R.L. Kramer

I don’t know if it is fair to connect it to my ADHD, maybe it’s just me, but I have struggled with finishing for a long time. Starting projects is something I could do endlessly. I could come up with an intricate, complicated thing to build and work on it till four am with a nice pace, motivated by the afterglow of inspiration, especially when I was using the medications. I would work until I was pooped and go to sleep. The next day, only briefly glancing at what I had begun as I move it out of the way to make space for this day’s new idea and project. 

I started a book back in 2013 about ADD, its medicines and both of the relationship I shared with each of them. I wrote it repeatedly. I restarted the project over and over and I committed to finishing. I knew it was within my capacity to let it go. I had let go of many creative endeavors to make the space for the book. 

 I learned how to show up and finish. It’s about those finishing, lasting touches. It makes it work. It makes it happen. Books don’t get written by accident. Thinking about doing something one day doesn’t move it along without some sort of relative action towards its in-real-life manifestation. The words get put on the page; the page gets edited, formatted and shipped off. The foundation is poured, walls framed, wrapped, trimmed, painted and a place ready to move into. I had a tendency to become a resident of my projects. I settled into them being places of creation and movement. I lingered in there for comfort. Projects need regular state changes until the state becomes “done.” I would finish the book then do another read-through, then another one on an e-reader in a coffeeshop and take notes. Then read through it again on the computer, then the editor takes a pass and read through it looking at her notes. Then convert it into a speech file and listen to it while I dig holds for a split-rail fence. Pausing regularly to take screenshots on my phone of what needs to be changed and then staying up till two in the morning inserting my changes into my manuscript.I became attached to the process. I changed my final so many times that the person formatting my final document had to resend it ten times. The process must eventually lead to finishing. 

My book is finished. I have copies of it in my house — and I am having a hard time looking at the inside and reading it. I have done it so much. I know I will have to do it one more big time for the audiobook read-through. I’m ready to talk about the book, but I don’t need to look at it. It’s too unfamiliar to look at it without being able to touch it, move things around, delete and write into it. It’s locked.

Sometimes finishing doesn’t feel like you imagine it will. Nothing changes. It’s just gone. I can write this blog now, I can open new projects. But a relationship is over. I no longer spend evenings and early mornings with my friend, the manuscript. I am becoming an empty nester as Hocus Focus: Coming of Age with ADD and its Medicines, goes off into the world on its own. With the space open, I can now start something else.