Unlocking the ADHD Brain for Business & Creative Writing Success

Discover how to turn the chaos of ADHD into your ultimate writing weapon as we sit down with Cathy Kirch, the maestro of the ADHD Writers Guild. She's not only transformed her academic prowess into a flourishing business but also lights the way for neurodivergent entrepreneurs to craft their narratives. Unpack Cathy's fascinating evolution from academia to guiding others in embracing their neurodivergence, and learn how wearing multiple hats in a home business is not just a necessity but a potential superpower for those with ADHD.

Venture into the world where ADHD and entrepreneurship intersect, a realm where passion, creativity, and a knack for innovation reign supreme. We discuss how individuals with ADHD often possess an innate entrepreneurial spirit, yearning for the flexibility and independence a home business grants. Cathy and I reflect on the stiff structures of traditional employment that often stifle neurodivergent thinkers and celebrate the liberation found in tailoring a career that complements the ebbs and flows of an ADHD mind.

Finally, we arm you with an arsenal of strategies and tools to elevate your writing, offering solace for those who find putting pen to paper intimidating. Cathy divulges her top techniques, from voice-to-text software to breaking writing into manageable phases, all designed to minimize overwhelm and maximize output. If you're a home business entrepreneur aiming to carve out your slice of success, or simply someone seeking to refine your writing skills, this episode promises to be a cornerstone in your journey. Join us and let's write our own rules for success together.

Website: https://hello.mywritinghero.com
Facebook Group: Writers with ADHD: https://www.facebook.com/groups/writerswithadhd
Instagram: https://instagram.com/mywritinghero
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-kirch-09878535/

This program is brought to you, in part, by:
Oxygen America

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Transcript

Hank: 0:40

Welcome to the Home Business Success Show. Join us as we speak to home business entrepreneurs for tips, tricks, do's and even don'ts for running a successful home business. Welcome everyone, I'm Hank Eater, also known as Hank the PR Guy, Host of the Home Business Success Show here on bizradious. All entrepreneurs all the time. I'll introduce my guest right after my two cents marketing minute. You know there are many tasks that entrepreneurs need to learn how to outsource, but in the early stages of starting their businesses they are forced to wear many, if not all, the hats. Writing is one of those. Most business owners don't have a writing background but still need to take on that role in the beginning. A lot of folks struggle to get writing done for their business. After all, writing is hard, especially if you don't know how to do it, but there are strategies and tools that can make it easier. Today's guest will share some of those.

Hank: 1:47

My guest, Kathy Kerch, is an ADHD writing coach. She specializes in helping other ADHD writers understand how to work with their brains so they can start and finish the projects that mean the most to them. In addition to writing and editing on a freelance basis, Kathy currently teaches writing at Columbia University, where she received an MFA that masters in fine arts. For those who don't know In fiction writing, she has dedicated her academic and professional career to supporting those who struggle to get writing done, including neurodivergent writers and folks without a writing background. In the ADHD Writers Guild, the world's first online writing center for ADHD writers, Kathy serves as the founder and director, Using her neuroscience background to help writers build a practice that works with their brains. Welcome to the show, Kathy.

Cathy : 2:56

Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here.

Hank: 2:58

Oh, you're welcome If you would please tell us more about your business, tell us what you do, and all those good things.

Cathy : 3:06

Sure, well, as many people who live in New York City, which is where I'm hailing from today, I have always worn a lot of different hats. One of those hats has always been writing. One of those hats has, for most of my adult life, been teaching in one form or another. And, as Hank mentioned, I currently teach at Columbia. And it was during that time, as I was writing and I was teaching and I was I think I was just about to turn 30 maybe when I was diagnosed with ADHD officially, and, and being the sort of academic nerd that I am, I immediately sort of dove right into the like well, there has to be research on this, there has to be research on ADHD writers, and that's what I primarily identified as. And I found that there wasn't really. And I also really loved the work that I do with writers.

Cathy : 4:14

And when I was diagnosed with ADHD, I all of a sudden things started clicking and I realized oh, this is why certain students and certain writers kind of gravitate towards working with me that we sort of understand each other's brains on a fundamental level in a way that maybe other folks don't, and so things started really clicking and I was, because I love what I do. I love the work that I get to do with writers, especially one-on-one, at the university level, and I wanted to do that full time, but those jobs didn't exist, so initially it was just like, well, I guess I'll just create the job that I want. I'll just, instead of looking to find a full-time writing center, a lectureship or position as a professor, instead of trying to find that diamond in the rough, I'll just create it out of my own lump of coal. And so that's what I did. Originally.

