Friday Done List October 31

This week involved mornings lost to a doctor's appointment, buying and taking care of groceries (which I try to do only twice a month in my desperate attempt to save time), and a telephone call appointment, which, of course, involved preparing for the call and post-call activity. All this came out of work time. 

I mention my loss of work time to my fascinating personal life, because it points out, once again, the value of a Done List. I hustled this afternoon to make a submission and get an essay started so I could put both items on my Done List. My week would have been far less productive without having knocked those tasks off.

Sadly, the letters I wrote to friends and relatives to include with Halloween cards do not count toward writing. Wait. Unless I can use something in one of those letters in an upcoming piece. Gasp! Also, I've started keeping a nature journal! I wrote a little bit in that last night. Could that turn into something some day? 

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Received two rejections. Huzzah! That means I'm working!
• Resubmitted one of the rejected pieces.
• Found a publication I can submit a short story to if it is rejected by the publication that is considering it now. That is not negative thinking. That is planning.
• Tried to save and start using the short-form marketing spreadsheet Computer Guy made for me. Yeah, we need to do some work on that.
• Started an essay revision of my two ADHD adult character blog posts. By which I mean I have copied the blog posts into a Word document. Important first step before the cutting begins.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Wrote two blog posts on ADHD adult characters for ADHD Awareness Month. This took quite a bit of my available writing time this week, but I was very interested in the subject so there you go.
• Promoted both posts on Facebook and BlueSky. ADHD Awareness Month doesn't seem to have received much attention at either place.
• Spent a little time looking for short story writers on BlueSky.
• Did a Facebook post promoting some local book events coming up next month. That got more attention than ADHD Awareness Month.

ADHD Awareness Month: Still Looking for Adult ADHD Characters in Adult Books

With adult fiction dealing with ADHD characters there are two issues to consider: 1. Characters who are not intentionally created as being ADHD, readers see it in them. 2. Characters who are intentionally created as being ADHD. In my limited experience, there may be more of the first than the second.

Unintentional ADHD Characters

This is a matter of readers perceiving a character as ADHD whether or not the character is clearly identified as ADHD or whether or not the author intended to be writing an ADHD character. 

This Book Riot article, for instance, argues that Jane in Dread Nation and Ayoola in My Sister, the Serial Killer both have ADHD characteristics. I've read both books but before I became what I might call ADHD sensitive. Thus, I can neither support nor refute their characters' ADHDness. Certainly, these books were written in a time period when ADHD is recognized as ADHD and authors could be interested in creating ADHD-like characters, even if it wasn't discussed as such in the story.

But I've also found articles about characters in books from periods when the disorder must have existed and was even recognized within the medical world. But how much the general public and reading public knew about it is another thing. Were the authors modeling characters on people they knew with what we'd now recognize as ADHD characteristics? Were they intentionally creating ADHD characters, though they wouldn't have known that designation? 

Characters from older books who are sometimes believed to be ADHD-like include Sherlock Holmes and Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables. But the character from an older book that I frequently saw listed as having ADHD qualities is Emma from Jane Austen's Emma. 

Unlike the Sherlock Holmes stories and Anne of Green Gables, I don't believe I've ever read Emma. I made an attempt this past month, but the characters in that thing talk a lot. They talk about the neighbors, primarily. I used to have to finish reading a book once I'd started it, but not anymore.  

However, I did get through, I believe, 18 chapters and found some of the material sited by readers who find Emma to be an ADHD character. 

• She has been meaning to read more since she was 12, has made lists, but another character says he has given up expecting her to do any reading. 
• When her mother died, a character says, Emma lost the only person who could cope with her.
• Emma describes having been interested in painting portraits a few years before but had given it up in disgust and not one painting had been completed.
• At one point, Emma herself describes how little she's able to maintain attention.

I find Emma to be incredibly elitist and overall unpleasant, which has nothing to do with these ADHD type characteristics. I'm not at all sure what Austen was going for here.

Authors With ADHD: More Unintentional ADHD Characters?

