J.M. Bask

The ADHD Writer Diaries: May 29th, 2026

June 6, 2026 / Jessica Bask / 0 Comments

This post has been transcribed from handwritten.

It’s not writer’s block. It’s ADHD. It’s hormone deficiency. It’s perimenopause. It’s my brain either exhausted or wired, sludge at one time of the month, then running at full speed for a few days somewhere in the middle.

EXCEPT-EXCEPT-EXCEPT-by the time I grasp that my mind is actually functioning and catch up with enough (chores, errands, responsibilities) to feel like I might be able to write with out all of those things nagging at the back of my mind, weaving in and out of the story I’m trying to tell—it’s on the downswing again.

As I write this, the back of my brain is literally chanting, “I bought this green pen at a dollar store in the mountains.”

Maybe I should try to write with music, find some lofi wordless hum, but then I worry that my ADHD brain would want to [stares off into space for a full minute] spend a bunch of time picking out the ‘perfect’ music to write to {my perimenopausal brain keeps wanting to spell ‘write’ as ‘right’ and it’s pissing me off}.

I love that I have an answer for the reason I lose interest in writing projects and interrupt people and [stares off into space again] have to put my keys and wallet in my purse and always hang my purse here {mental picture of the black hook on the coat closet door} or I’ll lose it.

I hate that there was a slim to none chance of me being diagnosed sooner.

I despise that I cannot tell my mom this diagnosis because she’ll say ‘no you don’t/it doesn’t exist/you were just a weird kid/I hope you’re not taking those stimulants.’

I loathe that all the stories I started and never finished were probably because my brain was done getting dopamine from them. {Here’s looking at you, all the Nanowrimos I ‘won’ by getting to the 50k word deadline, only to quit writing, mid-story somewhere between 50,000 and 51,000.

–I’m using synonyms to work on by brain power—

I’m scared I’ll never write again because there is no deadline/deadlines I give myself aren’t good enough to make the brain go/I can’t get someone else to give me a deadline (publisher agent professional0 without proving first I’m good enough to deserve a deadline.

I know all my short stories are novels waiting to happen.

Should I write more short stories? Should I rewrite my goblin novel and make it more horror? Should I just keep writing it as-is, even though it doesn’t feel write (goddamnit) right to me, tone-wise? {I love the concept}. Should I just give up and lay down and say I wrote a bunch of short stories and a first draft of a novel and got published a few times and just give up?!

I DON’T WANT TO GIVE UP.

What I want is for some semi-successful writer I admire—someone I would feel beholden to through sheer admiration—to magically appear and give me a deadline and a minimum word count and agree to read a chapter if I make it all the way through writing a whole novel.

I want to not have ADHD.

But, if I didn’t have ADHD, would my brain make the what-ifs that have allowed me to tell so many wonderful stories {if only mostly to myself}.

[stares off into space, then back at the notebook, then—you get it]

I slept from eleven-thirty last night until six-thirty am, and then took a nap from eight forty-five a.m. to ten a.m. and then drank coffee and cola and it’s close to eight in the evening now and I’m tired. So tired.

If stimulants allow me to focus and write, I don’t care if there is an evening crash. My brain already has them anyway.

{This—being ADHD—explains the late nights I spent most of my life having [Hey did you know I taught myself to tell stories in my head and/or listen to the background music in my skull—Radio JMFM—rather than my racing throught in order to fall asleep at a decent time?]}

I hate when I get the words wrong now. It feels like time is ticking down to when perimenopause/menopause or dementia or old age are going to steal my prized words [mental picture of Gollum in the cave with the ring].

Precious, not prized. My precious words.

I write this like my brain thinks.

I wonder if anyone would want to read it/if I should transcribe it.

The act of physically writing + listening to the cat’s drinking fountain has kept my brain busy {calm?} enough to focus.

I wonder how long after I stop until the music kicks back in—

–ope, there she goes [strains of “My Name is Jonas” by Weezer play from the backrooms of JM’s skull].

