How do YOU stay focused?

[AkazilliaDeNaro]

So, I've been looking back through all my "projects", that I've done over the years, and I've noticed one major flaw in all of them.

None of them are finished.

I figure its because I lose focus, or interest (if you prefer), on the project, and abandon it. I think its because of my ADHD. (wait do I still have that? Is that a thing you can grow out... nevermind, stupid question.)

Anyway, I ask you playgrounders, how do you stay focused on a particular project long enough to finish it.

And please don't say, "PRACTICE". That is what your answer is to everything!

[Thisguy_]

Don't try inundating yourself with caffeine. In a year, you'll just be unfocused again (and caffeine dependent).

Emotional support is one thing. Make it something that people know you're doing, and maybe you'll have an extra push of compulsion to finish it for them.

[Closet_Skeleton]

(wait do I still have that? Is that a thing you can grow out... nevermind, stupid question.)

Depends which psychologist you ask.

The 'h' (hyperactive) part you do grow out of, seeing how the similar ADD was basically the adult version since only children were diagnosed with ADHD (before they were merged into the same definition in 1987). Since ADD is partially a developmental disorder and one of its symptoms is being behind your age in some areas of development when un-medicated, eventually ADHD sufferer's slow development effectively catches up enough for everyday life. Adult ADHD tends to have different symptoms to the child version which most experts specialise in treating.

The above paragraph is based on a lecture given by one expert who may be heavily disagreed with by his peers (see previous one sentence paragraph).

edit: If you do have a disability that's inhibiting your ability to live your life the way you want, then you can't just speculate about it and shrug. You're going to have to really look into it and develop coping strategies, ideally with the help of a specialist. Serious problems are serious and need solutions not just crappy platitudes like "you can use your unique outlook to your advantage" or "x might have had this same condition and achieved something".

Anyway, I ask you playgrounders, how do you stay focused on a particular project long enough to finish it.

Baby steps.

The most important factor in whether or not a project will be completed is the project's inherent completability. Write short stories instead to build confidence. They can be expanded or joined together into longer stories later. Don't worry about re-using ideas, you can always start again from scratch, you don't have to come up with a new concept for every story especially not if you're doing it for practice and don't plan on others reading it.

If you know a project is going to take ages and be hard to finish, don't get so worked up about your inability to finish it. Some things just take ages and get completed in small chunks.

And please don't say, "PRACTICE". That is what your answer is to everything!

That's not that useful advice because you can't just practice this specific area directly.

What you have to practice is building up a routine. If you're not doing something regularly then you're not going to finish it.

[shawnhcorey]

Anyway, I ask you playgrounders, how do you stay focused on a particular project long enough to finish it.

End the day's session with something exciting to do next. That way you will constantly think about it and be eager to start the next session.

[AkazilliaDeNaro]

Don't try inundating yourself with caffeine. In a year, you'll just be unfocused again (and caffeine dependent).

Emotional support is one thing. Make it something that people know you're doing, and maybe you'll have an extra push of compulsion to finish it for them.

I don't drink caffeine, after going a year without it, and then drinking 6 Mountain Dews in 3 hours caused me to stay awake for 3 days, I learned my lesson.

As for support, I've go that covered.

Depends which psychologist you ask.

The 'h' (hyperactive) part you do grow out of, seeing how the similar ADD was basically the adult version since only children were diagnosed with ADHD (before they were merged into the same definition in 1987). Since ADD is partially a developmental disorder and one of its symptoms is being behind your age in some areas of development when un-medicated, eventually ADHD sufferer's slow development effectively catches up enough for everyday life. Adult ADHD tends to have different symptoms to the child version which most experts specialise in treating.

The above paragraph is based on a lecture given by one expert who may be heavily disagreed with by his peers (see previous one sentence paragraph).



Baby steps.

The most important factor in whether or not a project will be completed is the project's inherent completability. Write short stories instead to build confidence. They can be expanded or joined together into longer stories later. Don't worry about re-using ideas, you can always start again from scratch, you don't have to come up with a new concept for every story especially not if you're doing it for practice and don't plan on others reading it.

If you know a project is going to take ages and be hard to finish, don't get so worked up about your inability to finish it. Some things just take ages and get completed in small chunks.



