Rose Wilding, a North East author who just published her debut novel Speak Of The Devil, is going to share her experience of writing with her recently diagnosed ADHD, and some tips for other writers who are also living with ADHD.

When Rose was in school, she used to daydream a lot, staring out of the window during the lessons but since she was quite an academic student, no one thought she could possibly have ADHD.

“Diagnosing ADHD in adults is more difficult because there's some disagreement about whether the list of symptoms used to diagnose children and teenagers also applies to adults” - NHS

When Rose talked about her tips, she mentioned her medication and the Pomodoro Technique  which is a time management method where you work for 25 minutes then have a 5 minutes break. She recommended Forest app which is designed to work along side with the Pomodoro Technique.

“All of my anxiety had gone, and I just feel so calm, so able to sit down and do what I need to do.” Rose said ADHD medication is such a big help for her while writing.

“Writing with ADHD gives my novel more excitement”- Rose Wilding, the author of Speak of the devil

Tahmina Ali, an award-winning poet was born in Bangladesh, raised in South Shields. She shares her journey as a writer of colour who used to struggle with self-identity, a mother with two young children who suffered from postnatal depression, used to be an only brown woman who performed poetry in Newcastle.

Tahmina is delivering free writing workshops with the New Writing North, and constantly performs spoken words around the North East.

Tahmina mentioned writing is helping with her mental health, since it gives her a safe space to let out her emotions and helps her understand her feelings.

For today’s Writer’s Story, Tahmina wrote an unpublished poem to introduce herself, let’s have a listen to the interview:

“Not Bangladeshi enough, not Geordie enough"-Tahmina Ali, a spoken word poet

Alice Chao (余安利) is the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author, she just published her debut Shanghai Immortal. She is a Taiwanese Canadian fantasy writer currently residing in the UK but she was born and raised in Calgary, Canada.

An author with a multicultural background, Alice mentioned the publishing industry should be accepting more diverse stories. “There’s been always, we have a Chinese author, we don’t need another one. But you will never hear someone said we have one of those WW2 stories, we won’t take another one.”

Before becoming a writer, Alice was a lawyer. She spent her free time at an evening writing class, and when she moved to HongKong, her daughter was born and she didn’t know many people there so she found more time to write. That’s where her writing began.

Growing in an immigrant family, Alice values and feels proud of her Taiwanese identity. However, she had seen many diaspora children like her who weren’t comfortable with their Asian identity. One of the reasons she wrote the book is that she wishes people who are growing up like her and her daughter can resonate with that while reading her novel.

“Writing with ADHD gives my novel more excitement”- Rose Wilding, the author of Speak of the devil

lola

Related tracks