FIN

Attention: Writing

June 5, 2026 / Jessica Bask / 0 Comments

A vulnerable post but, first, a writing history:

I was acting out fanfiction on the playground in elementary school thirty years before I even knew what fanfiction was. My best friend, Justin, and I pretended to be characters from movies we liked and acted out entirely new stories on the playground. He would be King Triton and I would be Ariel, sent on an adventure that had nothing to do with some boy up in a castle. We would play invisible baseball with our monstrous imaginary friends, Beetlejuice, Drop Dead Fred, and Maurice. I wanted to tell stories even before I knew that was a job you could have.

By sixth grade, I realized people were paid to write books and I knew I wanted to be An Author. So I started writing

Weirdly, though, I had a hard time finishing what I started. I would write a chapter or two and go back and edit, edit, edit until I lost interest. If I did happen to get farther (I once filled nearly an entire notebook with what I realized, years later, was Interview with the Vampire fanfic), I would lend it to a friend for feedback and lose interest by the time I got it back.

In my twenties and early thirties, I won Nanowrimo multiple times, back when Nano wasn’t taboo due to AI use, always hitting that lauded fifty-thousand word mark…only to stop before fifty-one thousand words. I meant to get back to it those stories. I just never did.

Then, the pandemic came, and the literal threat of death made me realize if I did not take writing seriously, I would never be a published writer. Mid-2020, I started churning out stories long-hand and piecemeal between dealing with two young kids in virtual school, then typing them up later. By the middle of 2023, I had sold my first story.

The next year, I told myself I would write a book. I wrote the whole thing longhand on half a dozen legal pads, but got off track around 95% done. I fought myself for months to write the ending. I knew what I wanted to write, but every time I wanted to sit down and do it, it was like walking through sludge or trying to press myself through a brick wall. When I finally talked myself into it, it took a handful of hours and added up to less than 3,000 words. (I typed it all up in 2025, and have spent the first half of 2026 telling myself I’m going to pick it up and start cleaning it up).

By this point, the vaccines had rolled out and less and less of my friends and family went out masked, so the urgency to write-or-die waned. The kids were back in school. I still wrote down my story ideas and wrote a story here and there, but it was becoming harder. I still wanted to do it, more than anything.

Fast forward to 2025: in the fall, I hit perimenopause loud and clear with symptoms I won’t bore (or disgust) you with, and suddenly everything I wanted or needed to do became more difficult by the day. I had always kept lists for the grocery store and a planner with to-do’s. Suddenly, I wasn’t remembering to write things on them. Whatever hormone had given me the urgency to do the laundry or dishes or pickup drinks from Costco before we ran out–let alone write a story–has started only showing up at certain times of the month.

If you’ve made it this far and haven’t figured out what has been holding me back, it’s ADHD. And anxiety, but mostly ADHD. I got my ADHD-Inattentive diagnosis, a few weeks ago in May of 2026.

For the first week, it was a relief! I wasn’t lazy! I really do want to write! It’s just the dopamine and the norepinephrine and other complicated brain-chemical-stuff I don’t understand.

And now I’m in the grieving period. Realizing thirty years have gone by that I could have been writing and actually finishing things if someone had caught it. (Yes, other things I missed out on, but god the writing I could have done! THE WRITING I COULD HAVE DONE).

I am about to travel the road most ADHD adults travel: finding the right medication and lots of therapy to deal with what I lost. In the meantime, I am also trying to find my way into writing daily again, mostly by journaling what I am going through.

If you’re interested in reading about that experience (there will be lots of em-dashes, italics and parentheses and NO AI), then, please, follow along. I am doing this partly for myself but, also, in the hopes that I’ll find some other writer out there who is dealing with ADHD the same way I am, and that we’ll both feel less alone.

On that note, if that’s you, I’m looking for someone (or more than one someone) to be my accountability partner—and vice versa—to check in on word counts and trade manuscripts and cheer each other through that stupid stubborn wall in our minds.

FIN.

Fall 2025 Updates–New Stories, Recommended Reading

November 25, 2025 / Jessica Bask

Hey, it’s actually been a pretty busy fall for me.