That's not that useful advice because you can't just practice this specific area directly.

What you have to practice is building up a routine. If you're not doing something regularly then you're not going to finish it.

Well, I don't think I can write a short story. All of my ideas are reeeealy big in scale, so its kinda hard to slice it down to small size.

As for building a routine, I'm in the middle of building one, so i guess i could do that.

End the day's session with something exciting to do next. That way you will constantly think about it and be eager to start the next session.

That... is a really good idea.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Well, I don't think I can write a short story. All of my ideas are reeeealy big in scale, so its kinda hard to slice it down to small size.

If you think that then you've already failed. Its cliche self-help speak, but it is kind of true. You don't actually believe you can ever finish your big ideas anyway, so you're basically stuck without an outlook change. Don't be so sure about what you can or can't do. Focusing on the big picture is a standard avoidance tactic your brain uses to make everything seem impossible. If a thought pattern is telling you you can't do something then you have to confront it and rethink things.

Anything can be simplified. Most long stories have episodes in them that can stand on their own. You can take characters out from other ideas and write a short story about them. If you want your can write garbled frameworks that don't make too much sense, you can always rework them. Some ideas only seem big because you haven't broken them down into what actually interests you about them.

Its possible to do a lot in a short story. There are 100 page novellas that cover more than long sprawling works just like there are 900 page novels where nothing actually happens. In science fiction its actually the short stories that deal best with the big ideas. Read more short works and you'll have a better idea of what can be done with them. A lot of the time we make incorrect assumptions of what a story can be based on our limited experience of what we think stories are like.

Read Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock. That's only around a 120 pages but has more stuff happen in it than most fantasy epics. Most writers who went on to write long stories were very experienced in short stories to start with. Don't think you have to emulate big stories just because that's what your immediately attracted to wanting to write. If you want to focus on writing you also have to be able to focus your writing.

Show don't tell is good advice on how to write better but if you can't write at all then its useless. Some parts of a story can be told and glossed over. If you really wanted you could tell a whole fantasy quest epic in one scene with a bit of exposition worked in. Outside of the tiresome Robert Jordon genre of fantasy where the point seems to be that you include everything, its generally the rule that a important part of story telling is knowing what to leave out. Most stories can be improved by taking stuff out, don't be too worried about having to add stuff in before a work is complete.

Don't think that you're wasting time if you have to work on something that isn't directly connected to the final result you want. There isn't a skill in the world that isn't related to one's ability to tell stories. If you have a narrow definition of achievement then you're going to feel like you haven't achieved anything.

Apologies for lecturing about anything that might not be relevant to you.

[FinnLassie]

Being someone with ADD-like behaviour due to being bipolar, the best way I've dealt with it and art has been to start several projects. I drop one, go on to continue another, and another, and again and again until I find myself with the first project. I used to be able to work on one thing and finish it within a month, but that was in school with a strict schedule (worked for me and still works, but there's no strict regime specifically for arts anymore in my life). Basically, I had no time to get bored. I know it doesn't work for everyone, but both of these methods have been good for myself.

If your ideas are really big in scale, just write it. Visualise it. Write, write, write. Bored with explaining one of the aspects in your story? Start a new paragraph and write about another thing. Write about what you're currently seeing around you to break the routine with just working on your plans for a specific things. If you haven't tried this already, then I'd suggest trying it.

[Toastkart]

So, I've been looking back through all my "projects", that I've done over the years, and I've noticed one major flaw in all of them.

None of them are finished.

I figure its because I lose focus, or interest (if you prefer), on the project, and abandon it. I think its because of my ADHD. (wait do I still have that? Is that a thing you can grow out... nevermind, stupid question.)

Anyway, I ask you playgrounders, how do you stay focused on a particular project long enough to finish it.

And please don't say, "PRACTICE". That is what your answer is to everything!

My usual advice to beginning writers is to finish something, even if it's bad, because if you don't finish something, then you'll never finish anything. You seem to have identified this so I won't say much more about it.

In a lot of ways, it kind of depends on what medium you're writing in. I personally only work on one project at a time, but I'm writing a novel while trying to stay afloat financially, so my situation is probably pretty different from yours.

