Episode 101: Get to Know Your Writing Coach for ADHD Brains

Stephanie here. I’m solo for this week’s episode. 

Do you feel like a lot of writing advice doesn’t work for you?

For example, have you tried to read & complete The Artist’s Way and you couldn’t finish. Or, the advice to do your morning pages everyday when you first wake up, before anything else, stresses you out. Then you spiral into thinking you’re not a “good enough” writer because you don’t do morning pages like everyone in your writing group keeps talking about. 

If so, I can absolutely relate. 

After reading ADHD for Smart Ass Women by Tracey Otsuka, my entire perspective on building a writing life shifted. It was as if I’d stumbled across the fountain of inspiration & affirmation for someone, like me, with a brain that I know works differently, and now I have tools and a plan for what’s next.

I came to the realization I’d been trying to fit my writing into a system that’s meant for someone with a standard brain.

Have you felt this too?

I discovered I’d been so conditioned by the larger system I grew up in to believe that writing is done in one particular way.

Has this stopped you in your tracks with your writing too?

It feels so frustrating to have taken this long in my life, having turned 50 in August, to come to this realization.  

But, there’s magic & beauty in it too. Now I’m fired up to do things differently and embrace the strengths of my brain. I want the same for you too, if you identify at all as having an ADHD brain, let’s chat! 

I’m offering the Finish Your First Draft in 90 Days program.    

It’s about getting you to a messy first draft so you can move on to the next step.

The first draft is the hardest. You probably have so many first drafts in your Google Drive or wherever you store your writing. I can relate. I find it helpful to have multiple drafts going at one time, but it’s getting one of them to the finished stage that is often the most challenging.

Let’s change that. I’m on my way. Are you with me?

Listen to this week’s episode where I dig into writing with an ADHD brain and why coaching is a highly recommended step for getting that dopamine hit for your brain of getting to DONE. 

If you’re curious about the details of my coaching program you can find them here. 

 Welcome to the Inspired Writer Collective podcast. If you've ever felt the pull to write your truth, to shape the chaos of real life into something meaningful and to share your journey with the world, you're in the right place. We're your hosts, Elizabeth and Stephanie, writers, coaches, and entrepreneurs who believe in you and know how important it is to find a writing community to guide you on your path to self-publishing.

Stay until the end of the episode to learn about our Virtual Memoir Summit on March 14, 2026. 

Join our Embodied Writing Experience where you’ll get a writer’s retreat directly to your inbox on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays each week. This is an invitation to slow down, tune in, and write with embodied intention.

Get on the waitlist for the Memoir Master Plan cohort here.

Apply to join the Finish Your First Draft in 90 Days program here.

If you prefer to watch our conversations, you can find all of them on our YouTube channel.