Adult authors with ADHD include Rebecca Makkai and Mary Robinette Kowal, both of whom were diagnosed as adults, after they were established in their careers. Kowal has a marvelous short video on ADHD and writing.  In a conversation with Mindy McGinnis (The Female of the Species) Kowal says "I think I'm writing all of my characters as ADHD characters, but if I were trying to write a character who is explicitly ADHD, I wouldn't actually know how, because that's just the way my brain works all the time."

Now I had read the first of Kowal's Lady Astronaut books a few years ago, before ADHD was something I was what you might say sensitive to. I have no recollection of seeing anything ADHD-like in it. But for this ADHD Awareness Month project I read her book Ghost Talkers.

Kowal writes alternative history, and Ghost Talkers involves an alternative World War I-era world in which the British government employes mediums to work with recently deceased soldiers who are trained to report back to them immediately after being killed in order to pass on information about what is actually happening during battles. On the very first page the main character describes having to try to struggle to maintain control during a work session.  "She tried to hold the awareness at bay, along with the dozens of other spirit circles working for the British Army." "...if she weren't careful that would pull her back into her body." There are references throughout the book to her being in danger of coming unmoored, in danger of losing her grip, and dealing with thousands of memories at once. At another point, one of the ghosts has to struggle to focus.

Was Kowal using ADHD characteristics to create characters and even plot? Is this something other ADHD authors may do? Or is this just a reader finding what she's looking for in a text? 

Intentional ADHD Characters in Romance

I've read, more than once, that romance writers have embraced ADHD characters. In fact, you can find ADHD romance lists. I found Portrait of a Scotsman, a historical romance by Evie Dunmore, on a couple of ADHD romance lists. 

Right away in the first chapter the main (wealthy, of course) character is concerned that she has gone to the wrong address. "Or perhaps she had done it again...She squinted at the address, then back at the house number with full attention." She struggles with impulse control in a gallery. "...she shouldn't touch it. She really should not." When caught touching something she shouldn't have, she says, "I had not meant to touch it." She later describes how she had failed to get her mail that morning and thus didn't know about a cancellation. In a discussion with the male lead, she says, "...there's the matter of my attention...It is either scattered or directed with an unnatural focus. I lose track of time when I paint, for example."

She, and her family, are aware of her ADHD, even if they don't have a word for it.

She is also clearly dyslexic, however. The two conditions do sometimes occur together. Having seen  doctors about her inability to write without spelling errors or keep numbers in the correct order, her family is finally told that it's not her eyes causing the problem, but a sort of "word blindness." This leads her father to fear there is something wrong with her brain. Her brain is considered odd within the family, though the male lead in the story recognizes early on her superior visual memory.

We don't see a great deal about her conditions over the course of the story, but I think what we do see is mainly related to dyslexia. Dyslexia is like the autism I wrote about earlier. Neurotypical readers feel they know what it is and can recognize it. That would make it easier to show in fiction than ADHD.

My short study of ADHD adult fiction has been as interesting as it's been disappointing. I'll definitely be looking for ADHD in my adult fiction reading in the future.

ADHD Awareness Month: Where Are the ADHD Characters in Adult Fiction?

I have reached the end of my reading for the Heritage Months that were recognized by the U.S. government prior to 2025.  The State Department only recognizes Black History month now. The former history months can be found at an archived web page.  

That left me free this month to read for ADHD Awareness Month. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting how the brain works. People with the condition sometimes identify as neurodivergent, because they think differently than what is considered typical or neurotypical. (Remember that. I'm going to use the terms  later and needed to squeeze them in early, sort of like foreshadowing but different.) ADHD has become an interest for me, because we have a family member with the condition. Thus, I have a dog in this race, so to speak.

These days, adult books are also an interest for me. This month I was interested in finding adult fiction relating to ADHD. I came up really short on that. 

In children's fiction, there have been ADHD characters for years. Since back in the day when it was called just ADD, in fact, if not earlier. Why can't I find much in the way of adult fiction dealing with them?

You've probably guessed I have a theory.

Theory Part 1. Children's Gatekeepers Love a Fictional Problem

Problem books are a definite thing in children's fiction. This may be connected to the belief that children's books should be instructive, something that goes back to the nineteenth century, anyway. If a problem is addressed in a book, child readers can learn about it. Huzzah!

