You don’t need more discipline.
You need a writing life built for your ADHD brain.
Join this live 12-week course for writers with ADHD who want to understand their brains, start writing sooner, finish more of what they begin, and stop feeling like they’re doing writing wrong.
You know you can write.
The maddening part is getting yourself to actually do it.
You have ideas. Good ones.
You care deeply about your writing.
And yet somehow…
You put off writing for days, weeks, sometimes months.
You sit down to work and suddenly everything else feels urgent.
You have twelve ideas and no idea which one to pursue.
A notification can take out an entire afternoon.
You spend an hour perfecting the first paragraph and never reach the second.
You make a beautiful new writing plan…and stop following it three days later.
You lose track of time, underestimate projects, miss your own deadlines, and wonder where the week went.
You start things with enormous energy and then watch that energy disappear halfway through.
And every time it happens, some part of you wonders:
Why can’t I just DO this?
Maybe you’ve called yourself lazy.
Undisciplined.
Scattered.
Inconsistent.
Not serious enough.
Maybe you’ve even started wondering whether you’re really a writer at all.
What if none of those things are the problem?
What if you’ve simply been trying to build a writing life for a brain you don’t have?
Your ADHD brain isn’t a defective version of somebody else’s brain.
It works differently.
And once you understand those differences, a lot of things that once felt like personal failures start making sense.
Why starting can be so hard.
Why urgency suddenly makes you brilliant.
Why an exciting idea can consume you for six hours—but answering one email feels physically impossible.
Why traditional routines work beautifully for three days and then collapse.
Why rejection can hit so hard.
Why you can care desperately about a project and still avoid it.
And most importantly:
You can stop wasting so much energy fighting yourself.
That’s what we do in Harnessing ADHD’s Wild Horsepower.
Meet the horse you’re actually riding.
Harnessing ADHD’s Wild Horsepower is a live, interactive course designed specifically for writers with ADHD brains.
Over 12 weeks, you’ll learn what’s actually happening inside your brain—and experiment with practical ways to work with it.
This is not another productivity class telling you to make a better to-do list.
It’s not three months of “just try harder.”
And it’s definitely not an attempt to turn you into an impeccably organized person who wakes at 5 a.m., writes 2,000 words before breakfast, and never loses her keys.
The goal is much more useful:
To help you understand the conditions under which you write best—and build more of them into your life.
By the end of the course, you’ll have begun creating your own personal operating manual for writing with ADHD.
Not someone else’s perfect routine.
Yours.
What could change?
Imagine sitting down to write without first spending forty-five minutes negotiating with yourself.
Imagine knowing what to do when your motivation disappears.
Imagine recognizing overwhelm before it turns into three weeks of avoidance.
Imagine getting distracted—and knowing how to come back.
Imagine abandoning the fantasy of the Perfect Writing Routine and instead having several reliable ways to get yourself moving again.
Imagine looking at a stalled project and knowing how to make it small enough to start.
Imagine getting rejected without losing your entire sense of yourself as a writer.
Imagine missing a week of writing without deciding you’ve ruined everything.
Imagine having other writers around you who understand exactly what you mean when you say:
“I wanted to write. I just…couldn’t make myself start.”
And instead of answering:
“Have you tried being more disciplined?”
they say:
“Oh my God. Me too.”
The shift is bigger than productivity.
Past students have come into this class wanting help with procrastination, focus, routine, overwhelm, time management and finishing.
Those things matter.
But something else happens along the way.
Students start realizing:
I’m not the only one.
There’s a reason my brain does this.
I don’t have to hate myself into becoming productive.
I can build around the brain I actually have.
There might be a way to do this that doesn’t require becoming somebody else.
That combination—understanding + self-compassion + experimentation + support—is where the real horsepower comes from.
The 12-Week Journey
Every week tackles a different part of the ADHD writer’s experience.
WEEK 1
We Get to Gallop
Loving Who You Are and the Benefits of the ADHD Brain
We begin somewhere most conversations about ADHD don’t: with what’s already working.