When I was an undergrad in college, I wrote a short story that's about thirty pages long. It took me four days to finish 90% of it, but I was in such a state of creative flow when writing it that when I got out of that state, I couldn't write an ending to it worth a damn. I spent two weeks trying to do an ending for it with no success. I eventually managed to bull through and write something, but it's a weak ending at best. But an ending is better than no ending. Very few people will read something that's unfinished.

What I'm trying to say (in a pretty rambling way) is that managing your creative flow is pretty important. Try to learn what can trigger your creative flow, what can keep it going, and what can kill it and act accordingly.

Well, I don't think I can write a short story. All of my ideas are reeeealy big in scale, so its kinda hard to slice it down to small size.
That... is a really good idea.

A short story is really nothing more than a work that can be read in a single sitting. Think of a single chapter from a book, there's your short story right there. Also, not all stories have to be big in scale. Not every hero has to save the world.

Even if you're writing something the length of a novel, it may be helpful to construct each chapter as if it were a short story. That's one of the things I did with my novel. I didn't number my chapters, and I wrote them as self-contained as possible. More than once I've re-organized the order the chapters appear in and, because of the way I designed them, had to make only minimal changes when I did so.

As for how to stay focused on something of greater length, the standard advice is usually to create an outline and work from that. Outlines have never worked for me, but I always have known the basic plot elements of each act, the major character arcs, and how the story is supposed to progress so that it can reach where I want it to end up long before I ever start writing. Having that kind of a plan, even if you don't write it down, is pretty crucial to completing a work.

There's also a thing called flash fiction which are super short stories, mostly considered to be between three and five hundred words. Spend an afternoon writing a few of these and see how they turn out. It could be good practice (sorry) for you.

If you think that then you've already failed. Its cliche self-help speak, but it is kind of true. You don't actually believe you can ever finish your big ideas anyway, so you're basically stuck without an outlook change. Don't be so sure about what you can or can't do. Focusing on the big picture is a standard avoidance tactic your brain uses to make everything seem impossible. If a thought pattern is telling you you can't do something then you have to confront it and rethink things.

Its possible to do a lot in a short story. There are 100 page novellas that cover more than long sprawling works just like there are 900 page novels where nothing actually happens. In science fiction its actually the short stories that deal best with the big ideas. Read more short works and you'll have a better idea of what can be done with them. A lot of the time we make incorrect assumptions of what a story can be based on our limited experience of what we think stories are like.

This is also sound advice. I would add that you should determine what you want to write about before you start writing. Do you want to write about a big, evocative idea that will leave your reader thinking and questioning? Do you want to tell an interesting story that will have your reader engaged with the characters and the plot? Think of the themes and meanings that you want to convey before you begin writing.

I recommend reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, both by Richard Bach. They're both tightly written novellas between a hundred and a hundred fifty pages each, and very emotionally evocative. They've got basically nothing to do with the genres I write in, but they've both been incredible sources of inspiration.

Show don't tell is good advice on how to write better but if you can't write at all then its useless. Some parts of a story can be told and glossed over. If you really wanted you could tell a whole fantasy quest epic in one scene with a bit of exposition worked in. Outside of the tiresome Robert Jordon genre of fantasy where the point seems to be that you include everything, its generally the rule that a important part of story telling is knowing what to leave out. Most stories can be improved by taking stuff out, don't be too worried about having to add stuff in before a work is complete.

Show don't tell can mean different things in different contexts, though. In writing, you often have to tell more than you can show compared to a visual medium. Probably my biggest weakness as a writer is how poor I am at rich description. Vivid descriptions enhance a reader's imagination, lengthy ones just bore them. If you have a character that you want to be a particular ethnicity, for example, you have to draw attention to that in some way in writing that you don't in, for example, a tv show where an actor of that ethnicity can be cast without a word being mentioned at all.

[ThinkMinty]

So, I've been looking back through all my "projects", that I've done over the years, and I've noticed one major flaw in all of them.

None of them are finished.

I figure its because I lose focus, or interest (if you prefer), on the project, and abandon it. I think its because of my ADHD.