I also used to see a theory that problem books are easier to teach than, say, anything else, meaning problem books would have a good chance in the educational market. And then the school library market. And the parent and grandparent market. All the markets that buy children's books so kids can learn something.

Now there are excellent reasons for including ADHD characters in children's books, whether or not the book is specifically a problem book. Representation for ADHD readers is one of them. Opportunities for readers without ADHD to gain more understanding of the condition is another. I am going to argue that ADHD characters can also have something unique and interesting to add to a work of fiction, something new I haven't seen over and over again because I've been reading so very, very long.

But those reasons for including ADHD characters also exist for adult fiction. So why have I found it so difficult to find ADHD characters in adult works of fiction?

Theory Part 2. Adults Are Our Own Gatekeepers 

We adults have a great deal more flexibility in choosing our own free reading than children do. No one is assigning us meaningful books to read or insisting we read from an approved list of improving titles. Fiction around conditions as conditions doesn't appeal to us that much. If we have a condition or disorder we want to learn more about, our first thought isn't a novel, but nonfiction written by a professional of some sort. 

There is a great deal of ADHD nonfiction for adults.  A great deal. So many nonfiction lists.

But the lack of representation in fiction is fascinating. Perhaps if adult readers wanted to see ADHD characters, they would appear?  A market would be born! But my guess is that after having spent their youths seeing treatment of ADHD in children's literature as a problem to cope with, neither those with ADHD or those without it are wildly enthusiastic about having to read more.  

Theory Part 2, Subsection A. Writers Don't Know How to Write ADHD.

But why aren't there characters with ADHD in books that are not specifically about ADHD? After all, other neurodivergent characters, and I'm thinking autistic ones here, appear in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and The Maid. (Both mysteries for what that's worth.) I've recently finished watching the wonderful French TV series Astrid et Raphaelle, a clever, even witty, buddy cop story in which one of the cops is autistic. So neurodivergent characters can be successful in fictional worlds.

I'm going to do some speculating here and throw out a guess that neurotypical audiences and gatekeepers believe they know the common characteristics of some types of autism--lack of eye contact and stimming, for instance, and sensitivity to sound. These happen to be characteristics that are relatively easy to show. 

Though knowledge of ADHD behaviors goes back at least to the beginning of the twentieth century, it became far more known among the neurotypical public around the 1980s. At that time, it was generally thought of as involving struggles to pay attention in school and impulsive behavior. Those general issues are harder to quickly use in a piece of fiction for adults than the issues general readers and writers associate with autism. In an adult book the results of having had trouble in school, something that happened in the past, or the results of being impulsive would probably be easier to work into a story than the real time school problems and impulsive behavior.

ADHD was also associated with children at that point in the late twentieth century. It appears to have taken the literary world a while to recognize that ADHD children grow up to become ADHD adults.

Or that ADHD can go undiagnosed until adulthood.

Perception of ADHD in the Twenty-first Century

These days a great deal more is known about what ADHD involves, things we so called neurotypicals had never heard of a few decades ago. In addition to the famous difficulty focusing attention and impulsive behavior we now know about:

• Hyperfocus--The ability to stay fixated on a subject or project for lengthy periods of time, which, yes, seems unexpected since superficially ADHD is seen as the inability to maintain attention. I've witnessed this.
• Sensory processing issues--This can involve any of the senses, including taste and smell. Connected to the eating problems in some people with ADHD? I've witnessed this, too. Though there are other reasons ADHD can be accompanied by eating problems.  
• ADHD paralysis--Sensory overload or overload from having too many options or tasks to complete, so the individual just shuts down. Maybe collapses on the couch. Yes, I've witnessed this.
• Anxiety--Anxiety is common in people with ADHD. I have witnessed this, too.
• Hypersensitivity to rejection/criticism--Or maybe even perceived rejection/criticism? Yes, yes, you've guessed it. I've witnessed this.

Those are just aspects of ADHD that my shallow knowledge of the subject has turned up. They could definitely be used to create unique, well-rounded characters.