You’ll look at your own creative history, recognize strengths you may have taken for granted, meet your crew, and begin identifying the conditions that help your particular brain come alive.
I’m not going to B.S. you with the lie that ADHD is always a gift.
It’s about noticing that the same brain that can make writing difficult can also bring curiosity, intensity, imagination, risk-taking, connection-making and enormous creative energy to the page.
WEEK 2
The Horse You’re On
The Neuroscience of ADHD & Writing
What is actually happening when you procrastinate, hyperfocus, lose track of time, chase novelty or cannot initiate a task you genuinely want to do?
We’ll look at ADHD through the lens of executive function, attention, motivation and emotional regulation—and connect the science directly to your writing life.
Understanding your brain gives you something enormously valuable:
a better explanation than “I suck.”
WEEK 3
Loving Your Wild Horse
Self-Compassion for the ADHD Writer
You cannot shame yourself into becoming a sustainably productive writer.
And yet many ADHD writers have spent years trying.
We’ll look at perfectionism, negative self-talk, accumulated shame and the stories you’ve learned to tell about your own inconsistency.
Then we’ll work on something harder—and much more useful:
responding to difficulty without turning it into a verdict about who you are.
WEEK 4
Giddy Up, Already
Procrastination Pitfalls: Starting, Emotions, Triggers, and Solutions
Why can starting five minutes of writing feel harder than writing for five hours once you’re going?
We’ll unpack task initiation, avoidance, emotional resistance and the sneaky ways procrastination disguises itself as research, preparation or “getting organized first.”
Then we’ll build practical ways to make the starting line easier to cross.
WEEK 5
Blinders On, Chaos Off
Corral the Chaos: Managing Overwhelm and Distractions
Your ability to focus doesn’t exist separately from your environment.
We’ll explore digital distraction, interruptions, sensory overload, competing ideas, clutter, too many open loops and the other things constantly bidding for an ADHD brain’s attention.
The goal isn’t to become someone who never gets distracted.
It’s to make the work you care about easier to return to.
WEEK 6
Chasing the Dopamine Rush
Working With Motivation, Novelty, and the ADHD Brain
Your brain may not respond particularly well to:
“This is important and I should do it.”
So what does get it moving?
We’ll explore interest, novelty, urgency, challenge, reward and other sources of activation—and look at how to make writing more engaging without relying on last-minute panic as your permanent motivational strategy.
WEEK 7
Riding at Your Own Pace
Time Blindness, Routines, and Starting Again
Planning time with an ADHD brain can be bizarre.
Ten minutes becomes an hour. A month-long project somehow becomes tomorrow’s emergency. That thing you procrastinated on for months turns out to have taken 7 minutes to complete.
We’ll work on realistic scheduling, time estimation, rituals and flexible routines.
And just as importantly, we’ll practice the skill most productivity systems forget:
how to start again after the plan falls apart.
WEEK 8
Building Your Corral
The Dance of Structure and Freedom in Writing
Some ADHD writers rebel against too much structure.
Others flounder without enough of it.
Most of us need something in between.
We’ll figure out how much scaffolding your brain actually needs, how to make big projects visible and manageable, and how to create enough structure to support your writing without making your creative life feel like a prison.
WEEK 9
The Carrot and the Switch
Accountability, External Motivation, and Getting Yourself to Do the Thing
Sometimes the missing ingredient isn’t another insight.
It’s another person.
We’ll explore why external accountability can be so powerful for ADHD brains—and how to use deadlines, body doubling, writing partners, social expectations and other outside supports without turning accountability into shame.
You’ll design an accountability system that helps you move because someone is beside you, not because someone is scolding you.
WEEK 10
You Belong in Your Herd
Rejection Sensitivity, Feedback, and Asking for What You Need
Writing already asks us to tolerate uncertainty, criticism and rejection.
ADHD can make those experiences feel even louder.