Cathy : 5:12

I was focused I was just focused on writers more generally. But again, once I got my diagnosis and started learning more about ADHD and realizing why the things that I do and the things that I teach click with certain groups of people, I started narrowing the focus towards ADHD writers, and so that's a little bit about how the ADHD Writers Guild was born. We're a couple years old now, launched in late 2020. And so it's, but it's been quite the journey. I've learned a lot, still wearing probably way too many hats, both writing and teaching and running the guild but it's all things that I love to do, so I'm busy, but happy to be busy.

Hank: 5:59

There you go, Happily busy Productive Productive is a better term, I think, than busy. So I guess it was your own diagnosis of ADHD that made you start to work specifically with ADHD writers and I want to bring up something a little bit more about that in a few minutes. But I've heard you say that many entrepreneurs are neurodivergent. What do you mean by that?

Cathy : 6:26

Yeah Well, so I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but there have been a number of studies and sort of statistical analyses looking at both the sort of prevalence of ADHD among entrepreneurs as well as the sort of likelihood of someone who is ADHD to start a business. Neurodivergent for anyone who isn't familiar with the term refers to any sort of difference in brain function. So under that umbrella are included things like ADHD, things like autism, things like dyslexia, dyspraxia or dyscalculia which I can never fully pronounce PTSD, OCD the things that really represent a difference in brain function, and there's so many different life experiences that sort of fall under this umbrella. But specifically I don't know if there have been quite as many studies examining the prevalence of autism and other sort of neurodivergent experiences in entrepreneurship, but I know that there has at least been some examination in looking at the prevalence and prominence of ADHD. And I remember reading somewhere don't quote me on this because I don't know, I don't have again, I don't have the figures in front of me that people with ADHD were somewhere between like 100 and 300 times more likely to start their own business, and I've seen I've also seen figures that anywhere between like a quarter and half of entrepreneurs are ADHD, and again, not super sure on what the actual numbers are. But I think the important point is that there is a sort of strong correlation between the two and to me that makes sense right, If you kind of like me, if you find yourself not really fitting within the system or the structure of more typical nine to five or the kind of corporate structure that a lot of us are sort of educated and moved sort of through life, as though that's sort of where we're headed, that a lot of those more sort of conventional careers maybe don't mesh as well with a brain that's wired a little differently, and especially folks with ADHD who are idea wizards, right, and there have certainly been studies about how well ADHD folks score on tests of creativity, that if talk to any ADHD person and there's always a million ideas, and so I think the fact that the ADHD brain is super creative, drawn to novelty and new ideas, maybe has some less conventional ways of working or moving through the world.

Cathy : 9:45

That all sort of adds up to it makes sense to me that there's a sort of correlation between ADHD and entrepreneurship, that we have folks who maybe are looking for something and not really finding it in existence, and so well, I'll just create it myself. That was kind of my experience in some ways, but it's also. I think the entrepreneurship path offers different levels of flexibility that can potentially be more accommodating to the way that an ADHD or neurodivergent brain works, and so I think that there's opportunities to sort of expand and as well as to do things that we're really passionate about.

Hank: 10:33

Cause one of the things.

Cathy : 10:34

One of the sort of misconceptions of ADHD is that, oh well, people with ADHD can't pay attention to anything. Well, that's not exactly true. If you give us something that we love, something that we're really passionate about, something that we're invested in, something that challenges us and interests us in a really tangible way, it's hard to get us to stop.

Hank: 10:55

Right, and I think that touches a little bit. You mentioned autism. That touches a little bit on the spectrum, and people aren't necessarily autistic, but are somewhere on the spectrum. I'm trying to remember what that was called. I was a teacher at one time and we had kids who weren't considered autistic, but they were.

Cathy : 11:14

Right, what is that word? What is that word?

Hank: 11:17

I think the word that you're thinking of is Ashburgers, that's the word I'm looking for, the word that you're thinking we call them ASPY kids, but yeah, so we're touching-.

Cathy : 11:25

That term was worth pointing out, that that term is no longer in use. Yeah, that now there's no longer viewing autism on the same sort of like functional spectrum as it used to be. But yeah, go ahead. You were talking about-. Yeah, but what?

