Snowflake challenge prompt 8

[bella_luugosi]

Content advisory: light mentions of neurodivergence and burnout



Challenge #8 - Talk about your creative process.


My creative process is a train wreck! I sort of wish it wasn't, but it is. I was diagnosed with Autism a couple of years ago (a "later in life" diagnosis) and since then I have spent a bit of time teasing out the difference between hyperfixation and special interests. I've recently come to the understanding that (stop laughing, real life people who already knew this years ago, I'm still figuring this stuff out) just as one of my strengths is my ability to hold focus on something, to sit down with a coding problem or a bug report or a thing that won't work and just keep going over it and over it and over it until it is fixed. Eight, ten, twenty hours at a go, I am good at just sitting with a problem and working it until it is done. In extreme circumstances when something is critically broken, that's a very useful skill.


Unfortunately somewhere along the line hyperfixation became my default state of being, and that's been really hard to come to terms with. I have special interests and I flit from focusing on one to another, which you can do with or without hyperfixating, but I have lost, or never really had, the ability to balance my attention into healthy parcels. Which is a problem creatively, because it mean that all of my writing is done in a rush, and thrown out onto the internet, and if the whole rest of the world isn't checking that AO3 tag at that exact minute there's a part of me that really can't understand why not. Which has led me, in the past, to some very unhelpful practices and frankly to being a bit of a dick, and finally to a bunch of abandoned fic.


I want to write, now, the things that I want to read and am not finding, and I want anyone else's enjoyment of them to be a bonus. I don't want to care about statistics and engagement and stuff like that. I also want to rediscover my joy in coding and upgrade my skills so I can look at going back to work, I want to keep singing a little bit longer and I want to finish all the craft projects I have ideas for. I have so many ideas, so many. Writing wise I am scribbling a lot of drafts and scenarios and dumping them into Scrivener, which is great because I'm capturing them for a later time, but I'm not really able to settle down to writing, pick it up for a couple of hours, put it down and pick up my knitting, and produce something halfway decent out of either creative endeavour. Every day this week I've told my husband that I'm going to rest this morning and by 10am I'm trying to figure out what I've got wrong now with the angular website I'm working on.


My muscle memory for doing one thing obsessively, to the exclusion of all else, is really holding me back at this point. I keep planning to organise my time so I code in the morning, I keep house in the early afternoon and then the evenings are for my creative endeavours, but I have no experience actually living my life like that What my brain wants right now is the ability to hyperfixate on four things at once and do them simultaneously, but that leads to cloning and brain transfers and increasing food and clothing bills and all sorts of ethical questions about who gets to make decisions and own stuff when there are four of me all barging around the house at once.


FM might enjoy having four of me, I suppose.


What I actually need to learn how to do is step back, do a little of something and get to a stopping point and let that be enough. I have read so many self help books on the subject and they are all so much bollocks that I already know in theory and can't put into practice. But if I want to keep on being creative, then I have to find a way to do it that doesn't end up breaking either me or the thing I am trying to create.



I am hoping that everyone else's responses to this challenge will help me to understand a little about how other people approach projects, creativity, and maybe get some ideas about how to do things differently. If anyone has any thoughts to share about getting past this sort of rut (despite what I said about self help books I am open to advice!) and I would particularly be interested in experiences of neurodivergent people who are also prone to fixation.

Comments

[scribblemoose]

I teach a lot of neurodivergent students, all adults, many with later life diagnoses, and they have taught me that if your brain works that way, fighting hyperfixations and special interests is intensely distressing and stressful. While they need to be flexible enough to ensure they care for themselves healthily, having outlets where they can let their thoughts and creativity do their thing is really important. Even as a neurotypical person, writing is something I do and enjoy best when it's not competing with a million other things.

Without wanting to diagnose a stranger on the Internet from one post, I think perhaps anxiety might be the biggest problem here? I've noticed from the answers to this challenge so far that there is no one process that suits everyone. It seems to be more about experimenting, finding what works for you and then throwing yourself into it.

Sharing your work is also very stressful - I've had the disappointment of nobody immediately picking up on my stuff, too. Or seeing hits and assuming people hate my work because kudos is so low, etc. etc. It's hard, but I'm working on not doing that. Ao3, like other social platforms, are extremely complex and I'll never know what the people who read and don't say think of my work. Instead I treasure the people who do interact with me. It's hard, though.

I hope you find a process that suits you. I think my advice as a creative writing teacher would be to relax, and don't put strict rules on yourself that are going to be hard to keep. Trust yourself. You're awesome.

[emperor]

Might having a thing that goes ping (or a FM that goes "you wanted to do something else for a bit now") after a particular time help? And then say "I'll work on this for an hour, and then do something else", but with something/one to actually poke you after that time?

[bella_luugosi]

I have tried iterations of both automated and FM-generated nudges, alas, I am extremely good at saying "just let me get to a stopping point" and then going for another hour or 6.

I imagine the answer is in some form of obeying predetermined time limiting, but I trained myself so well to ignore that sort of thing that it's likely to be quite a serious exercise unlearning those habits.

Maybe if I can rig something up to involve the cats thinking it's food time, as they are less gentle and considerate than FM... But then I will have cat health issues to address as well!