My horror short story, “I’m Not From Here” came out on September 1, 2025 in the Costs of Living anthology from Whisper House Press. The editor, Steve Capone Jr., was a pleasure to work with and really made my weird little second person story the best it could be. If you’re interested in reading it, it’s available at the link above.

At the same time, my suburban fantasy/slipstream story, “A Sea of Laundry,” debuted in Trollbreath Magazine’s Fall 2025 issue. If you care to subscribe, the link will take you there. Again, the editors were amazing and made my story the best it could be.

And now, “I’m Not From Here” has appeared on the Horror Writer Association’s reading list, in the short fiction category. The list compilation of recommendations by members, which means someone in the HWA liked my story enough to recommend it. I am absolutely blown away to be in the same section of the list as such wonderful authors as Joe R. Lansdale, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Paul Tremblay, and Jonathan Janz (who by the way, I’m sure is going to win an award for his short piece, “Lenora” because it was asbolute fire).

I guess I better push aside all the other stuff I have been dealing with this fall and get back to writing to make sure this is the first time I appear on a recommended reading list, and not the last.

Best,
J.M.

I Have Never Lived Alone (A Rant)

June 17, 2025 / Jessica Bask

I have never lived alone. I have never lived alone.

I was the youngest of three siblings. I have never lived alone. I always had roommates to share the fridge and the bathroom and the workspaces. I have never lived alone. There have always been the smells and sounds and sights of other people in my personal spaces. I have never lived alone. A toilet flushes, Mom cooks dinner in the kitchen, my brother screams my name. I have never lived alone.

I went from living with a roommate to moving in with a boyfriend who became a fiance who became a husband. And then we multiplied. We made two people who call my name and and ask for lunch and what’s for dinner and where are we going today and what are you doing. I have never lived alone. I try to write in the dining room where no one goes, but they find me. I have never lived alone. I write in my bedroom with the door open, and they stand and stare in silence. I have never lived alone. I buy a desk and move it to the room off the basement and shut the door, but they knock anyway. I have never lived alone. I tell them not to knock and Dad tells them not to knock and I hear their voices loudly asking where’s Mom. I have never lived alone.

Now all I want is to have a place to be alone. I want a tiny house, right next to my husband’s because I have never been alone. It will have a bathroom, a bed, a desk, a fridge for cold drinks, shelves for books and I will be alone. I also dream of soundproof walls so I can’t hear the leaf blowers and the hedgetrimmers and I can feel alone. One-way windows so no one can see if I am home and I will be alone. I don’t even need the internet or cell service. Don’t call me, I’ll call you and maybe I won’t, just so that I am all alone I’ll write my stories on pieces of lined paper and type them up later. Leave me the hell alone.

For a day. An hour. A minute. I want to write in silence and know that no one is going to call my name or turn on a TV or trim a hedge outside my window or ask what’s for dinner because I’ll be all alone. I just want to be alone. I just want to be alone. Not all the time. Just for a little while. But, goddamnit, I need to be alone.

Words Matter (And Not Just the Ones in Books)

June 15, 2025 / Jessica Bask

It’s been so long since I have regularly posted on this blog, that I’m not sure I have ever written about why it has taken me so long to be a published writer.

I have known I wanted to be a writer since elementary school. I can’t pinpoint the exact time or place (or book) that made me sure that was what I wanted out of life, so we’ll just say the age of ten. That’s over thirty years in the past and yet I didn’t get my first publication until two years ago, didn’t finish my first draft of my first book until this past year. Why?

The simple answer is support. Or lack thereof.

I remember having a typewriter and writing a ‘children’s book’ and getting a rejection in the mail for it when I was thirteen or fourteen. In the intervening thirty years, I didn’t submit anything else. And it wasn’t because of that rejection.

