I’m writing ten books right now. Not sequentially. at the same time. Five novels in stages of development, plus client ghostwriting projects, plus coaching sessions, plus the handbooks I publish at The Writing King. On a typical day I produce 10,000 to 12,000 words across multiple projects. I also have AuADHD. Autism and ADHD combined. My brain doesn’t do sustained focus the way neurotypical productivity advice assumes. It doesn’t respond to willpower, discipline mantras, or “just sit down and write.” It does hyperfocus, associative thinking, novelty-seeking, and abrupt interest shifts.
Every system I use was built to work with those traits. If you’re a neurotypical writer looking for motivation tips, most of what I do will still work for you. If you have ADHD or suspect you do, what follows might explain why conventional writing advice has never worked for you and what to do instead.
Why Write Multiple Projects at Once With ADHD?
Most writing advice says focus on one project until it’s finished. That advice is designed for brains that can sustain interest in a single thing for months. My brain can’t.
After a certain number of days or weeks on one project, the novelty wears off, the resistance builds, and forcing myself to continue produces garbage. For more, see how to write 10,000 words a day and imposter syndrome and adhd. So I don’t force it. I rotate.
When the momentum on my novel Peacekeeper stalls, I shift to Shield of Ashes.
When Shield of Ashes hits a scene I need to think through before writing, I move to a ghostwriting project where the structure is already decided and I just need to execute. When the ghostwriting feels mechanical, I switch to Grim, where the writing is experimental and every story is a fresh challenge. When I need a break from fiction entirely, I work on a handbook or write an article.
The rotation isn’t random. Each project occupies a different creative tone. Some require deep emotional engagement. Some require technical precision. Some require research. Some require pure invention. By matching the project to whatever my brain is capable of producing at that moment, I maintain high output without ever hitting the wall that comes from forcing a single project when my brain has moved on.
Ten projects means I’m never stuck. If one project resists, nine others are waiting. The total word count stays high because I’m always writing something, even if what I’m writing changes throughout the day.
Back in 2024 my schedule ran on 12-hour workdays, five days a week, with no weekends at all. I started around 4 a.m. and worked into the evening. About six hours of that was writing. That was about as much as I could do. The rest was meetings, where I’m not creative, so the day alternated between the two kinds of work. That mix worked really well for me.
A first-time novelist asked a writers’ group about this recently. She was 30,000 words into a contemporary romance set in Greece when she found a serial killer thriller she’d started in 2005, and it was good. Could she write both at once?
Most of the group said yes, and plenty of them do. One writer keeps six books moving in pairs through rough, smooth and final drafts. Another works on three, a series book, a standalone and an idea still taking shape. Several mentioned Stephen King, who wrote the Bachman books partly because he could write faster than his publisher could publish. Several said switching is how they get past being stuck.
Two warnings came with it. The writer with three projects said her characters’ voices start to bleed together, so she pauses the others when she’s finishing a draft. And one writer pointed out that 30,000 words is right around where a lot of novelists run out of momentum, so starting something new feels productive right when the hard part begins. His line was that fulfillment comes from finishing books. Starting them doesn’t count.
Both sides have a point. The test of a rotation is whether books get finished.
How do 45-minute writing blocks help with ADHD?
Forty-five minutes is how long my focus cooperates before it starts looking for something more interesting. I didn’t choose this number from a productivity book. I discovered it through years of trial and error, paying attention to when my output drops and my attention fragments. I write in 45-minute blocks with mandatory 15-minute breaks. During the block, I write. No email, no browsing, no research rabbit holes. Just words on the page. During the break, I do something completely different: walk, stretch, make coffee, look at something that’s not a screen. Then I come back for another block. Eight or nine blocks across a day produces the 10,000 to 12,000 word range. Not every block is on the same project. I might do three blocks on a novel, two on a ghostwriting project, one on a handbook, and two on articles. The variety keeps each block fresh because I’m never returning to something I just left. The mandatory break matters as much as the writing block. ADHD brains that skip breaks produce less, because the quality degrades and the resistance builds until the entire day collapses. The break is part of the system.
How does dictation help writers with ADHD?
I dictate most of my first draft content. This single change tripled my output. ADHD brains process language faster verbally than through typing. My thoughts move faster than my fingers. When I type, there’s a bottleneck between the idea and the page. Ideas back up, get lost, or lose their energy while I’m still typing the previous sentence. When I dictate, the words arrive at the speed I think them.
Dictation also reduces the physical fatigue of producing high word counts. Typing 12,000 words is hard on the hands and wrists. Speaking 12,000 words is a conversation. The physical ease translates to longer sustained output without the strain that makes late-day writing blocks feel like punishment.
