I’ve published 113+ books. I have ghostwritten 54+ projects for clients. I write between 10,000 and 12,000 words every day. And there are still mornings when I sit down at the keyboard and a voice in my head says I have no idea what I’m doing.
Enda Quealy had a better name for that voice when he came on Leaders and Their Stories. He called it head trash. His work with hypnosis, he told me, is “allowing me to jettison a whole load of head trash and baggage that I’ve been lugging around like an idiot for decades.” The baggage doesn’t get lighter because you’ve published more books.
That voice has been there for decades. It was there when I published my first book. It was there when a client’s book raised $30 million in venture capital. It was there when my own consulting book got adopted at Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management. It was there this morning.
I also have ADHD. Which means the imposter syndrome doesn’t just whisper. It bounces off every wall in my skull at the same time, competing with fourteen other thoughts about whether I remembered to eat breakfast and what that weird noise was outside and whether the paragraph I wrote twenty minutes ago was terrible. If you’re a writer dealing with imposter syndrome, ADHD, or both, I’m not going to tell you to keep a gratitude journal or practice self-compassion. I’m going to tell you what works, because I’ve had decades to figure it out.
What Is the ADHD-Imposter Syndrome Loop?
ADHD gives you days where you produce 10,000 words of material that surprises even you.Share on X
ADHD and imposter syndrome feed each other in ways that most writing advice completely ignores. For more, see imposter syndrome and writers.
ADHD gives you days where you produce 10,000 words of material that surprises even you. Then it gives you days where you stare at a blank screen for two hours, write three sentences, delete them, and convince yourself you’ve lost whatever ability you thought you had. The inconsistency itself becomes evidence for the imposter voice. A “real” writer would produce consistently. A “real” writer wouldn’t need to trick their own brain into functioning. For more, see writing motivation with adhd.
ADHD also means your process probably looks nothing like the process described in writing books. You might dictate instead of type. You might write scenes out of order. You might need absolute silence or you might need background noise that would drive other people insane. You might produce your best work at 2 AM or in 45-minute bursts with mandatory breaks between them. None of that matches the image of the disciplined writer sitting at a desk for eight hours producing steady pages, so the imposter voice tells you that your process is wrong and therefore your output must be fraudulent.
Mine doesn’t look like it either. I don’t usually outline first. I get an idea, write the first chapter, then outline, then write whichever chapters strike my fancy in random order and connect them together. I call it the ink blot method. I think the people who insist there’s one correct order for building a book have done real damage, because plenty of writers quit after deciding their messy process proves they’re frauds.
It’s not. Your process is the one that produced 113+ books. Their process produced a nice theory about how writing should work.
What Works Against Imposter Syndrome?
Evidence. Keep a record of what you’ve finished and read it when the voice starts, because the voice argues from feelings instead of facts.
From the podcast
On the podcast, Richard reframed the way he works: Adulting with Autism:
ADHD isn’t a disability. It’s a power. It’s a superpower. The thing to do is to stop treating it as a disability and start treating it as a powerful thing.The imposter feeling shrinks once the trait doing the work has a better name.
I write in 45-minute blocks with 15-minute breaks.
Not because a productivity book told me to. Because after years of trying to force myself into longer sessions, I figured out that 45 minutes is how long my brain will cooperate before it starts looking for something else to do. Fighting that limit produced frustration and bad writing. Working within it produces 10,000 words a day.
The 15-minute breaks are mandatory. They’re when my brain resets, processes what I just wrote, and gets ready for the next block. Skip the breaks and the blocks get shorter and worse as the day goes on. My brain needs the downtime the same way muscles need rest between sets.
I also use dictation. That tripled my output speed. ADHD brains often process language faster verbally than through typing. My thoughts move faster than my fingers, and by the time I’ve typed a sentence, the next three have evaporated. Dictation captures the flow before ADHD redirects it somewhere else. The transcription needs cleaning up afterward, but cleaning up existing words is a completely different cognitive task than generating them, and my brain handles the two tasks at different energy levels.
I set daily word count targets and I track them. I do it because ADHD brains respond to concrete, measurable goals. “Write today” is vague enough that my brain can negotiate its way out of it. “Write 10,000 words” is specific enough that I know exactly when I’m done and exactly how far I have to go at any point during the day. The number also gives the imposter voice something to argue with. You can’t feel like a fraud when the word count says you produced ten thousand words before dinner.
| Tactic | What I do | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| 45-minute blocks | Write in timed 45-minute sessions. | That’s how long my brain cooperates; the timer triggers hyperfocus. |
| 15-minute breaks | Take mandatory breaks between blocks. | The brain resets; skipping them makes later blocks shorter and worse. |
| Dictation | Speak the draft and clean up the transcript later. | Captures the flow before ADHD redirects it; tripled output speed. |
| Daily word targets | Set a specific count and track it. | ADHD brains respond to concrete goals; vague intentions get negotiated away. |
| Records of results | Keep records of output and what clients achieved. | The imposter voice argues from feelings; records are evidence. |
| Your own process | Stop comparing your process to anyone else’s. | The only metric is whether finished work comes out. |
The Imposter Voice Versus the Evidence
The imposter voice deals in feelings. The counter to feelings is evidence.
