merlin, fanfic and the adhd hellscape

[tinyforestspirit]

i finished elementary a week back and... i'm not revoking anything i said in my post. it just wasn't for me. overall i was a little disappointed to be totally honest. i dove into the tumblr tag (as i do upon finishing any media ever) and it seems to be widely beloved. i think it missed me quite spectacularly. ah, well. 

i planned to re-watch merlin as soon as i had finished watching elementary, and now i'm there it's like a breath of fresh air. funnily enough, as much as i always adored it, i never sat down to watch merlin all the way through. i watched the odd episode here and there and i watched either series 3 or 4 as it aired. i avoided series 5 like the plague as i just knew what was going to happen. but now it's time to finally brave it!

and oh how i missed it. i forgot how much i loved these wonderful idiots. i don't know if it's because i've come straight off elementary, but it's really hit me just how much personality these characters have. i love all of them. especially merlin himself. my lord, he fits very snugly into my favourite type of character. he's a little ray of sunshine. i love him so so much. colin morgan too. 

right now i am on series 2 episode 13. i've been watching as i draw or spin and it's been a jolly old time. 

of course, with a new hyper fixation comes with the urge to write fanfic. i've always been a prolific whump / hurt/comfort writer. it's all i write to be completely honest. it's all i particularly enjoy writing. if i'm not writing whump i'm leading up to it. it's incredibly cathartic for me, as i'm sure it is for a lot of people. i've always thought it would be interesting to give my fic to a therapist and see what they can deduce about me from it, but it would feel like exposing a vulnerable piece of my soul. there's a reason why i never share my fic with people in my real life. i have at least 5 new fic ideas buzzing around the brain, all for merlin, all incredibly whumpy. 

so then you would think i would be able to sit and write it.

this is my biggest struggle with adhd, even with medication. doing things. it is easier than it was before, but i still struggle. it's executive dysfunction, i think, combined with task switching (idk if this is more of an autism thing? have both makes it extremely difficult to untangle traits) i will sit with the document open, lost in my own thoughts for ages before i can actually start. once i do i'm usually on a roll. i wrote somewhere in the area of 2k words this morning, but it was exhausting. i love writing and it frustrates me that i can't just do it.

i feel rusty, too. my writing feels creaky. i feel like i've written so much better before and i can't get up to that level again. 

on friday i'll be attending a lesson on adult adhd at the recovery college. i've done group things before, i did an online thing under the nhs not long after i was diagnosed. it was helpful just to learn about adhd, fill in blanks and answer a lot of questions i had about myself. it was only a couple of years ago and i've forgotten everything we covered. i'm hoping friday will be insightful. 

i think what i really need is an adhd coach. i need to learn how to make my brain work for me... but i have no idea how much that would cost. i have savings, but as someone who can't work it's difficult for me to dip into them. these things are usually eye-wateringly expensive. perhaps this is something i can ask about at the session on friday.

i'm going to see if i can squeeze out a couple hundred more words.

Comments

[althea_valara]

I was fandom adjacent to Merlin - never watched it myself, but IIRC there was an old Nerd Wars team for it, so I would see stuff about it from time to time. I don't really watch TV these days but if I did, it's on my list of shows to try.

I think I saw one episode of Elementary. Couldn't help comparing it to BBC's Sherlock which I watched for a bit and really liked, so yeah, Elementary wasn't for me.

My therapist and I think I have ADHD inattentive type. I'm not formerly diagnosed with it - my diagnoses are Bipolar type II and General Anxiety Disorder. I am NOT autistic (was tested for it, they said nope). Therapist also said bipolar type II is like.. depression then MORE depression, which I found interesting because no one ever really explained it to me before. She also said there's a lot of overlap between the neurodivergent diagnoses of ADHD, Autism, and Bipolar II.

Anyway, here's some of my experiences with my brain weasels:

I am very good at ignoring things. Like, my room is usually not clean and it doesn't bother me because as long as I can safely get around, why worry about it? It's like, I literally forget my room isn't clean when I am focused on something else, and I'm often focused on something else.

For writing specifically: I *can* write on the same computer I do all my other stuff in, but I need to have a dedicated program for writing. This can be a simple Notepad (I used to write in Notepad++ until they got compromised badly and then I ditched them in favor of Visual Code Studio or whatever its called). I recently splurged for Scrivener, which is a bit overkill for me because I tend to write short stuff, but I've found Scrivener is helpful if only because it's DEDICATED to writing. I don't use it for work or coding like I did Notepad++, so I don't distract myself with "hey, maybe I should work on my Neocities site instead". I'm still very new to Scrivener but so far it's been worth the money. I did get it at a discount, though, which helped.

I tried Ellipsus (an online word processor) but it absolutely did not work for me. I think I need an application shortcut in my toolbar, staring at me and reminding me that oh yeah, you want to do this writing thing, better do it. One of the reasons Ellipsus didn't work was because I often forgot about it. I use Vivaldi browser which allows you to have groups of tabs called Workspaces, and I dutifully had a Writing workspace for Ellipsus and research stuff, but did I ever check the workspace? I did not.

BTW, Scrivener allows you to store your research right inside it, so it's also more self-contained when writing. Everything you need can be in one place.

One thing that helps me is timers for stuff. I often have a hard time getting started with things, because there's Too! Many! Shiny! Things! that are more fun to do. Setting a timer and saying "Okay, I will clean for 5, 10, 20 minutes, whatever I set it at" helps me get over the hill of activation energy required. Usually, once I start, I can keep on with a task. Getting started truly is the hardest thing.

For writing, I've found sprints via the Sprinto bot in Discord very helpful. I can think of at least three Discord servers I'm in that the bot also has its own channel, and not all the Discords are writing-related. I have yet to set up a sprint myself, but will join if I see others doing one, and there's something motivating about trying to come up with as many words as possible in 20-30 minutes--and, of course, cheering everyone on for how well they did, or commiserating if they didn't do well.

Also: I'll just comment that I do MUCH better with writing prompts than I do with coming up with my own ideas. The Final Fantasy Kiss Battle is what got me back to creative writing about 5 years ago: my friend lassarina left a prompt: "Bartz/Gilgamesh, duel" and I thought "Hey, I think I can write that" and so I did and you know, it was pretty good for not having written in a long time! I've also gotten prompts from various communities here on DW, and I'm working at filling those prompts... slowly, but it's happening. Let me know if you're interested in some prompt communities, and I can link them for you.