We’ll talk about rejection sensitivity, feedback, collaboration, communication and self-advocacy—and how to stay connected to your writing when an editor says no, a critique stings or another person simply doesn’t understand what you need.
The goal isn’t to stop caring.
It’s to keep caring without every bump knocking you off the trail.
WEEK 11
Enduring the Trail
Getting Through the Messy Middle and Finishing What You Start
Starting gets a lot of attention.
Finishing deserves its own strategy.
We’ll look at what happens after the exciting beginning—when novelty fades, the project gets complicated, the dopamine drops and a brand-new idea suddenly looks irresistible.
You’ll identify your own finishing patterns and build supports for staying with the work long enough to get it across the line.
WEEK 12
Blazing Your Own Trail
Building Your Personal Operating Manual as an ADHD Writer
There is no single perfect routine for an ADHD writer.
There is only the growing body of evidence about you.
In our final week, we’ll pull together what you’ve learned about your attention, motivation, environment, routines, emotions, accountability and creative process.
You’ll leave with a clearer sense of:
what helps you start;
what helps you focus;
what kind of structure you need;
and what kind of writer you actually are.
Not the writer you keep thinking you should become.
The one you already are—and now know how to support.
Accountability isn’t one lesson.
It’s built into the entire course.
Knowing what works is not always the same thing as doing it.
ADHD writers tend to know this particularly well.
So you won’t spend ten weeks sitting alone with a notebook full of good intentions.
Throughout the course, you’ll have structures designed to help turn insight into action.
Your Crew
You’ll be paired with a small group of fellow writers who become familiar faces throughout the course.
You’ll check in, talk honestly about what’s working and what isn’t, celebrate wins and help one another keep moving.
In-Class Implementation
We won’t spend every minute talking about doing things.
We’ll do some of them.
Depending on the week, you might:
break down a project that has been overwhelming you;
create a restart ritual;
test a focus tool;
design a writing session;
body-double with the group;
identify your procrastination triggers;
build an external accountability structure;
or actually write.
You’ll leave class having already begun.
Weekly Horsepower Missions
Each week, you’ll leave with one clear experiment to try.
One focused way to apply what you learned to your actual writing life.
What happens in a class?
The format changes slightly from week to week, but sessions may include:
✺
Grounding
We start by arriving.
A short meditation or grounding exercise helps you transition out of whatever happened five minutes ago and into the room.
Because sometimes the first ADHD strategy is simply:
helping your brain get here.
✺
Practice
You’ll have time to apply what you’re learning while support is right there.
✺
Teaching
You’ll learn the “why” behind the week’s problem and practical strategies you can experiment with.
Expect neuroscience, discussion, examples, stories and tools—not jargon for jargon’s sake.
✺
Crew Connection
Small, structured conversations give you a chance to process the material with writers who get it.
✺
Expert Voices
Select sessions will include writers, psychologists, ADHD coaches and other experts whose work can deepen our understanding of ADHD, creativity and sustainable writing practices.
We care more about bringing in the right guest than filling a quota of one guest every week.
✺
Your Next Experiment
You’ll leave knowing what to try before we meet again. No wondering:
“Okay…what am I supposed to DO with all of this?
Designed for an ADHD brain
It would be fairly ridiculous to teach a class about ADHD while designing the class as though everyone had perfect working memory, sustained attention and executive function.
So we scaffold the experience.
You can expect:
Clear weekly themes
A course roadmap so you know where we’re headed
Written instructions for activities
Visual support
Repeated breakout prompts
Practical exercises
Small-group structure
Midweek reminders and recaps
One primary weekly mission
Access to recordings if you miss a live session
Because the structure of the course should support the very brain we’re talking about.
This class may be for you if…
You’re a writer—or desperately want to be one—and ADHD keeps showing up between you and the work.
