Questioner
I'm a bit of an aspiring author myself. How would you deal with ADHD writer's block?
Brandon Sanderson
Some things I know that work for some writers... Do you like hiking? Do you like walking? Because I have known professional writers who have trained themselves to write by talking into a microphone, in order so that they can be walking somewhere, and kind of being visually stimulated while they're writing. I wish I knew better how to write, like, ADHD.... How do you motivate yourself to do other things? Is it a reward mechanism? Is it a short burst sort of thing?
Questioner
The issue that I have is that whenever I sit down to write, I sit down, and I'm either just sitting down and writing for five minutes, and then I get bored and move on, switch over to playing video games or surfing the web. I do a lot of thinking about what I want my world to do, stuff like that, but I don't actually have an outline.
Brandon Sanderson
Have you tried writing longhand, when you're away from the internet, getting a notebook, going out somewhere, writing in a notebook. That helps a lot of people who are getting distracted by the internet frequently, if there's just no internet to get on. And sometimes it works really good because you also are writing it, and can be, like, "You know, it doesn't have to be perfect while I'm writing in the notebook. I'll make it perfect when I transfer it to the computer." That gives you permission to be free. I don't know that you need to have an outline. Like, Stephen King never uses one. It's a tool that works for some authors and doesn't for others.