Alright, I'mma teach you the secret about ADHD/ADD. It's not, as is frequently said/joked about, an inability to pay attention. Instead, you have no automatic control over your response to external stimuli/how much attention you pay to anything. It can-and-will lead to becoming quite easily distracted, since you have to manually, intentionally ignore random noises, flittery insects, and the like; thus the reputation for being a space case.

However, there's an upside: Hyperfocus.

In order to actually use the hyperfocus, you need to find a nice quiet spot that's less likely to have random environmental shifts, like a study, workshop, or dedicated workspace. Then you need to just start working on the project for a few minutes, and soon enough your inability to control how much attention you pay to things gives you an indomitable laser-focus that makes you better equipped to handle the task than a person without ADHD or a buttload of cocaine up their nose.

Spoiler: Eggtimers

Show

Also, in terms of writing (which is what I...do), there's a handy little trick called the Eggtimer Method. So, you take a timer/stopwatch (the internet has plenty, there's one built-in to google if you search for timers), and set it for twenty minutes. You've gotta work for that twenty minutes, and when that timer's up, if you still really-really-really don't want to, you can stop and go do other things. However, if you're all in the zone, continue for as long as you like.

I get a lot more done using that method than I do just telling myself to write.

Spoiler: Writing!

Show

As for writing, short stories are very fun. They're simple enough to put together in an afternoon or two, and your idea doesn't necessarily need that scale at first. A thousand words or more, and you're good on the shorter end of length; longer ones usually run between 5k and 15k in wordcount. Submit that to an anthology, and that's a royalty check right there.

...plus, something that starts as a short story can turn into something a lot bigger. Stand By Me started as a short story, and then it became the best Rob Reiner movie.

I also write thinkpieces, because the risk-reward behind them is entirely within my current skillset, let alone the future ones. Thinkpieces can lead to short-term payment, which can be a good way to inject some cash into your bank account, for bills, savings and/or splurging purposes.

I also do poetry for the occasional warm-up to get me in the mood to write prose, or just the challenge of it. Haiku is pretty fun and everyone can do the meter in their sleep, and lately limericks are my thing because, despite what high school tells you about 'em, they have an extant and very precise meter.

I'm workin' on a fantasy thing as my BIG CRAZY THING, right now; I finally hit the production/composition phase rather than just the worldbuilding stuff or writing beta stories to test the setting.

...and at some point I might branch out into comics work, if/when I get an artist to team up with, or somehow someone solicits me.

I don't intend to sound like a braggadouche; I am somewhat new to the professional part of writin', just wanted to throw a bit of information your way in that context.

Anyways, if you have further questions or other things, throw a PM my way if you feel like it.

[AkazilliaDeNaro]

Alright, I'mma teach you the secret about ADHD/ADD. It's not, as is frequently said/joked about, an inability to pay attention. Instead, you have no automatic control over your response to external stimuli/how much attention you pay to anything. It can-and-will lead to becoming quite easily distracted, since you have to manually, intentionally ignore random noises, flittery insects, and the like; thus the reputation for being a space case.

However, there's an upside: Hyperfocus.

In order to actually use the hyperfocus, you need to find a nice quiet spot that's less likely to have random environmental shifts, like a study, workshop, or dedicated workspace. Then you need to just start working on the project for a few minutes, and soon enough your inability to control how much attention you pay to things gives you an indomitable laser-focus that makes you better equipped to handle the task than a person without ADHD or a buttload of cocaine up their nose.

Spoiler: Eggtimers

Show

Also, in terms of writing (which is what I...do), there's a handy little trick called the Eggtimer Method. So, you take a timer/stopwatch (the internet has plenty, there's one built-in to google if you search for timers), and set it for twenty minutes. You've gotta work for that twenty minutes, and when that timer's up, if you still really-really-really don't want to, you can stop and go do other things. However, if you're all in the zone, continue for as long as you like.

I get a lot more done using that method than I do just telling myself to write.

Spoiler: Writing!

Show

As for writing, short stories are very fun. They're simple enough to put together in an afternoon or two, and your idea doesn't necessarily need that scale at first. A thousand words or more, and you're good on the shorter end of length; longer ones usually run between 5k and 15k in wordcount. Submit that to an anthology, and that's a royalty check right there.