In another post I'll cover some books I read in my attempt to find ADHD adult fiction, including older books ADHD readers look to to find themselves, a genre that is supposed to be taking the lead in including ADHD characters, and a little bit about some ADHD writers.  

Friday Done List October 23

I missed two days of work today to attend a family event--a pleasant one, not a funeral. I still have some cleaning up for that, because I don't travel lightly. And I have a lot of life things to do that I didn't do while I wasn't here.

What I'm getting at is that this is the kind of week when a Done List is really important. You can reassure yourself that you did something, no matter how small. Also, as the day for the Done List draws closer, you'll find yourself hustling to get a few more things done to add to it. An example? For goal one I resubmitted a story I might have wait until next week for but I wanted to look good on my Done List.

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Submitted the humor piece I talked about for three weeks. Now four, because I'm talking about it now.
• Received rejection on that humor piece.
• Resubmitted that rejected humor piece to another site, one that I have never submitted to before.
• Believe I worked a bit on the book chapter being revised into a short story.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Did some promotion for an essay published the end of last week.
• Did quite a bit of work on a blog post I hope to publish soon.
• Came up with another blog post idea! One that can become an essay to submit!
• Came up with still another blog post idea!

Goal 3. Submit Book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

• Am considering a new agent to submit one of my books to. This came about within hours of me telling my cousin I wasn't doing that anymore, unless a name dropped into my lap. And that's sort of what happened.

Goal 4. Play with the 19th Century Novel Idea, Which Does Have a Title, But is Mainly a Fun Think Piece

• Made some notes on this. 

Friday Done List October October 17

Not my best week, but a Done List certainly makes clear that it could have been a lot worse. As it probably will be next week when I'm going away for an overnight.

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Worked some more on revising a book chapter into a short story. You remember...I mentioned it last week?
• Also last week I told you that I'd nearly finished a second draft of a humor piece that I'd mentioned the week before. Three weeks. I think it's ready to submit, but I need to go make some bread, so I'm going to wait until tomorrow, because I don't like to rush these things. Three weeks!
• Finished the essay revision of two blog posts about Hispanic American literature.
• Submitted the above essay to Books Are Our Superpower.
• Oh, and look! It has been accepted. Well, that's gratifying.
• Did research for the short-form market project. One publication. I looked at one publication. It accepts flash shorter than I write now. But maybe I'll submit something in the future, because I did like what I had time to read there.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Wrote and posted a humor study blog post.
• Promoted the humor study blog post on Facebook, BlueSky, and Goodreads
• Found an article on building up a BlueSky following. For what that's worth.
• Have just barely begun a new blog post.

Getting Serious About Humor: More Humor With Mystery

Timmossholder on Unsplash

I picked up The Mystery of the Crooked Man by Tom Spencer while browsing at a library, and I'm blogging about it now because I really need to get it back there. One of the book's blurbs described it as "riotously funny," and while I wouldn't go that far, main character Agatha Dorn is extremely drole in a bitter way that I enjoyed very much. 

In my inept study of humor writing I have found very few truly funny works of fiction. They tend to involve wry point-of-view characters and how they perceive what is happening in the story. Perhaps what I should learn from this is that humor in fiction is usually about character, not situation or plot.

Of another humorous mystery, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson, I said, among other things, that the narrator's inner life contributed to the humor. The same is true of the main character in The Mystery of the Crooked Man. Agatha might argue that she doesn't have much of an inner life or much of a life at all, which ends up being far funnier than you'd think it should be.

Of course, any readers of mysteries, or at least any readers of a certain age who have been reading mysteries for a long time, are going to raise their brows at a main character named Agatha in a mystery novel. Agatha Christie has become as famous for being Agatha Christie, Mystery Author, as she is for being Agatha Christie the author of mysteries, if you follow my thought there. She's sort of transcended her work. 

Now that I think of it, you probably don't need to be a reader of mysteries to know who Agatha Christie is and to note the use of that unusual first name in a book. 

