Neurodiversity and Writing

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Introduction

The Writers Workshop welcomes UIUC writers from all identities and backgrounds. This includes writers with both physical and cognitive disabilities and neurodiverse writers.

Neurodiversity is a nonmedical umbrella term that refers to individuals whose brains function differently than the norm, broadly speaking. Conditions such as dyslexia, autism, ADHD, and OCD are generally grouped under this umbrella, among many others. Although the term is relatively new, around one-fifth of Americans identify as neurodivergent. According to UIUC’s Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES), over 80% of registered DRES students have non-visible disabilities like neurodiverse conditions.

Neurodivergent people often face challenges in professional, educational, and social settings that those without cognitive disabilities (AKA “neurotypical” people) do not. These challenges often relate to “executive functioning” skills like organization, time management, sustaining focus, and sensory and emotional regulation. Difficulty reading and interpreting social cues is also a common issue. Indeed, those who identify as neurodivergent sometimes characterize their day-to-day lived experience as “playing life on hard mode.” For neurodivergent students, these problems can become more pronounced when transitioning to college or to grad school, where struggles with severe text anxiety or approaching large-scale projects might also emerge, and new standards of academic performance may be unclear.

Since neurodiverse conditions influence the way a person thinks, processes information and stimuli, and expresses themself, it also often influences the way they read and write. Here at the Writers Workshop, we work with many writers with disabilities and neurodiverse writers, and several of our current and past writing consultants are also neurodivergent. If you’ve booked a consultation with the Writers Workshop before, you may have noticed that on your appointment form, you have the opportunity to “disclose a disability” or “learning style preference,” which might help your consultant better address your needs as a writer. But disclosing a disability or other stigmatized identity is intensely personal, and we recognize that not everyone feels comfortable sharing this information. Or perhaps you just don’t know how to convey your particular challenges when it comes to writing and what sort of help you’re looking for. 

Disclosure isn’t required for us to help you meet your writing goals. We strive for the Writers Workshop to be accessible to everyone. Our consultants tailor their approaches to your individual needs as a writer, which is based on what you are comfortable sharing about your learning preferences—not on any preconceived ideas about disability status or identities. If you want support with your writing but are feeling uncertain about where to begin, looking at our “Meet the Staff” page is a good place to start. There you can read about the research and writing specializations of our consultants, many of whom come from fields like psychology, neuroscience, and disability studies—or, they simply enjoy working with neurodiverse writers.

Common Challenges

Below, we have listed some of the most common issues that neurodivergent writers face. Many of these overlap with (or are more intense varieties of) the mental blockages and procrastination behaviors that we detail on our “Assessing Your Writing Habits” page (which we also highly encourage you to check out!).

Organizing thoughts and ideas

The process of starting a new writing project can be extremely difficult and overwhelming if you struggle with organizing your thoughts. This can be intensified by the anxiety of your writing coming off as incoherent, illogical, or, at worst, unintelligent. Many common strategies for outlining a paper (formulating a clear thesis statement, writing topic sentences for paragraphs, etc.) and incorporating sources are not particularly helpful for neurodivergent writers. This is often related to the non-linear thinking patterns of neurodivergent people. We are taught that drafting a paper should be a sequential series of steps from points A, B, C, and so forth all the way to the concluding point Z. But this simply isn’t how neurodivergent brains tend to process and communicate information. It might look more like beginning with points Q and R, and then back to C, B, and A, and then to Z. The redrafting, revising, and editing stages of writing are usually also difficult. Neurodivergent writers sometimes jump between all these tasks in rapid succession, which can lead to “task paralysis”: the feeling that things are so overwhelming you become incapable of even starting or continuing. 