Maybe you:
have been diagnosed for years;
were diagnosed recently;
strongly suspect you have ADHD;
have a drawer full of half-finished work;
write brilliantly under deadline and mysteriously cannot write without one;
constantly make new systems and abandon them;
struggle to maintain a writing routine;
experience perfectionism or enormous self-doubt;
have trouble choosing between ideas;
feel chronically behind;
want to finish essays, articles, a book or another meaningful writing project;
are tired of treating every difficulty as evidence of a character flaw.
You do not have to arrive organized.
That would rather defeat the point.
What you might leave with
Not a magically cured attention span.
Something better.
A clearer understanding of:
Why you procrastinate.
What helps you start.
What makes you focus.
What overwhelms you.
What motivates you.
How much structure you need.
What accountability actually works for you.
How to recover when your routine falls apart.
How to keep going when the shiny-new-project dopamine disappears.
How to treat yourself like a writer worth supporting.
And—very importantly—
A group of writers who know exactly what this is like.
Meet Your Guide
Writer with raging ADHD. Diagnosed at 38.
Before I knew I had ADHD, I had plenty of explanations for why writing seemed unnecessarily difficult.
None of them were particularly kind.
Then I started understanding what my brain was actually doing.
Suddenly, things I had thought were random personal failures began fitting into patterns.
And patterns can be worked with.
I’ve spent my career figuring out how to build a writing life around the brain I actually have—not the imaginary perfectly disciplined brain I thought a “real writer” was supposed to have.
Along the way, I’ve published more than 100 pieces of writing, including work in The New York Times, ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Vice, Vox, Marie Claire and Yoga Journal.
My essays have reached millions of readers.
My work has been anthologized alongside writers including Roxane Gay, Ashley C. Ford, Mindy Kaling and Audre Lorde.
But this class isn’t about teaching you to work exactly like I do.
Quite the opposite.
My job is to help you figure out how you work.
WITH PERSONAL ESSAYS IN:
Harnessing ADHD’s Wild Horsepower
Stop fighting your brain. Start learning how to ride it.
Class Details
Dates: Starting October 21, 2026
Time: 12 p.m. - 2 p.m. ET
Length: 12 weeks (skip weeks Thanksgiving and Christmas)
Location: Live online via Zoom
Investment: $975
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No.
If the challenges and patterns we’ll be exploring resonate with your experience, you’re welcome here.
This course is educational and designed specifically around the experience of writing with ADHD; it is not medical treatment or a substitute for professional care.
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Writers of all kinds.
Essayists. Memoirists. Journalists. Authors. Bloggers. People working on books. People trying to become more consistent with a personal writing practice.
You do not need a publishing credit—or even a finished draft—to belong here.
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Then you will have lots of company.
Difficulty creating a consistent writing practice is one of the major reasons people join.
You do not have to establish a routine before taking a class about establishing a routine.
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You’ll also have the weekly materials and Horsepower Mission so you can stay oriented even when life happens.
Frequently Asked Questions
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No.
And I would run very quickly away from anyone promising that.
The goal is to understand what contributes to your procrastination, recognize it sooner and develop multiple strategies for getting yourself moving.
You’re building a toolkit—not waiting for one magical trick.
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Not in the traditional sense.
We may write during class, but this is not primarily a critique workshop.
The subject of the course is your writing process: the brain, habits, environment, emotions, structures and support that make getting your work onto the page possible.
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Excellent.
Knowing about ADHD and knowing how to translate that understanding into your actual writing life are different things.
This course is built around application, experimentation, community and accountability—not simply collecting more information.
What makes this different from a productivity class?
We’re not trying to optimize you into becoming a machine.
We’re trying to understand a human being.
A creative one.
With ADHD.
The question isn’t:
“How can I force myself to become more productive?”
It’s:
“What allows me to do meaningful creative work—and how can I build more of that into my life?”
That is the work we’ll do together.
Your brain has horsepower.
Let’s learn how to use it.
You do not need to become more like some imaginary perfectly disciplined writer.
You need to understand the writer you already are.