Here is an interesting bit from the The Mystery of the Crooked Man that casual readers may not get and is not a spoiler: Agatha Dorn is a museum archivist who is a specialist on an author from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction named Gladden Green. Gladden Green had a real mystery in her life, because she disappeared for a few days while at the height of her career and later turned up in a hotel. This all right out of the real life of Agatha Christie. In case I haven't been clear, Agatha Dorn is a specialist on a character modeled on Agatha Christie. And get this...Gladden Green's husband's name is Archie. Agatha Christie's husband at the time she disappeared was also named Archie. She got another one later.

Now, of course, none of this is particularly funny, but it is fun. Also, is it metafiction? I've never been one hundred percent clear on what that is. 

I'm obsessing.

I must say that I felt this book dragged a little in the middle in terms of plot and mystery. But then it came roaring back with one of the best mystery endings I can recall. I didn't see it coming, but it made perfect sense.

I don't know how Agatha Dorn can come back for another mystery, but I'm definitely onboard if she does.

 

Friday Done List October 10

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• A revision of my post on children's book blogging was published last Friday at Books Are Our Superpowers.
• Began a revision of a book chapter into a short story. I was going to do this, anyway, but am now revising it for a themed submission that I read about while doing some reading for the Market Research Project.
• Speaking of the Market Research Project, as part of that I did some reading on a publication and submitted a piece of flash fiction to it.
• I've been keeping track of the Market Research Project on a rough chart I made in Word. My Computer Guy made me a spreadsheet, which I now need to learn how to use.
• Did almost a complete second draft of a humor piece I mentioned last week.
• Did a little bit more on the Hispanic American Book essay I'm working on.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• 
  Did a post here on the children's book blogging essay.
• Promoted that blog post as well as the original essay.
• Joined a new (for me) women writers Facebook group, because you can't belong to too many Facebook writing groups.
• A friend found a copy of My Life Among the Aliens on display in a New Hampshire school library. Yeah, I've been sharing that, both on Facebook and BlueSky.

A Story Behind the Story with Childlit Blogging. Also, How Are Things Going at Medium?

Robyn Budlender on Unsplash

Last week I revised Still Another Childlit Blog Gone into pretty much another essay, A Passion for Children's Books, which was accepted by and published at Books Are Our Superpower on Medium. 

I may be wrong, but I believe I've mentioned here before that using the same material in different ways for publication in different places is a classic freelance writer method of generating work. Also, Medium is open to its writers republishing their own work, so I could republish my Original Content work there, anyway. I think there are people who republish their Substack work at Medium and vice versa.

I do this kind of thing primarily with my Heritage Month posts. It gives me an opportunity to expose the books and writers I'm writing about, and yes, me, further than I could do just with the blog. It gives me an opportunity to promote all of us again on BlueSky and perhaps Facebook and my Goodreads blog. 

I also end up doing more thinking about my subject. When I first started doing this, I just did a little tinkering before submitting to Medium publications. My rewrites have become more and more involved, especially if I was combining and compressing more than one Original Content post. I'm embarrassed to say that it's almost as if the Original Content material is the first draft. 

And How Is Doing This Working Out for You, Gail?

Except for a few humor pieces, most of my submissions to Medium publications this year have been revisions of this type. I'm avoiding going to the work of creating brand new pieces for submission there, because readership is so low. The only time I do well there is if an accepted essay is nominated by the publication's editor and selected by the mysterious upper beings for what is called the Boost Program. This happened a couple of times this year, most recently with When the French Canadians Came to Town. In that situation, Medium gives articles more promotion, and there is the potential for many more readers, which can mean making more than a dollar and change for your writing. But you can't expect this to happen. I've had 14 articles or humor pieces published at Medium publications this year with 3 boosted. Of the other 11, six had so few readers that I made less than a dollar each on them. I did better than that a few years back. Now breaking a dollar is good news.

Therefore, this year I'm trying to spend more time submitting to literary journals, which so far has resulted in a piece of flash fiction, What We Do, being published in Stonecoast Review. Literary journals often don't have broad readership, either, and they often don't pay, so that doesn't seem a big gain over Medium. However, publication in literary journals may be better than Medium in terms of status, since they have more rigorous gatekeepers monitoring acceptance and are likely to have more professional editing. That means they could be better for building/maintaining a career. 