The raw dictated text needs cleanup. Dictation produces run-on sentences, missed punctuation, and occasional wrong words. But cleaning up dictated text is editing, and editing is a different cognitive task than generating. I can edit when my creative energy is spent for the day. The generation happens when the energy is highest.
Daily Targets, Not Feelings
I don’t write when I feel motivated. I write because it’s Tuesday and on Tuesday I write. Motivation is a weather pattern. Some days it shows up. Most days it doesn’t. Waiting for motivation to write is how books die unfinished on hard drives.
My daily word count target is concrete and non-negotiable. Not “write some today.” A specific number. Hitting that number is the job. Whether the writing feels inspired or mechanical, whether I’m excited about the scene or dreading it, the target gets hit. Anthony Trollope wrote his novels while he held down a full-time job at the British Post Office, where he worked for 33 years until he retired in 1867. He started at 5:30 every morning and wrote for three hours before he left for the office.
He spelled out the method in his Autobiography. He wrote “with my watch before me” and required of himself 250 words every quarter of an hour. He worked out that the pace gave him more than ten pages of an ordinary novel volume a day, and that if he kept it up for ten months he’d finish three novels of three volumes each in a year.
A Victorian novelist with a day job beat the inspiration myth with a watch, and the method was sharp. He set a number and timed himself against it every morning before work, which is the same bet I make every Tuesday.
ADHD brains respond to concrete measurable goals in a way they don’t respond to vague intentions. “Write 2,000 words on Peacekeeper” produces writing. “Work on the novel today” produces an hour of staring at the screen followed by reorganizing my desk. I track my output daily. The tracking matters because streaks become their own motivation. Forty consecutive days of hitting the target creates a psychological investment in not breaking the streak. That investment is more reliable than inspiration, more sustainable than discipline, and more effective than any motivational quote I’ve ever read.
What Are the ADHD Advantages for Writers?
Most writing about ADHD dwells on the deficits: the trouble focusing, the inconsistency, the executive function problems. Those are real. I’m tired of hearing only that half of the story, though, because ADHD also produces traits that make certain kinds of writing easier.
Hyperfocus is the obvious one. When an ADHD brain locks onto something interesting, it produces sustained, intense concentration that neurotypical focus can’t match. My 45-minute timer is partly designed to trigger this. The time pressure and the novelty of starting a block create conditions where hyperfocus is more likely to engage. When it does, the words come faster and better than they’d under normal concentration.
Associative thinking connects ideas that linear thinkers wouldn’t link. My fiction benefits from this constantly. Plot connections, thematic echoes, character parallels, unexpected metaphors. The ADHD brain that jumps between ideas during a meeting is the same brain that finds the unexpected story connection that makes a novel surprising.
Speed is the third advantage. When the system is working, 10,000 to 12,000 words a day comes without strain, because an ADHD brain operating inside a system built for it has multiple interesting projects to rotate through, a dictation setup that matches the speed of thought, and timed blocks that trigger focus instead of demanding it.
What writing advice doesn’t work with ADHD?
From the podcast
Rico Caveglia points to a study that undercuts the whole intensity model, on Leaders and Their Stories:
The people who just moved a lot more throughout their day lost more weight than the people who exercised real intensely.Consistent low-grade motion beats the heroic session, the same finding that makes a forty-five minute writing block outperform the marathon weekend.
Willpower doesn’t work. My brain is an interest detector that either engages or doesn’t, and no amount of self-talk changes the detector’s reading.
Long unstructured writing sessions don’t work. Four hours of “just write” produces less than four 45-minute blocks with breaks, every single time.
Writing in one place doesn’t work. I change locations when I need a novelty boost. Different room, different coffee shop, different chair. The environmental change tricks my brain into treating the work as new.
Writing one project until it’s done doesn’t work. The project goes stale, the resistance builds, and forcing through the resistance produces writing I’ll have to throw out anyway. Guilt doesn’t work. Beating myself up for a low-output day has never once produced a high-output day afterward. What produces a high-output day is getting enough sleep, starting with the 45-minute block, and trusting the system.
Building Your Own System
My system works for my brain. Yours might need different block lengths, different rotation patterns, different tools. The principle is the same regardless: build around how your brain functions, not around how productivity advice says it should function.
If you’re a fiction writer trying to build a sustainable writing practice, my handbooks at The Writing King cover craft and process across every aspect of fiction writing. If you want one-on-one help building a system that works for your brain and your project, book coaching gives you a collaborator who has solved these problems across 113+ published books.
If conventional writing advice has never worked for you, the fault sits with the advice. Writers blame themselves for years because some productivity guru’s one-size schedule didn’t fit their brain, and the blame is misplaced. Build a system around how you work, and the words come.