Difficulty staying on-task: Rabbit holes and Spiderwebs

Related to non-linear thinking patterns, neurodivergent folks are often incredibly curious to learn new things, and may have many special-interests. Some say this relates to the neurodivergent “interest-based nervous system,” where motivation is related to passions, novelty, and sense of wonder, rather than the importance-based systems dominant in neurotypical people where motivation is driven by rewards and consequences. When it comes to subjects in a college class, neurodivergent students may feel an urge to know the larger history of a topic—sometimes far in excess of what is required for completing an essay or assignment. For example, say you need to write an exploratory 5-page essay for a sociology course about a social movement leader in American history. You pick Martin Luther King Jr., and plan to write about his upbringing, how his faith influenced his leadership style, and the impact of his legacy on American culture. But after five hours of writing, you realize you’ve drafted two pages about how Henry David Thoreau’s essay on “Civil Disobedience” inspired King, another page on Rosa Parks, and another on King’s relationship with Bayard Rustin. In other words, you’ve written very little of what the assignment rubric requires.

Neurodivergent people tend to appreciate abundant contextual information, which can lead to exhaustively exploring tangential lines of thinking that veer off into connected—but also distinctly different—topics. Some call this getting lost “down a rabbit hole.” Another helpful metaphor for understanding this tendency is the “spiderweb.” Nishe Patel, a life coach for neurodivergent people who herself has ADHD, describes this as “[seeing] the world as a spider’s web when solving problems or working through a challenge, with everything connected to everything else, and all the information right there in front of me.” This way of seeing the world can help you be incredibly creative and versatile, but it can also make it feel impossible to squeeze your sprawling spiderweb of brilliant thoughts into the span of a few pages. 

Perfectionism and Imposter Syndrome

These are obstacles that almost all writers face at some point, but they can be especially debilitating, and even harmful, for neurodivergent writers. Anxieties about “fitting in,” meeting the standards of others, and the tendency to thoroughly research everything you write about before beginning a draft can lead to unrealistic expectations. You may feel that if you don’t demonstrate an expert-level understanding of all the literature on a subject—of every scholarly critique and scientific study— that you have somehow miserably failed. This form of perfectionism is also called “all-or-nothing” or “black and white” thinking: the feeling that, in order to do a thing at all, you have to become the expert or master at it. Otherwise, you might be “found out” as an imposter—as someone who isn’t smart or creative enough to be in the class, program, school, etc. This in turn can lead to excessive self-critical thoughts of being inadequate and unworthy, or that you will never be good enough. After learning about these harmful thought patterns, some neurodivergent writers reflect that they were always their own worst critics, and that alleviating themselves of this intense internal judgement helped them develop a healthier relationship with writing and other school work.  

Sensitivity to criticism/feedback (and RSD)

Because neurodivergent people may already be struggling with feelings of inadequacy due to stigmatization of their conditions or other forms of ableism, receiving any form of external criticism, even when well-meaning or constructive, can feel catastrophic. Another person critiquing you, especially when they are in a position of authority like a teacher, can feel like confirmation of your internal criticisms. Of course, no one is perfect, and pursuing any undergraduate or advanced degree will necessarily entail receiving constructive feedback from instructors, professors, and mentors about areas for improvement and growth. Although sometimes instructor feedback on student writing isn’t communicated in the most productive manner (see our page on “Dealing with Critical Feedback”), even the gentlest and most thoughtful suggestions for improvement can seem horribly severe to neurodivergent writers.

For many neurodivergent people—and particularly those with ADHD—this can stem from “Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria” or RSD. Obviously, most people don’t like rejection, but according to the Cleveland Clinic, RSD is related to the brain’s inability to “regulate rejection-related emotions and behaviors, making them much more intense.” RSD can make neurodivergent people interpret even neutral or vague interactions and comments as pointed critiques of their personal deficiencies. RSD can also interact with and exacerbate perfectionism and task paralysis, where the fear of being criticized prevents one from beginning the task at all. 