You can find us on Instagram and Threads

Transcript

Stephanie Oswald 1:14

Hello, listener and welcome back to another episode of the Inspired Writer Collective. This is Stephanie here with you today to talk about my coaching direction of helping the A DHD writer I really like to approach it from the perspective of thinking about A DHD in relation to. Your brain, because of course, A DHD is about the brain. And so rather than saying that you have a DHD I like to think about it as how do we work with the A DHD brain? How do we work with your brain, your tendencies, the way you approach your writing in order to best fit? A process that will get you to the goal. And I've been inspired by reading Tracy Otsuka's book, A DHD for Smart Ass Women. And I love the title because really resonates with me. And also the fact that she writes about how so many of us as women. Are very smart. We're very driven. We have dreams and goals for ourselves, and sometimes there are things getting in the way, and we may not always be able to identify what those things are. And one of the things I found for myself after reading this book is that the entire book spoke to me. All of the things she talked about of experiences of different women in their different paths of life. And encountering different challenges. All of them I could relate to, and I all of a sudden was like, oh my goodness. I think I have an A DHD brain, and it makes a lot of sense to me because I have Bo boys who are teenagers and. Two of them have been identified as having a DHD and so it makes a lot of sense that I would fit. And while I haven't formally been diagnosed, I have definitely self-diagnosed myself, and I've been doing a case study on myself of really taking notes and observing and. Really seeing how things that I do in my life relate to aspects of what Tracy Otsuka describes in her book, A DHD for Smart Ass Women. So if you haven't picked up the book, I recommend it. And if you wanna hear more about it, I'll be doing an upcoming episode specific to that book as part of our book club series here at the Inspired Writer Collective. Now what I'm really excited about to share with you is a program that I've created called Finish Your First Draft, and I bracket it within a time period of 90 days because I know that one of the pieces within identifying having an A DHD brain is that it can be really helpful to have deadlines, to have guides along the way, to have touchpoints along the way that help you to reach a goal. And 90 days is a nice packaged timeframe. It's a quarter of the year and. It's doable, especially for a first draft because your first draft is messy. It doesn't have to be clean. It doesn't have to be perfect. Everything doesn't have to be in order. I'm not asking you to write an entire book and have it ready for publication in 90 days. I'm simply saying, let's get that draft done so that you have something to work with and. That's when all of the other pieces of the writing process come into play, where you go in and you hone your message and you make your scenes really jump off the page and you make your characters more depthful and, and you create more dialogue or you. Make less dialogue or you take away a lot of backstory so that you can add more relevant information. All of those pieces come after the first draft. It can be really important to get to that finished point, especially for the A DHD brain because it gives you that boost of dopamine of like, yes, I did this, I finished this. And it can spur you onto the next piece because one of the things that really. Helps those of us with a DHD brains is that feeling of having completed something, of finishing something, of getting to the end of something. One of the things that can really plague us is that feeling of, oh my gosh, I have this project. I haven't finished it. It can weigh on you. It can weigh you down. You can avoid it. You, you try to do every other thing except that. That one thing that's sitting, staring at you. And I know this all too well because I definitely allow other things to come in and take away from my focus on my writing. And not only have I created this program for all of you, but it's also a program that that I really believe in because it's helped me. And so. I'm really excited, uh, that this is part of my coaching and especially to help women who identify as having an A DHD brain because. It's a very unique type of experience related to A DHD. It's not always visible. It's not in your face. Uh, it's not the hyperactivity that you, that we see so often in, you know, boys and young men. And men and that impulsiveness, uh, those of us as women. It's a very active mind, and if you can relate to this, I, I really hope you'll reach out and connect with me so that I can help you calm all of the chatter and allow yourself to get focused on your writing. One of the pieces that I've discovered that's been incredibly effective for really getting into my writing is this idea of. Getting into the body first before I sit down to write. And it's been incredibly helpful for me. And it stems from my yoga practice and influences from other writing sources that I've found. And the idea is. That you give yourself time when you first sit down to close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Just allow yourself to settle into the space and whether you give yourself a prompt or not, um. It does really settle the mind to allow for some really incredible writing to come out that you might not even expect, and that's definitely something that is incorporated into this program that I've created for you that. Our live sessions begin with a time of settling in that we have writing sprint time, that we have sharing time. And one of the unique things about the sharing time is that our focus will be on the writing itself. It's not going to be focused on you as the writer. The emphasis is on the writing, and the reason the emphasis is on the writing is because whether it's, uh. You and I face to face, or you and I in a small group setting, it allows for that comfort piece, especially with those of us with A DHD brains to not feel like we as a person are being judged in any way. Because if you can relate to this at all, one of the roadblocks for so many women with A DHD is this. Perfectionism piece. This idea that you have to have it right every time, that when you come to a room of writers that you have to have the right answer, that you have to have the right words, that you have to have the right sentence structure, that you have to have read the right books, whatever it is. I want you to just imagine coming into a space where none of that exists, where. There is no right way. There is only your way and it is your way and your words that, and especially your words and your writing, that becomes the focus because that's where the magic happens. The magic happens in listening to yourself read, getting feedback that is about the work, hearing. What touched others who