I keep records. Not a gratitude journal. Actual records of what I’ve produced, what clients have achieved with the work, and what the results have been. When the voice says I don’t know what I’m doing, the records say otherwise. A client’s book raised $30 million. Another client got invited to speak at TEDx. Another client’s book became required university reading. A brain surgeon trusted me with his memoir about the human mind. A CIO who spent his career at PepsiCo, Tropicana, and Dr Pepper Snapple Group came to me for book coaching on a business book about his tech career.
During our sessions a better story emerged, a memoir about his childhood, and I told him that’s the book. He wrote it himself with my coaching, submitted it to an editor, and posted publicly telling people that if they have a book in them they should hire me. The imposter voice was there the entire time I was coaching him. It didn’t stop me from recognizing his real story when he couldn’t see it himself. Those aren’t feelings. Those are outcomes.
For fiction writers I coach, I recommend the same approach. See the full Psychology of Writing Hub for related guides. Track your output. Track your completion rate.
Track reader responses if you publish. When imposter syndrome hits, you need something concrete to point at, not affirmations, not self-talk, but actual evidence that you’ve done the work and the work has produced results. (See also You Can Heal Your Life)
ADHD as a Writing Advantage
Most writing advice treats ADHD as a problem to overcome. I’ve come to see it differently after publishing 113+ books with it.
Hyperfocus comes with ADHD too. When a scene locks in, I can produce thousands of words without looking up.
The trick is learning to trigger hyperfocus deliberately instead of waiting for it to show up randomly. For me, the trigger is the 45-minute timer. Something about the time constraint focuses my brain in a way that open-ended sessions never do.
Associative thinking is another thing ADHD gives you.
My brain connects ideas that a more linear thinker would never put together. That produces unexpected plot connections, character insights, and themes that I couldn’t plan if I tried. The same mental restlessness that makes me check my phone during a boring meeting makes my fiction more surprising and layered.
ADHD also gives you speed. When I figured out how to work with my brain instead of against it, my output tripled. Most writers produce 2,000 to 3,000 words on a good day. I produce 10,000 to 12,000 because my system is built around how I function, not how a writing manual says I should function.
A system built around an ADHD brain produces several times the daily output most writers manage.
The imposter voice says that writing fast means writing badly, and I think that’s among the most damaging lies writers tell each other. Speed and quality both come out of a system that fits your brain. Writers who’ve been shamed into believing slow equals serious end up producing a fraction of what they’re capable of, and the people who did the shaming never pay for it.
For Fiction Writers Dealing With Both
If you’re writing fiction and dealing with imposter syndrome, ADHD, or the combination, this is what I tell my coaching clients. Acknowledge the imposter voice and move on, because it’s going to happen. Start examining it and you put yourself into a vicious, dwindling spiral.
The imposter voice says that writing fast means writing badly, and I think that’s among the most damaging lies writers tell each other.
Stop comparing your process to anyone else’s. If you write best in 20-minute sprints, that’s your process. If you need to dictate while walking, that’s your process. If you write 5,000 words on Monday and zero on Tuesday, that’s your rhythm. The only metric that matters is whether finished work comes out the other end.
Set targets you can measure. Not “write more” or “be more consistent.” A set word count, a set number of scenes, a set deadline. Give your brain something concrete to chase because ADHD brains are terrible with vague intentions and excellent with defined goals.
Build your system around your brain. Every strategy I use, the timers, the dictation, the daily targets, the breaks, exists because I tested it against how my brain works. Some of what I tried failed. The stuff that works, works because it fits me. Your system will look different because your brain is different. That doesn’t make it wrong.
And when the imposter voice shows up, let it talk. Then look at your word count, look at your finished projects, look at the evidence, and get back to work. My AI-Enhanced Writer’s Productivity Handbook covers daily writing systems, dictation methods, and output strategies in depth. You can also read my short stories, serialized fiction, and flash fiction for proof that the system produces actual work across every genre.
My take
Imposter syndrome doesn’t go away, so stop waiting for it to. It still shows up for me after 113+ books. Let it talk, then look at the word count and the finished work, and get back to the desk. Build your system around your own brain and drop any routine that doesn’t fit it. Concrete targets beat good intentions every time, especially with ADHD. Finished work is the proof that counts.
Imposter Syndrome and ADHD FAQ
Imposter syndrome is one of the walls Don’t Live in Fear takes apart. I wrote it about the walls we build, starting with a job I lost because I was too chicken to talk to people.