Hank: 11:42

I was getting at is that when I was a teacher and we had some autistic kids in the school and we had kids at the time they were calling ASPY kids. They had that passion for specific topics. You know, one kid who probably had an IQ higher than all of the teachers in the building combined was into physics and mechanics. Another kid could tell you every dinosaur they'd ever lived in, the eras that they lived in and all that kind of stuff. But that being said, I think we're all a bit ADHD. The thing is back in my day and I'm a boomer when we were in school they didn't have that kind of a designation. We weren't ADHD, we were just the kids who didn't pay attention and acted up in class. And you know, the cure for so-called ADHD in my day is you'd get home and your father would give you wall-to-wall counseling until you never to act like that in school again. But you know, so I've suspected that I am and have always been ADHD. But I've always, you know, I had my coping mechanisms and stuff over the years.

Hank: 12:54

And in the corporate world I did my stint in the corporate world because as boomers we were taught, you know, get a good education, get a job, stay with the job, and I struggled with that. I did move various times from job to job. I just couldn't get into the routine of what it is. That they the way they did it, and it took me a lot of years to become an entrepreneur and get into the notion of doing my own business. But I think that's a pretty good compensation for for one who actually recognizes being a DHD, and I wondered over the years if I displayed even some of the ASPY's qualities.

Hank: 13:33

But that that being said, what are some strategies and tools that we can use that when we do start recognizing that maybe we have some of these qualities in ourselves? And specifically as it relates to writing, you know somebody's going to sit down and say, oh, I have to write this for my business, I have to. You know I have to do this, I have to write this report or whatever it is. I have to write, but I hate writing and I don't know how to do writing and it's so boring. What are some tools and techniques that people can use that help them along?

Cathy : 14:07

Yeah, well, I think one of the things that you said is really that sort of key here is that I, probably a lot more people, are ADHD, which my partner has now started calling autism B sides. There's definitely some overlap there, I love that.

Cathy : 14:26

But there's. But you know there's probably especially since a lot of the early research on both ADHD and autism and other neurodivergent experiences was done primarily on young boys who were acting up in class and disruptive. You know, most of that research was done on our particular sort of subset of folks when it's particular subset of experiences, and now the, now our understanding has sort of expanded to include more experiences that it now includes not just the sort of loud running around bouncing off the walls, you know, like little boy named Kevin who can't say still, but it also is covering the, you know, the girl who stays quiet and reads instead of doing whatever it is that the class is supposed to be doing, Right. And so there's, especially for women, but I think for a lot of, for a lot of other genders as well, who maybe, who maybe are presenting their symptoms differently. They're starting to be recognized more, and so I do suspect that there's a lot more people that have these experiences than maybe realize it.

Cathy : 15:39

And the, and I think that the other sort of important thing about, like you know, recognizing these aspects and the sort of well, everybody is a little HD. Well, everybody urinates, but if you're doing it 200 times a day, it might be time to talk to someone about it, and so the sort of ADHD diagnosis has to do with how much these things affect you, right, the sort of ADHD symptoms of forgetfulness and and feeling scattered, right, like forgetting things, losing things, difficulty concentrating, especially on tasks that we perceive as boring, right, those are things that everybody experiences to some degree, and so for that reason, a lot of the strategies that that I offer are certainly helpful for ADHD writers, but they can be helpful for writers even if they're not ADHD, because everybody has a brain, everyone has a dopamine system, everyone has a working memory, and those are all things that are particularly taxed during the writing process. So some strategies are, at least maybe differences of approaching writing that I might offer to someone who has to write a thing for their business, doesn't want to finds writing boring, is maybe sort of because starting to think a little less conventionally about what writing is and what writing looks like. So if sitting in front of the computer and looking at a blank screen and typing words on to it, you know, doesn't really get the juices flowing, right, If you're someone who's like, well, I can talk about it all day, but then once I look at the screen and the blinking cursor, I can't get a word down. Okay, well then let's turn off the screen and do you maybe voice to text or something like that? Or maybe trying to write, trying writing longhand, or writing in a program that's not a word processor, writing in a slideshow deck, writing in a spreadsheet, right, Sort of expanding the notion of what we consider writing and expanding where we can put things.