Tips and Strategies


The combination of some or all of these factors can lead to many neurodivergent students not beginning a writing assignment until the due date has almost arrived, needing the sense of urgency and anxiety to break through blockages and enter into marathon writing sessions up to the deadline. Even though this approach may still result in a good grade or completed project, it usually comes at the cost of sleep deprivation and excessive reliance on caffeine and junk food, among other potential disruptions to work-life balance. This approach can also simply feel miserable, especially if you rinse and repeat it each semester or finals period. 

If you see yourself or your writing process reflected in any of the above, remember that the way your brain works is not the problem. Rather, it is that many standardized approaches to teaching and learning writing are for neurotypical people, and thus may reproduce ableist structures. Here are a few small strategies that may help: 

Don’t collapse the writing process

We often try to breakdown writing into a series of progressive stages, with each building upon the previous: research, brainstorming, outlining, drafting, revising, editing. Many neurodivergent writers tend to combine some or all of these stages when they write. Doing your best to disentangle these stages and keep them separated can be beneficial. You might try setting a timer for twenty or thirty minutes with the goal of doing only one task like outlining your paper; you can repeat this as necessary until you’re ready to set another timer with the intention of only drafting new prose, etc..

While drafting, try not to look up references or be too concerned with flow and sentence structure. If, for example, you realize you need to find a citation, you can make a note for yourself to come back to that later. Some options for reminders are to insert a provisional [bracket] into the draft, make a marginal comment for yourself, or use highlighting or color-coding in the text. You’ll have to experiment with what methods work best for you. The point of these strategies is to mitigate the urge to open up your web browser and dive into the endless rabbit holes of library databases and search engines.

Multiple screens

If you are a person who has dozens of browser windows open at any given time with countless tabs on each, your writing process may benefit from having multiple screens available. Neurodivergent people sometimes have different relationships to space and object-permanence than neurotypical people, and need to take a visual inventory of all the resources available to them as they begin a task or project. This is why, for example, neurodivergent people might tend to leave kitchen cabinet doors open or spread their wardrobes out across the room. These habits, which are often mistaken as signs of being disorganized or uncleanly, can actually be complex systems of “organized chaos.”

When it comes to writing, multiple screens can help you sift through your own organized chaos by taking inventory of the research you’ve done and the resources you’ve collected. This might prevent multiple windows from being layered on top of each other, causing you to lose track of the ideas and trains of thought. 

A scrap document or “writer’s palette”

While writing, you might experiment with having a separate document or window open in addition to your main draft. Consider this as a scrap piece of digital notebook paper where you can dump ideas, sentences, or paragraphs that you know belong in your final draft, but don’t quite yet know where they belong. This strategy can help prevent your draft from becoming too cluttered or visually overwhelming, and also caters better to non-linear thinking and writing. Several word processors now also have the ability to open separate windows in the same document and have “split view” functions (in the latest edition of Microsoft Word, you can access these options by opening the “view” tab at the top). Other writing software such as Scrivner have similar functions that assist with organizing larger scale writing projects like books, dissertations, and research reports.

The metaphor of oil painting may be applicable here. A painter usually mixes colors together on their palette to get just the right shade before applying it to their canvas so as not to compromise the progress they’ve already made. Just as the painter’s palette is a place for experimentation and trial and error, your scrap document can function as a “writer’s palette” where you can tweak sentences, draft new ideas, swap out different concepts, etc. This allows you to work through all the messiness of the writing process before integrating new things into your “clean” draft—your textual canvas.

Freewriting and unclogging “the bottleneck”

Since task initiation can be one of the biggest obstacles for neurodivergent writers (and writers in general), freewriting exercises are an excellent strategy for getting jumpstarted. Neurodivergent writers don’t struggle as much with what they want to say, but more so with how they want to say it. You may have an entire term paper drafted in your head, but as you type it out, you get jammed up by trying to express many complicated ideas at once. Some people describe this as a mental “bottleneck” where a multitude of ideas collide into each other, making them more difficult to understand. Setting a timer for 5 to 10 minutes to freewrite without any restrictions on can help disentangle or unclog your writing process. Think of this as a “brain dump,” or turning the cognitive faucet on full blast in an effort to clear the plumbing of blockages.