It was very simply because every time I mentioned wanting to be a writer, wanting to go to college and get an E

A few days later, I was talking to my husband and, wondering aloud, I said, “I wonder if I would have made it as an author if someone had encouraged me when I was a kid?”

nglish or journalism degree, wanting to write novels, I was told I would be wasting my time and money. “You can’t make a career of writing.” “It’s so hard to be a novelist.” “If you’re going to get an English degree, the only thing that’s useful for is teaching.” I was a child and these were adults. So I believed them. I stopped finishing stories. I stopped prio

A few weeks ago, I got my copy of the anthology I am in that comes out in September, Costs of Living from Whisper House Press. I showed it to my husband, excited, and to my kids, excited, and all of them were proud of me. My daughter (a surly, preteen who pretends to be disgusted with me most of the time) even told the friend she was chatting with on the phone.

Without missing a beat or stopping what he was doing, he said, “Of course you would have. You’d probably be famous already. Look at you now, you’ve already sold a couple of stories and you just started trying to sell them.”

I wish someonehad encouraged me then, the way he does now.

By the way, just sold another story. Details to come soon.

Updates

May 12, 2025 / Jessica Bask

I’m apparently really bad at this blogging thing since the date of my last post is eleven months ago.

So, quick recap:

I never finished the second novel I was writing in the last post. I do plan to, even though it’s not my usual genre (it’s fantasy romance).
I didn’t finish it because I got caught up typing up the second draft of the first novel (I handwrote the whole first draft because I’m crazy).
I got another story accepted. This actually happened at the end of last year, though the anthology it is in does not come out until September 2025. The story if “I’m Not From Here” and will be in Whisper House Press’ Costs of Living anthology, which you can preorder from Amazon at the link or at the less distasteful bookstore of your choice. If you’re a writer, you can check our Whisper House here. I really enjoyed working with the editor and they have more horror anthologies forthcoming.
While I am not currently finishing the fantasy romance (working title: The Bog Witch) I am currently working on another long piece and finishing up some shorter stories I have going on.
Neil Gaiman turned out to be a creep. That was disappointing. I still own a bunch of his books, but I’m not sure I will ever be able to enjoy them again.
In terms of writing, I am writing way more consistently this year. I am already way further on overall word count than I was at the same point in 2025, and I have already submitted more stories than I did for all of last year.

I think that about covers it, writing-wise. I am going to try to post more content here, even though I’m 90% sure no one reads it.

Frozen…

June 6, 2024 / Jessica Bask

…And not in a good way. Not in a self-discovering, ice-castle-making, singing-on-high kind of way.

I’m currently working on my second(?) novel(?) with double question marks, because the story I am currently writing I did not intend to be anything but a short story but, as stories often do, it took on a life of it’s own and recently passed 15,000 words with no end in sight.

And with no end in sight and a meandering fifteen-thousand word tale, I had an epiphany of how the story should have began. That beginning would change the whole story and I would have to start anew.

I know what I’ve written so far isn’t very good. I know it is directionless. I know it is something I was writing just to keep writing and prove I could finish it (eventually). And I know for that reason I should start over. But, that’s also the reason that’s making it hard for me to start over.

See, if you know anything about me you know I have been writing for 30 years, and only started finishing things three or four years ago. Yes, that’s right, nearly three decades of half-done stories, novels that didn’t go more than three chapters, and several that had tens of thousands of words…and then just stopped.

I just recently proved to myself that I could finish things. And I’ve only finished something so lengthy once (finished first draft of first novel in March of this year). So I’m afraid if I start over, I’ll be falling into old habits and this will just become one more thing I didn’t finish. I also know what I’m writing now isn’t that great, and what I would write, if I began again, could be awesome.

I’m frozen, a big ball of anxiety. I hope I figure it out soon, because I tend to only draft one project at a time.

Guess Who’s Back…

May 21, 2024 / Jessica Bask

…back again, Jess is back, tell a friend…

Yeah, I’m that old.

Anyway, the site was down for awhile due to some PHP stuff which, as a writer, I am completely unfamiliar with. Thankfully, however, my husband is great at all things tech (and I’m based off his server) so he handled it.

Of course, that doesn’t excuse the long absence of me posting anything before the very short one of my website being wonky. That one had more to do with a mix of seasonal depression and being overwhelmed as a parent, partner, and human being for most of the winter.

More to come, and soon.

-J. M.

