5 Tools to Writing with ADHD

Now, if you don't know what Trello is, then you've been living under a rock. Trello is one of the most organizational ways of keeping your life together in one cohesive place.

My mom used Trello for keeping recipes and other information stored, and my one uncle used Trello for work. I use it differently: I use it to organize my books and stories into one common area. Trello is a series of boards and you can name them whatever you want! You can name it "Waste of Time" if you want! Or "Crazy Banana Pants"! Whatever you feel like calling the board, and then you go into creating your lists. Each list should be to organize certain aspects of your story.

In the example below this, I am showing you the basics of what I I use for when I create a new board for a different story. I'll title it what I think would make a good title for the story, whether it's a series or a stand-alone novel, I just put whatever title comes to me. And then, each list in that board is to be titled the following:

• Important Items

  • This is where you'd put your templates and anything else that you deem important, like your theme for the series/stand-alone, or anything else you think is important enough to slap into that list.

• Characters

  • The name of that is pretty self-explanatory. You put your characters here, their entire profile and if you're feeling creative, their photo as well.

• Outlines

  • Your outlines can go here as well. Now if it's a stand-alone novel you're writing, then your outline should go into the Important Items list at the very top. But if it's a series you're writing, then an Outlines list is the best way to go. They even made it where you can now check it off when you're done with the card in the list (that's what they call the items in the lists: cards).

• Idea Dump

  • An Idea Dump is always a great idea to have on the board for your story, because as you're working on a character or the outline, we (ADHDers) tend to get more ideas in one morning than the average person does in the span of one month. So, having an Idea Dump right there at the back of the board has saved my life in the end. Now that doesn't mean every single idea you get and write down in that list will get used. I should know. A lot of my ideas have come up dry as well. But that doesn't mean the idea isn't good. If you have an idea in that list that isn't working for that story, but might for another, just move the card to that other board. I have one specifically for ideas that I'm not using anymore.

Trello is a fun and easy way to keep us organized with our stories. We can also change the background to whatever color we want, or we can put a photo in the background. And when you have everything filled out, your board should look like this: (example below is for my Halloween Series Monster Manor on Substack)