Writing groups and accountability partners

Given the persistent challenges of time management, task initiation, and focus that neurodivergent people face, external forms of accountability can be one of the most effective strategies for establishing more consistent and healthier writing habits. See if any friends in your major or program are interested in joining you at the library or a coffee shop to write on a consistent basis; even once or twice a week for a couple of hours at a time can make a tremendous difference. For a low-stakes form of accountability, you can also share both small-scale and large-scale writing goals with each other. For example, before you meet for your next co-writing session, you set a small goal of writing 250 words, or for a larger goal, maybe finishing your paper outline or incorporating revisions from your professor.

Also consider exchanging drafts with your accountability partners. Since self-critical thoughts and perfectionism are pervasive among neurodivergent writers, creating a safe environment to share unfinished drafts and partially-formed ideas early in the writing process can be a hugely positive experience. Sometimes, you just need to hear from a trusted person: “yes, I understand the point you’re trying to make here” or “this is a great idea for a thesis statement.” These small affirmations can help prevent overthinking and avoid unnecessarily harsh assessments of your writing.

Of course, the Writers Workshop is also a great way to find writing community, too! If you work well with a particular consultant, you can setup recurring appointments with them for another form of accountability. If you’re a graduate student, be sure to check out our calendar for our Graduate Writing Groups. Booking regular appointments with us, especially for long-term writing projects, can be an effective form of accountability and structuring your writing process.

Curating your writing environment

Being intentional about the when and where of your writing process can also help neurodivergent writers be successful. A perhaps obvious first step is to eliminate distractions. For some, that may mean putting your cellphone on airplane mode while writing; for others, it might be getting out of your house to avoid the temptation of getting engaged in other tasks. You might find that your writing benefits from switching up your work environment to create a sense of novelty that inspires you to be creative. Maybe one day you write at your favorite café, another at a park bench, or another buried deep in the UIUC Library Main Stacks. We’d again encourage you to checkout our page on assessing your writing habits (specifically Step #3) to consider how making a series of small changes can accumulate to make a big positive impact for your writing process.

Conclusion


Whether you’ve long identified as neurodivergent or are just learning these things for the first time, becoming aware of these potential challenges can be daunting. At the same time, there are distinct strengths that come with being a neurodivergent thinker and writer, such as complex pattern-recognition and being able to synthesize information across disciplines, meticulous attention to detail, and just generally being immensely creative and passionate! Haily Nicole Otis, a rhetoric professor with ADHD, offers a helpful reframing of life as a neurodivergent scholar. 

“Think about it. How many dissertations and books were written because of a special interest in the topic? How many of the most engaging lectures are just accidental (and subsequently beautiful) moments of intense hyperfocus? You should see my mind when I’m building theory. It’s a messy web of ideas, inspirations, and questions. The ability to exist with such chaos and somehow bring the threads together into something brilliant is absolutely something that happens as a result of (not in spite of) my spicy brain.”

There is a widespread misconception that neurodivergent conditions like autism and ADHD are “new” things that didn’t exist in previous generations, and that they are somehow the result of our fast-paced, highly digitized world. But neurodivergent people have always existed. Indeed, it’s likely that some of the most intelligent and creative people in history—inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs, and of course, writers—were neurodivergent; we just didn’t have a word for it at the time. While there are as many types of neurodiversity as there are neurodiverse people, there is still power in naming this identity. It helps us better understand our experiences, embrace our strengths, and find community. Regardless of how you identify, the Writers Workshop extends you an open invitation into our community, and to explore and celebrate diversity, neurological and otherwise, through writing.

Resources

UIUC Campus Resources

Resources on Neurodiversity

Neurodiversity in Higher Education

Neurodiversity and Writing

Writers Workshop
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1408 W Gregory Dr
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Email: wow@illinois.edu
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