Make Writing a Challenge (but in a good way)
Part 3 of the ADHD Writers series on Motivation
I never really grew up thinking that I wanted to be a writer.
There was a time in 6th grade when a friend and I thought we would write our own spin-off from the Goosebumps franchise called Midnight Madness, but that dream died pretty quickly. Other than that, I had no real ambitions of ever writing again once I left school.
That all changed several years ago when I heard about a writing challenge called “Ship 30 for 30.” The primary concept was that for 30 days, you would write a short essay every single day, and then ship it—meaning you would post it online for people to see.
For some reason, something about this challenge called to me, and I took the opportunity to start writing about my experience with ADHD for the first time.
There’s something unique about a challenge that really seems to speak to our internal motivation.
When I talk to people about the 4 Cs of Motivation (Captivate, Create, Compete, Complete), quite often people will say they relate with 3 out of the 4, but they don’t really consider themselves a competitive person so the “Compete” word doesn’t seem to apply to them.
If you’re someone that feels like that, I want you to think about competition a bit differently.
Compete doesn’t always mean competing against other people. Sometimes it’s more about solving puzzles, rising to the challenge of something difficult but exciting, or maybe even a bit of spite-driven motivation where you want to “prove the haters wrong” by showing up in a big way.
Even when no one else is involved, I’m drawn to competing again myself, against a clock, against a deadline, eager to prove the world wrong and show that I can achieve that thing (whatever that thing is).
A simple approach to using “compete” for motivation is to create small challenges for yourself and your writing. There’s a really cool strategy based on this idea that I use a lot to help me get unstuck and add a fresh approach to my writing.
The Rubber Band Technique
Say you’re working on a chapter of a book, and it has to be about 2,000 words. You have a general idea of how much writing that is but are having trouble getting into the flow.
Challenge One: Make it shorter
Instead of trying to write 2,000 words, give yourself the challenge of trying to write that chapter in just 200 words. That’s such a drastic difference that you’ll have to really cut out anything extra and focus just on the core principles. This doesn’t mean you’re losing that stuff for good, but the challenge is to help you think about things in a new way. And to give yourself a boost of motivation with the novelty and excitement of this new challenge.
Challenge Two: Make it longer
Now we try the other way. No, not doubling it to 4,000 words. I want you to think about what it would look like if you stretched this 2,000 word piece of writing to fill 20,000 words or more, maybe an entire book. What would the table of contents look like? How would you expand on the writing without it just being fluff?
Now you’re not going to actually write 20,000 words, but the idea is to give yourself a moment to conceptualize how you would approach it if you had to make it that much longer. Give yourself 10 minutes or so to think about what that would look like, what you’d need to do with the writing for that to work.