are listening to you read and what stood out, because that is where the learning happens. When you hear your words coming back to you, you can hear the magic in them. You can hear the rhythm in them. You can hear how powerful they are on the page. One of the pieces that all of us. Have grown up with most likely if you grew up in the same timeframe as I did, um, going to school in the eighties and nineties and and even into the two thousands if you went on for graduate studies, uh, like I did, or wherever you are in your journey that we were taught to write. In a way in which we always felt like we were being judged, that we were always felt like someone was being critical of us. And in this program of finishing your first draft, I take that. Piece away because I want you to finish your first draft. I want to break down those barriers for you. I want to help guide you to that space and place to where each week throughout the program, you'll have access to me. It's like having a coach in your back pocket. You will have access to me via Voxer which is a tool if you haven't used it before, that allows for essentially walkie-talkie style communication. You send me a message, I send you a message, you can send it by voice or text, goes back and forth right away. When you have questions or you feel stuck or you need a burst of inspiration, you'll have access to me in that way. We will have an online. Space where all of the curriculum and all the pieces for each week will be housed. So you can access it when you need to. When you're stuck, you can use the pieces as you need them. You don't have to use them at all. It's there for you. There will also be weekly recorded question and answer sessions where I will ask for submissions of questions, whether it's just you or whether it's you in a small group. Whatever it looks like. And then I will record a video to respond to the questions, and that will become part of the archives of the course and the program. And then in addition to that, there will be monthly live sessions where you're invited to join and. You will share your writing, and again, the focus will be on the writing and it will be about helping you hear what's working and helping you understand where you can go next and all of those pieces, and it's really going to be meant to raise you up as a writer and really fire up your brain to have this. Mentality of, I've absolutely got this. I am so on top of my writing and I am ready to write my first draft. And so I really encourage you to take a moment and think about if this resonates with you. If it gets you excited, I'd love for you to reach out. And I have a short application process to. Join. It's really simple. It's not meant to scare you at all. It's just a way for me to get to know you and then connect with you and determine if it's the right fit for you. One of the reasons. That I have an application is it lowers that barrier to entry, that point of resistance that can be there. For those of us with a DHD Brains of, you know, having to book a call, booking a call can be incredibly scary. I know I've been there when I've reached out and wanted to work with someone and I book a call and it, I think, oh, and I get nervous and I'm not sure, and it always ends up being okay. But I also know that can also be really intimidating. And I want to ease your way into this process because writing is so personal for all of us, and it can really feel like you're bearing your soul in a way, in such a deep way, regardless of what you're writing that. Allowing for you to sit down and present yourself how you wanna present yourself and allow me to get to know you. And then I'll reach out via email and we'll connect and we can book a call at that point if that's, if that works for you or we can move forward with the process of onboarding into the program. I really leave it. Up to you in that regard with respect to booking a call and if booking a call is directly where you wanna go, you can reach out to me at hello@inspiredwritercollective.com and send me an email and just identify that it's to Stephanie and I will get back to you. There's so much packed into this, and you can get more information in the show notes. There's a link to what the course looks like and gives you an idea of the investment into it. And I believe every writing investment is a worthwhile investment. And when you're investing in your own professional development and growth and writing is your focus. And for a DHD brains, it's also incredibly valuable to have guides, to have people who help you along the way. Because if you try to do it all by yourself, it's just not possible to reach. That goal. And some of you may argue with me, some of you may come back and say, well, I have an A DHD brain and I've been able to finish all these things and that's great, that's wonderful. But I do know for the majority of us with A DHD brains that having some structure around it is incredibly helpful. You know, I think back to the early two thousands when I was a mom of two under two and I was working on my PhD and I, and I completed my PhD in. Four years, which is a huge accomplishment in and of itself. And nobody would've imagined that somebody with two under two and an A DHD brain would've accomplished that. And I was, I was able to do all of my coursework, all of my research. Write the 250 page book, that is my dissertation. And that was because I had structure around it. I had guides along the way. I had my professors, I had the spaces where I was doing research. I had all these supports along the way that helped me. And so if you're on the fence about it definitely reach out. I'd love to hear from you. You can also text me through the app of the podcast app you're on, and I'd love to chat. And again, if this feels that it resonates with you about being a writer with an A DHD brain. And if you're looking for support, I'd really love to connect and provide that support for you. As a writer to get you to that point of finishing your first draft because it's that first draft, that messiness that. What feels like, oh, I don't know that if I can do this, that feeling, every writer has had it. If you follow writers, if you listen to writers, I've been to so many different talks with writers and they all talk about it. Recently I was at a, I heard Taylor Jenkins read talk about our most recent book atmosphere, and she said she never thought she was smart enough to write the book, and she wrote the book and it's a beautiful book and. It's that point where needing to believe in ourselves and having someone who believes in us, that is so powerful. So again, listener, if you're interested in learning more about finish your first draft in 90 days, there's information in the show notes, you can email me at hello@inspiredwritercollective.com. And so I just leave you with this thought. About how important it is to find the support you need to achieve your dreams, and I'd love to be a part of that. So happy writing.