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]

These are all from my list of interesting communities that I post in my journal every now and then. The latest list is here and I intend to repost it during Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, which I think starts next week? Anyway, if you know of any interesting communities you'd like to see added to my list, let me know! Some of the ones on my list I've included just because I thought they would interest SOMEBODY, not necessarily me.

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25poemsamonth is a community where a 25 prompt table is posted at the beginning of every month and then, members have until the beginning of the next to fill as many prompts as possible.

100words is a drabble community for fiction of all kinds. They post weekly challenges there.

ladiesbingo is a bingo challenge to make works focused on the relationship between women, whether gen, femslash, or familial. I'm currently having great fun trying to fill my bingo board!

getyourwordsout is a writing challenge community where you can challenge yourself by wordcount of number of days written per month. It's currently closed to new members - membership opens up at the end of the year, and then folks participate for the next year.

10trueloves is a writing challenge where you pair a character with ten others (IIRC, they don't have to be romantic pairings, but I'm not sure; check the comm for more info!)

1character is a writing challenge where you choose a character and prompt set, then write one line sentences to fill each prompt.

inspiredby posts writing prompts monthly.

lyricaltitles is a bingo fest for fanfiction and original fiction centering around using songs for inspiration!

fan_flashworks is a multifandom comm that posts one prompt for the week you use to write a short fanfic.

sweetandshort is a low-pressure community for creating small fanworks / original works each week.

snowflake_challenge runs in January, and is a way to celebrate fandom and meet interesting people on Dreamwidth. There's also sunshine_challenge that runs in the summer, but I'm less familiar with that one.