...plus, something that starts as a short story can turn into something a lot bigger. Stand By Me started as a short story, and then it became the best Rob Reiner movie.

I also write thinkpieces, because the risk-reward behind them is entirely within my current skillset, let alone the future ones. Thinkpieces can lead to short-term payment, which can be a good way to inject some cash into your bank account, for bills, savings and/or splurging purposes.

I also do poetry for the occasional warm-up to get me in the mood to write prose, or just the challenge of it. Haiku is pretty fun and everyone can do the meter in their sleep, and lately limericks are my thing because, despite what high school tells you about 'em, they have an extant and very precise meter.

I'm workin' on a fantasy thing as my BIG CRAZY THING, right now; I finally hit the production/composition phase rather than just the worldbuilding stuff or writing beta stories to test the setting.

...and at some point I might branch out into comics work, if/when I get an artist to team up with, or somehow someone solicits me.

I don't intend to sound like a braggadouche; I am somewhat new to the professional part of writin', just wanted to throw a bit of information your way in that context.

Anyways, if you have further questions or other things, throw a PM my way if you feel like it.

That hyperfocus thing is AWESOME. I just wrote 12 pages in one sitting. Thanks!

If you think that then you've already failed. Its cliche self-help speak, but it is kind of true. You don't actually believe you can ever finish your big ideas anyway, so you're basically stuck without an outlook change. Don't be so sure about what you can or can't do. Focusing on the big picture is a standard avoidance tactic your brain uses to make everything seem impossible. If a thought pattern is telling you you can't do something then you have to confront it and rethink things.

Anything can be simplified. Most long stories have episodes in them that can stand on their own. You can take characters out from other ideas and write a short story about them. If you want your can write garbled frameworks that don't make too much sense, you can always rework them. Some ideas only seem big because you haven't broken them down into what actually interests you about them.

Its possible to do a lot in a short story. There are 100 page novellas that cover more than long sprawling works just like there are 900 page novels where nothing actually happens. In science fiction its actually the short stories that deal best with the big ideas. Read more short works and you'll have a better idea of what can be done with them. A lot of the time we make incorrect assumptions of what a story can be based on our limited experience of what we think stories are like.

Read Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock. That's only around a 120 pages but has more stuff happen in it than most fantasy epics. Most writers who went on to write long stories were very experienced in short stories to start with. Don't think you have to emulate big stories just because that's what your immediately attracted to wanting to write. If you want to focus on writing you also have to be able to focus your writing.

Show don't tell is good advice on how to write better but if you can't write at all then its useless. Some parts of a story can be told and glossed over. If you really wanted you could tell a whole fantasy quest epic in one scene with a bit of exposition worked in. Outside of the tiresome Robert Jordon genre of fantasy where the point seems to be that you include everything, its generally the rule that a important part of story telling is knowing what to leave out. Most stories can be improved by taking stuff out, don't be too worried about having to add stuff in before a work is complete.

Don't think that you're wasting time if you have to work on something that isn't directly connected to the final result you want. There isn't a skill in the world that isn't related to one's ability to tell stories. If you have a narrow definition of achievement then you're going to feel like you haven't achieved anything.

Apologies for lecturing about anything that might not be relevant to you.

Well, I do tend to come up with small ideas, but I never realized that they could be written down as short stories until now.

Being someone with ADD-like behaviour due to being bipolar, the best way I've dealt with it and art has been to start several projects. I drop one, go on to continue another, and another, and again and again until I find myself with the first project. I used to be able to work on one thing and finish it within a month, but that was in school with a strict schedule (worked for me and still works, but there's no strict regime specifically for arts anymore in my life). Basically, I had no time to get bored. I know it doesn't work for everyone, but both of these methods have been good for myself.

If your ideas are really big in scale, just write it. Visualise it. Write, write, write. Bored with explaining one of the aspects in your story? Start a new paragraph and write about another thing. Write about what you're currently seeing around you to break the routine with just working on your plans for a specific things. If you haven't tried this already, then I'd suggest trying it.

"Write about what I see" sounds a lot like what painters do. It also sounds like a good idea.