Cathy : 17:44

I think that's one way that we can sort of switch up our approach. Another way that we can switch up our approach is by allowing our drafts to go through kind of multiple layers, multiple phases, right. Sometimes we have this impression of like oh well, for writers who are really experienced, like they just sit down and then the perfect draft comes out and then they like, maybe edit for grammar and then that's it, and then it's like one and done. But no one writes like that. In fact, there's been research about how recursive professional and experienced writers processes are.

Cathy : 18:26

The sort of pressure to get things perfect right away can actually be very limiting. It can make writing actually harder, because one of the things that writing is particularly taxing on, one of the reasons that I always say writing is hard is because is because it's particularly taxing for our working memory. It places a lot of pressure on our cognition Working memory, of course, referring to our ability to hold information in our head while we're using it. So if you were to tell me your phone number, I would be able to hold it in my head long enough to write it down and then I would let go of it and then it would be gone. And so our working memory allows us to hold on to information. But then when we're writing, we have to hold on to what we want to say and how we want to say it and how it might come across to a reader, and all of these different things that we're trying to do at the same time.

Cathy : 19:16

And when we're trying to make something perfect right away, we're trying to think about both what we want to say and how we want to say it and how it's coming across.

Cathy : 19:26

And we're trying to do all of those things at once, which is actually making it cognitively more difficult than if we were to kind of separate those tasks out. So the other sort of approach that I might offer would be to try and separate out those different writing tasks. So, instead of kind of trying to sit down and I'm gonna write all of my sales page copy in one go, or I'm gonna just sit down and I'm gonna write this email that I have to send out to my list, right, Having sort of one layer where you're just jotting down what you want to say, not worrying about the wording, not worrying about how it's structured, and then maybe coming back and being like, okay, well, maybe I'll move these pieces around and play with the structure a little bit, or maybe now I'll sort of expand some of these bullet points into full sentences, right, and that you can sort of separate the different tasks that you have to do can make it a little bit easier for the brain and feel a little less painful for the rest of the week.

Hank: 20:23

Less intimidating, for sure. You know I've always been. I used to be a newspaper reporter, so I've published a lot of things. But I've always been a wanna be fiction writer and with a friend we were wanna be screenwriters. We actually almost sold the screenplay or came closer than most people do, but the end result is that it didn't get done. But we had a thing that we called the vomit draft. You know you get it out you have an idea.

Hank: 20:49

You put it down in your vomit draft. Maybe it'll go away later, but you get it down there. Then you've got the revision parts. You know you've got a draft two, draft three. You know you have to work hard on these things. You know this time is really flying by. I'm a base.

Cathy : 21:04

It really is.

Hank: 21:05

And how much time has gone by. Is there one particular thing you'd like to say that I haven't asked you?

Cathy : 21:11

The biggest thing for me as a writer. Even you know, I enjoy writing, and writing is still difficult, right. I think that one of the most important things that I've learned, and I'm still learning, is self-compassion. Right, that this is especially writing. We can be very hard on ourselves. It's challenging, but I think, like, especially when maybe you're you have a sort of different brain or different experience of the world, we can be really really hard on ourselves. And so, first of all, giving yourself permission to be imperfect is great, but also knowing that you know what you're gonna try, something it's gonna work great, and it's maybe. It's gonna work great for like three weeks, and then maybe it's gonna stop working, and that's just part of it. That's just part of the experience.

Hank: 22:01

So self-compassion is the most Self-compassion and allowing yourself to cycle through different strategies. I've got to ask you the final question, because I think we're actually running a little bit over, is what is the best way our listeners can reach you if they want to find out more about what you do and how they might become a client of yours to improve their writing?

Cathy : 22:24

One of the things that you can do. I have a free Facebook group for writers with ADHD. It is called Writers with ADHD and you can find that group on Facebook and I think maybe we'll link it in the show notes or something. But also you can find me on Instagram at mywritinghero, as well as on my website. If you go to hellomywritingherocom, you'll find the waitlist to join the ADHD Writers Guild.

Hank: 22:58

Very cool. Thank you so much for being here with us today, kathy. And to our listeners, tune in every Wednesday for the Home Business Success Show here on bizradious. Remember you can achieve success, freedom and independence in your own home business. I've done it, kathy has done it, and you can too. See you again next week. This is Hank Eater, wishing all of you a fabulous day of home business success.