it as an e-book but I am too broke to afford even that. BTW, writers, have you seen the fantastic software Adobe will drop on you for a 30-day free trial? Check them out. The Dreamweavers and desktop publishing equipment cost $400-500+ and you can download one right now. Watch out though. Some of the final publications they produce can only be read on tablets. You don't want to limit your e-book or what have you like that, do you? And remember--you better have your manuscript ready to roll because you only get 30 days of the free trial, and then you either have to buy the software or say goodbye to it.
That was a brief, unsolicited, unpaid, commercial announcement. I think it's really great of Adobe to do that. If you're a student, look into selling at one of their educational stores too. It's a good deal.
My 1,000 words a day will be about writing, writing books, self-help books in particular, AD/HD (ADD), addiction, alcoholism, and subtopics like coping with impulsivity, using your natural born creativity and not limiting it, learning to listen, money management, becoming addicted to AD/HD stimulant medication, which all the books say rarely happens, but I don't believe that for a second, and things along those lines.
They might also include novel writing since my second novel is currently in a state of unpleasant limbo with everybody in the book knowing what's happening and going to happen and no ending or resolution in sight. I got bored with my novel and the characters, and in that very distracted ADD way decided I was moving on to new, more interesting projects like teaching myself grant writing. I am currently working on that goal too. In fact, some poor misguided individual on my Elance agency jobs list wants a grant writer who will work on contingency. Freelance grant writers charge about $75/hr. so you tell me why one would take a job on contingency. I am seriously considering bidding on it for the simple reason that I have been going pie-eyed reading about how to write a grant proposal, but I have never done anything except type them when I worked as an administrative assistant for the U of I - Chicago, Dept. of Education. I have been planning to learn enough to go volunteer to work as some nonprofit grant writer's free intern just to learn the ropes, but writing a grant on contingency sounds equally beneficial. The only problem is that he wants videos and video components, and it's hard, I believe, to find grants to individuals for businesses that aren't nonprofit. But he may turn me down flat, so I'll worry about that later.
Sure, like I worried about what knowledge management was after I signed up, paid the tuition, and bought the books for the first of many courses in what was to have been my M.S. in Knowledge Management. My ADD had me really going off half cocked that time. I knew I wanted to go to graduate school, but I was too impatient to get started to thoroughly research what exactly I wanted to study, and I'm no kid. I was on about my fourth career change at the time, and actually was unemployed, so what better time to get into grad school, right? My B.A. is in English, and not with anything practical like education courses. No, I specialized in creative writing and literature the better to read Henry Miller and write two unpublished novels that may sit mouldering the rest of my life. Who knows?
It turns out, as I learned two weeks into the most god-awful, boring class of my life, that KM, as they like to refer to it, is not a groovy sort of information management resources thing. I was confusing an MLS and library sciences with capitalism, gross, and, P.U., business schemes to make more money. Borrrrrriiing! To top it off the professor had an accent and I couldn't even understand three-quarters of what he said. He had written our textbook, so there was no use hoping for a reprieve from monotony from that corner. It was duller than a John Wayne retrospective showing of his war movies, and I opted to leave with my failing grade emblazoned on a transcript I will never claim.
How's that for impulsive? I couldn't be bothered to find out what the hell I'd be studying for the next two years... AD/HD can really make your life ridiculously impossible if you let it.
Let me see how many words I've written so far: 1,076.
Reminder, if you don't make your quota in a day, the badge rules say you aren't supposed to try to make them up the next day or that's cheating.
I made mine. Now go start your novel, blog or e-mail to someone you haven't seen in a while.
