Description: Fifteen essays that offer inspiration, encouragement, and advice from accomplished writers with ADHD.
A rising number of ADHD diagnoses, particularly among adults, is not only confirmed by medical studies and mainstream reporting but also borne out across social media and elsewhere among people who'd been privately coping with persistent, often inexpressible challenges. Many of the contributors to this collection can attest to how a later-in-life diagnosis radically demystified the patterns, impulses, and impasses that had affected their lives and their writing. The essays in Chaos, Creativity, Completion reflect the ways poets, novelists, memoirists, filmmakers, and others have come to understand and engage the relationship between their ADHD and their creative tool kits. These essays consider how writers can embrace rather than mask their neurodifference, offering multiple ways of finding writing practices that work for ADHD brains--including techniques that often look quite different from traditional writing instruction. Some essays are analytical, some are reflective, and some are delightfully weird, employing humor, research, personal narrative, deep description, close reading, and experimental approaches to genre and form. Each essay also concludes with a writing prompt, providing readers with opportunities to expand their own creative toolkits. Finally, the book includes an interview with David Kessler, a licensed therapist and nationally recognized ADHD advocate, and an appendix with a glossary of helpful terms and a list of recommended resources, from books and organizations to apps and gadgets. Just as the experience of ADHD varies from person to person, so, too, do the ways those experiences can be expressed. Chaos, Creativity, Completion is a kaleidoscopic, adventurous series of takes on what writing looks like today.Brief description: Rebecca Makkai is the author of five books of fiction and a 2002 Guggenheim Fellow. Her novel The Great Believers, one of the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, among other honors.
Review Quotes: "Chaos, Creativity, Completion hands the mic to fifteen ADHD writers who don't color inside the lines, and don't need to. These essays are often sharp, strange, and gloriously anti-rule. They'll show you that your messy process isn't a flaw; it's a feature. The message is simple but radical: When ADHD writers work with their brains instead of against them, the result isn't just different--it's better."-- "Tracy Otsuka, podcast host and author of "ADHD for Smart Ass Women""