How what we enjoy shapes how we write.

[ColGray]

Interesting thoughts and practices; nice thread!

One of the recent things I’ve learnt about ADHD is super focus. And a sort of — I don’t know what to call it — intuition (?).

I’m mostly inspired by tone or feel. I can just get this awful obsession with writing a certain tone and can’t concentrate till it’s on paper.

I love E M Forster and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. At the mo I’m reading the complete works of STC and Forsters A Passage to India. It’s torture because I keep reading lines (esp with Coleridge) and have to get up and write something.

My last 300 word entry was heavily influenced by a Coleridge poem and inspired me to write my own (prob doggerel not poetry) to get across a sense of anguish from my character.

I often dream certain lines and/or stories — I can wake up with some bizarre nonsensical phrase that seems so important. That can be quite troubling because you think you’re going doolally.

I think that although I write modern spec fic with á supernatural element, I’m far more influenced by the likes of M R James or the two I mentioned above.

Weird that I love to read and write horror and weird fiction yet my influences are stuffy old literature.

The last three years has been coming to terms with my ADHD--diagnosed as a kid, never medicated and developed coping techniques that eventually failed due to serious life stressors/grief. Mine was always the track switching form (great for my old job, but terrible for writing!). When i opted to try some medicines i found the hyper-focus side of ADHD and hoo-boy did my ability to sit down and write suddenly appear.

Also, have you checked out John M Ford? His work ranges from pre-Gibson proto cyberpunk to speculative coal-and-sorcery to cold war thriller, but he integrates poetry and references Marlowe and classical poetry/lit effortlessly.