My usual advice to beginning writers is to finish something, even if it's bad, because if you don't finish something, then you'll never finish anything. You seem to have identified this so I won't say much more about it.

In a lot of ways, it kind of depends on what medium you're writing in. I personally only work on one project at a time, but I'm writing a novel while trying to stay afloat financially, so my situation is probably pretty different from yours.

When I was an undergrad in college, I wrote a short story that's about thirty pages long. It took me four days to finish 90% of it, but I was in such a state of creative flow when writing it that when I got out of that state, I couldn't write an ending to it worth a damn. I spent two weeks trying to do an ending for it with no success. I eventually managed to bull through and write something, but it's a weak ending at best. But an ending is better than no ending. Very few people will read something that's unfinished.

What I'm trying to say (in a pretty rambling way) is that managing your creative flow is pretty important. Try to learn what can trigger your creative flow, what can keep it going, and what can kill it and act accordingly.

Yeah, still trying to find out what causes my creativity.

A short story is really nothing more than a work that can be read in a single sitting. Think of a single chapter from a book, there's your short story right there. Also, not all stories have to be big in scale. Not every hero has to save the world.

Even if you're writing something the length of a novel, it may be helpful to construct each chapter as if it were a short story. That's one of the things I did with my novel. I didn't number my chapters, and I wrote them as self-contained as possible. More than once I've re-organized the order the chapters appear in and, because of the way I designed them, had to make only minimal changes when I did so.

As for how to stay focused on something of greater length, the standard advice is usually to create an outline and work from that. Outlines have never worked for me, but I always have known the basic plot elements of each act, the major character arcs, and how the story is supposed to progress so that it can reach where I want it to end up long before I ever start writing. Having that kind of a plan, even if you don't write it down, is pretty crucial to completing a work.

There's also a thing called flash fiction which are super short stories, mostly considered to be between three and five hundred words. Spend an afternoon writing a few of these and see how they turn out. It could be good practice (sorry) for you.

I have heard of that technique, where you break things down, 1000 things is hard to imagine but 10 piles of 100 objects makes it easier.

This is also sound advice. I would add that you should determine what you want to write about before you start writing. Do you want to write about a big, evocative idea that will leave your reader thinking and questioning? Do you want to tell an interesting story that will have your reader engaged with the characters and the plot? Think of the themes and meanings that you want to convey before you begin writing.

I recommend reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, both by Richard Bach. They're both tightly written novellas between a hundred and a hundred fifty pages each, and very emotionally evocative. They've got basically nothing to do with the genres I write in, but they've both been incredible sources of inspiration.



Show don't tell can mean different things in different contexts, though. In writing, you often have to tell more than you can show compared to a visual medium. Probably my biggest weakness as a writer is how poor I am at rich description. Vivid descriptions enhance a reader's imagination, lengthy ones just bore them. If you have a character that you want to be a particular ethnicity, for example, you have to draw attention to that in some way in writing that you don't in, for example, a tv show where an actor of that ethnicity can be cast without a word being mentioned at all.

My problem with description is I focus too much on things that the reader can just fill in with their imagination.
Also, the race thing gets people angry if you draw too much, or too little, attention to it.

[Toastkart]

If your ideas are really big in scale, just write it. Visualise it. Write, write, write. Bored with explaining one of the aspects in your story? Start a new paragraph and write about another thing. Write about what you're currently seeing around you to break the routine with just working on your plans for a specific things. If you haven't tried this already, then I'd suggest trying it.

One of things I do when I get stuck is start the next chapter and just keep on going. Or sometimes I'll write an action scene, as those tend to be fairly easy compared to what I get stuck on, which is usually dialogue or plot points.

My problem with description is I focus too much on things that the reader can just fill in with their imagination.
Also, the race thing gets people angry if you draw too much, or too little, attention to it.

Well, the race thing was just a quick and direct example, but it comes up a lot. Do you describe a character's outfit in detail? Probably not every time, but when it's symbolic or meaningful you probably want to spend at least some time on it, even though it can bog down the flow of text.

[Batou1976]

This may, or may not, help but...

