Thoughts on the Slow Writing Movement
What if writing slowly is an act of rebellion?
I’m not good at slowing down. Really not good. At all. I never have been. My whole life I had this kind of combustion engine inside me that never stopped. I know now that I have ADHD. I was diagnosed at fifty, though, so there wasn’t a name for it for a long time.
I just knew that I prided myself on outworking anyone. And that doing one thing at a time or doing anything slowly was hard for me. Like I said, that engine just never stopped.
But then, one day, it did. Literally, I woke up one morning and being a bundle of energy — someone who can do all the things, all at once — stopped being a thing for me.
Not because I wanted it to. Not because I got mentally exhausted by it. But because I physically couldn’t. Turns out my adrenal glands don’t work properly and cortisol is a little bit like gas for that internal engine.
From one day to the next, I stopped being a bundle of energy.
I won’t bother lying and trying to paint a rosy picture. Chronic illness is not good. It really sucks. But, also, it’s reality for me and for many, many other people.
What I’ve finally realized, after six months of constantly trying so hard to ‘get back to normal’ is that my…