So while I'm not through with Medium by any means, my five-year Medium experience suggests it's not a place where I should be submitting all my work.

Friday Done List October 3

Got a bit of a bounce back this week, in part because of found time due to a family cancellation. Good thing, because a number of personal things are coming up next week. 

 Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Received a cancellation, on my birthday no less. But it was the end of the day.
• Watched a video of a Zoom writing workshop I hadn't been able to attend live. It was disappointing.
• Finished a draft of a piece of flash fiction. Will sit on it for a while, because everything improves after being sat upon.
• Did a little on the Market Research Project, which led to...
• ...Submitting a piece of flash nonfiction.
• Finished a draft of a humor piece. It needs some tinkering.
• Started an essay combining my two Hispanic American Heritage Month posts.
• Revised the post I did on Jen Robinson's Book Page and submitted it to a Medium publication.
• Did a little more on the Market Research Project. This was for a publication I didn't care for. The two stories I started to read were readable but depressing and dull. Updated my notes with that. 

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Did a blog post on Jen Robinson's Book Page disappearing.
• Promoted the Jen Robinson post on Facebook and BlueSky.
• Worked on getting a few more followers on BlueSky, which meant following a few more. This is more than a pointless vanity project, because I'm developing a "literary bubble" at BlueSky in which I'm seeing links to articles and books that interest me. Almost more than I can read, in fact.

Still Another Childlit Blog Gone

Jen Robinson's Book Page, one of the more notable childlit blogs from the early 2000s, disappeared from the Internet on Tuesday, September 30. Typepad, the blog's host, has shut down and any blogs it supported are gone, too. 

When announcing this on Facebook a few days ago, Jen said she hadn't been posting regularly over the last few years, which is the case with many literary blogs, particularly those dealing with children's literature. Ms. Yingling has been blogging independently since 2006. Betsy Bird's A Fuse #8 Production began the same year, but has been part of School Library Journal for a long time now. There are a few others still out there, but many children's litblogs just disappeared with little fanfare. 

When Julie Danielson ended 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast in 2022, I addressed the incredible amount of time serious blogging takes. Jen Robinson was a serious blogger. In Julie Powell and the World of Blogging, I suggested other reasons litblogging, in general, is a shadow of its former self.

Jen's Facebook announcement of the disappearance of her blog brought 90 comments discussing the early days of children's litblogging. (In those early days of children's litblogging, we talked a lot among ourselves. All of that would have been in blog comments.) Substack came up, which is usually described as a newsletter site. I posted about Medium.

"Medium is often described as a blogging platform, I think because of the ease of use and because people are encouraged to post a lot there. But a lot of publications are created there, and the material published in those seems more like articles than blog posts, possibly because there is usually a gatekeeper. Plus, the platform is just so overwhelmed with tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of writers, many setting themselves up as authorities in all kinds of things. There definitely is not the feeling of the early blog era--the salon-type feeling, the exploration."

A Greek philosopher (Heraclitis--I just looked it up) said something about not being able to enter the same river twice, because the water in the river has passed on, you're entering new water. Meaning life, like rivers, never stays the same. I'm glad I was there for childlit blogging's wild west period, but I also recognize when it's time to move on. 

I will pause in my moving on, though, to direct you to this pdf we created of a blog tour stop I made at Jen Robinson's Book Page in 2008 in support of what may end up being my last children's book, A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers. Why, yes, that does make this all about me, doesn't it? What did you expect? This is an author's blog that exists to support my work, making it different from Jen Robinson's Book Page, a children's literature blog that existed to support that genre and its readers.

If you take a look at that blog post, you'll see that she didn't set that thing up as a traditional author interview with brief questions that I would go on and on about. This was a conversation, and Jen's contribution was at least as important as mine. Her side of the discussion shows her breadth of knowledge of the genre we were talking about. It also suggests that she assumed her readers would either know what she was talking about or want to know it.

I think Jen Robinson's Book Page represented the high end thought and writing that went into the best of children's book blogging back when children's book blogging was new.