I languished for years only ever working on my story in my head/ imagination, without really ever putting anything down on paper, so while I began it sometime in 1996, by 2013 I had exactly three chapters actually written. It was suggested to me by my wife I should think of and treat working on my story as though it were my second job. Since I started doing that, from August 2013 to today I have written about 105,000 words (24 chapters plus a prologue) and am presently mired in ch 25- my diligence with said second job has been subpar of late (if I had a boss I reported to, I probably woulda been F-A-R-D by now ).
Anyhow, if you think of it like a job- and it is, especially once you finally SELL a work - it may help motivate you to do what you need to do to kick in that hyperfocus and get stuff done.

By the by, I'm often pretty bad about not focusing also. Problem is, my distractions are voluntary rather than environmental- for weeks now, my days off will come and go, and I find I've spent two nights in a row on the PS3 instead of writing. Anyoen know how I can keep myself from playing Shadow of Mordor instead of writing?

[ThinkMinty]

That hyperfocus thing is AWESOME. I just wrote 12 pages in one sitting. Thanks!

You're welcome. A nice workspace works for anybody, but if you've got ADHD, it removes the downsides of the condition, and leaves you with a faster-than-normal (not necessarily smarter, just...quick) brain focused on getting one task done. Hyperfocus makes you hyper-capable in those bursts, plus it feels really, really good.

This is why I did really well on standardized tests, and tests in general.

Yeah, still trying to find out what causes my creativity.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth; it isn't so much important why you're creative, just that you are. This is also why I don't particularly care how or why the universe came to be, which is apparently bizarre by human standards.

My problem with description is I focus too much on things that the reader can just fill in with their imagination.

Fill in a few details, let the reader fill in the rest; just enough that they WANT to paint the rest for you.

Also, the race thing gets people angry if you draw too much, or too little, attention to it.

Less is more with the race thing (for me, anyways), although the two most important parts about describing a character's heritage and physical appearance, regardless of genre are:

1) Be consistent in the logic behind your word choice. If you compare one group to food, every group should be explained in comparison to food. Take around as much time with each description, particularly if you're working in the third person. Gushingly turgid descriptions of one group, and terse of another comes across...uneven.
2) Characters of any racial background are still individuals and should be written accordingly.

[Lissou]

People will come up with their own strategies, you'll have to figure out what works for you, but a writer gave me a trick of his once, so I'll relay it: whenever he finished a chapter, instead of going to bed, he wrote the first sentence of the next chapter (or part of it). This way when he got back to work the next day, he wasn't greeted by a blank page and having to basically start over with a new chapter. He had something to start with. You could try that, see if it helps.

[Toastkart]

Yeah, still trying to find out what causes my creativity.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth; it isn't so much important why you're creative, just that you are. This is also why I don't particularly care how or why the universe came to be, which is apparently bizarre by human standards.

I didn't really think of this at the time, but on rereading these posts, I think the point I was making might have been misunderstood. I wasn't talking about the cause of your creativity, but about creative Flow, which is a psychological concept related to the hyperfocus thing you were talking about. My bad for not linking it the first time.

Flow is a mental state of full immersion in a task. If you can learn to harness your Flow, that can really help your focus and your writing. I did read one of Csikszentmihalyi's books, but it was as a textbook for a class. Even though it was pretty dense, and I disagree with his definition of creativity in general (he distinguishes between big C and little c creativity), his book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention was still a pretty informative read on the subject, though it deals more with domain and culture level concerns. I've been meaning to get my hands on Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, but I haven't had the funds.

It may even be worthwhile to check out Rollo May's Courage to Create. He talks about the creative process on the experiential level and has some good thoughts on breaking out of patterns.

Less is more with the race thing (for me, anyways), although the two most important parts about describing a character's heritage and physical appearance, regardless of genre are:

1) Be consistent in the logic behind your word choice. If you compare one group to food, every group should be explained in comparison to food. Take around as much time with each description, particularly if you're working in the third person. Gushingly turgid descriptions of one group, and terse of another comes across...uneven.
2) Characters of any racial background are still individuals and should be written accordingly.

I would add that being consistent in your word choice and all characters are individuals and should be written accordingly are two of the biggest pieces of advice for writers that are so easy to forget.