Anxiety is a Bad Storyteller

June 21, 2023 / Jessica Bask

Anxiety, for me, is a bad storyteller. It’s half your brain, telling you bad stories all the time. You don’t want to hear them, but can’t help but listen.

One of the most famous writers of all, Stephen King, has said that he doesn’t plot, but instead uses “what-if” scenarios. “A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot. The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a What-if question: What if vampires invaded a small New England village? (Salem’s Lot). What if a young mother and her son became trapped in their stalled car by a rabid dog? (Cujo).” –Stephen King

Well, anxiety is your brain telling you “what-if” scenarios all the time. However, they are simultaneously weak plots and yet, also, the kind that will send a person into a panic spiral. For example, it’s been raining here for three days so here are some of the what-ifs my brain is giving me: “What if you get another roof leak? What if you get a leak, but it’s really water seeping into the house and it’s really slow and you don’t catch it right away? What if that imaginary slow leak causes the walls to fill with mold? What if you catch it, but your home insurance won’t pay for it? While you’re busy worrying about the roof, the walls, and the whole house leaking, what if your car is leaky too?”

None of these things would make a particularly good story. (Okay, maybe the one with the mold, but only if the mold is sentient and starts talking to you). But I hear this kind of thing in my mind, all the time. It’s my brain’s response to everything from one of my kids sniffling to someone driving erraticly in traffic. What-ifs, what-ifs, what-ifs.

It’s not all bad. I tend to notice bad drivers, and stay well away from them. I’m sure to catch any leaks, should I get one in my roof. But it’s hardly a super-power. It’s just more worry about things most people are able to brush off.

Now, I know what you’re going to say, which is probably going to be something along the lines of “Just don’t think like that.” Person Reading This, I have tried. Have you ever had a toddler follow you around and ask you questions and you can’t shake them, no matter what? Sometimes you give them a cookie and they go quiet to eat it for five minutes but then they’re back? That’s anxiety, except the toddler is IN MY HEAD. And that toddler is insistent. But, thankfully, also like the toddler, if I give my that part of my brain well-reasoned answers–“we checked the ceiling already and there are no signs of leaks and there has been no wind to cause damage, so it’s fine” or “No the basement is not going to spring a leak as it would take a lot of water to soak through eight inches of cinderblock”–eventually it will accept them and take a nap, for a little while at least.

And, like most storytellers, every so often that half of my brain comes up with a “what-if” I can turn into something…besides anxiety, that is.

This blog post was brought to you by my brain not being able to sleep at night and coming up for with this idea at 1 a.m. thanks to Anxiety!

Imposter Syndrome, It’s Coming For Ya! (Or My First Story Got Published)

June 18, 2023 / Jessica Bask

Back in mid-March, I received an email every writer longs to get. You know, the one that starts with “Your story has been accepted…” and follows up with said writer’s utter disbelief. My personal favorite story, “Doran” had been accepted by Allegory Magazine for publication in their May issue! And there was even token payment involved! I didn’t scream. I did shout at my family very loudly and very excitedly.

You would think that would solve that imposter syndrome, that finally having a story published would make me go, “Yes, I am a talented writer.” Instead, even as I signed the contract, wrote up and sent them a bio (I hate writing those by the way, and should you go read the story, I almost want to hear what you think of the bio more), and waited for publication day, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the magazine to fold, for the editor to tell me it was a mistake and they meant the other story about a swamp child by the other J. M. Bask. But nope, my story got published (and yes, it’s at that link up there).

But the imposter syndrome is still here. My brain is convinced no one has read it. My brain is convinced no one will publish anything else of mine.

And you know what I do? I tell my brain to STFU. It doesn’t work, not really. Those thoughts come creeping back. Every time I send out a story it tries to tell me I’m wasting my time. Every time I pick up a pen to work on my novel, it literally asks, Why are you doing this? I can’t get it to shut up, but sometimes, if I shout back loud enough–Because I want to! Because I AM good at this!–that stupid part of my brain that wants to see me fail will at least go hide in a corner for a little while. And if that’s enough for me to keep going, then I’ll take it.