Imagination is a Superpower
What Writing a Book with My ADHD Kid Taught Me About Creativity
Many of you know that I co-wrote Attack of the Monster Pickles! with my now 10-year-old son. What you may not know is that the story is all his, and he came up with it when he was only six. Parker was also diagnosed with ADHD around the same time.
Often, kids with ADHD get the message that they’re less capable than their neurotypical peers. Although Parker is fortunate to attend excellent schools with empathetic teachers, and I’ve always done my best to focus on the positive aspects of ADHD, he wasn’t immune to this negative messaging.
Although he fortunately does it less often now, in elementary school, he frequently came home asking if he was “stupid” because a lot of his schoolwork seemed harder or took him longer than the other kids.
However, Parker’s always shown signs of high intelligence, and that’s not just a mom brag. He’s intensely curious, loves to learn (although he doesn’t love school), and, from a very young age, teachers have constantly commented on his big vocabulary. In 4th grade, he was advanced to 5th grade math, and this past school year, he won a Presidential Gold Award for academic excellence.
But he also struggled with learning to read and still hates it. He has trouble focusing in school and is often caught daydreaming, and he’s had to be pulled out of class to work with teacher’s aides when tasks took longer than the allotted class time.
However, these things are less about intellectual capability than about being neurodivergent. Parker thinks differently, and that can often seem like a disadvantage in a world that encourages sameness, especially when it comes to classroom learning. Kids with ADHD don’t fit into the standard “box,” and that’s why they often get branded as less capable.
But the truth is that there are major benefits to thinking differently.
Is Creativity an ADHD Superpower?
All his life, Parker’s been a whirlwind of ideas. Writing this book together was one way to channel all that creative energy.
Creativity is often associated with ADHD. But I often wonder: Is supercharged creativity just an ADHD stereotype? Or is there any truth to the claim that ADHD brings exceptional creativity with it?
According to Scientific American, the research does show that people with ADHD are especially good at divergent thinking. Kids (and adults) with ADHD are less inhibited by traditional thought patterns, and this freedom from constraint can lead to an influx of “out-of-the-box” ideas. (Mutant pickles, anyone? ;))
ADHD is also linked to spontaneity and risk-taking. These traits can sometimes lead to the harmful impulsivity often linked with ADHD. But it also encourages the pursuit of new and original ideas, key factors in creativity.
Additionally, the hyperfocus that often accompanies ADHD can be helpful for anyone pursuing creative projects.
Case in point: Parker hates school because he doesn’t want to do any of the assignments. But, left to himself, he’ll do science experiments for fun, search YouTube to learn how to code his own video games, and write endless stories about superheroes. (Just don’t ask him to write an essay about tomatoes.) Specifically, he can hyperfocus for hours on drawing pictures or creating games.
Of course, not all kids with ADHD have super-charged creativity, and many neurotypical kids (and adults) are highly creative. (For example, I don’t have ADHD, yet I have more story ideas than I could write in a lifetime, and, like Parker, I’ve been coming up with stories all my life.)
Thus, individual difference plays a role. But, on the whole, research does show a link. Therefore, it’s not surprising that many artists and writers have ADHD.
My Writing Process
My writing process is a bit different from Parker’s, but co-writing with him has both taught and reminded me about the power of creativity.
I have a rather structured approach to writing, honed over years of practice. Whenever I start a new story, I first plan out the details. If it’s a novel, I might write character or world-building “bibles.” I often see scenes or hear lines of dialogue play out in my imagination, and those always get written down in a notebook. I call these my “sketches,” and eventually I compile them into some kind of order, which helps me start the process of building an outline. I call this outline/sketch combo my “zero draft,” which I then take and shape into a fleshed-out first draft.
This process works for me because I’m not a linear thinker. My husband, who’s also a fiction writer, likes to write his stories from A to Z, beginning to end. He “discovers” his story and its details as he goes.
But I usually get glimpses of parts of the story out of order. I might know how a story ends before I know how it begins. And my story ideas always begin with characters, and rarely plot points. So, rather than writing from beginning to end, I sketch out scenes as they occur to me and then arrange them in whatever order makes the most sense for the story to unfold.
This isn’t the age-old pantser vs. plotter debate to me, since my process is outside of either. I “pants” when I sketch out my scenes, and then “plot” when I create an order for them and fill in the “blanks” in the middle. So, for me, that dichotomy is too limiting. But then I’ve never much been a fan of dichotomies, which are almost always too limiting.
The Surprising Benefits of Breaking the “Rules” of Structure and Focus
I see some of my own process in Parker’s. He, too, is a notebook keeper. Whenever story ideas occur to him, he puts them in his notebook, jotting down his ideas for scenes, characters, and world-building. But, as is probably typical of any 10-year-old, it’s hard to say what his eventual writing process will look like.
But what I find fascinating is the way he works it all out on the page, first jotting down ideas and then reworking them like Play-Doh — all without having the language or sophisticated understanding of story structure that he’ll eventually learn when he’s older.
For example, whatever a writer’s process, at some point, whether during the initial writing or later in the editing phase, we have to ask questions like: “Is my plot structure working?” “What’s the conflict in this scene?” “How do I raise the stakes?” “What’s the character’s goal?” Stories rarely come out in a first draft in the same form they’ll take in the final draft — for any writer. We all have to figure out the technical side of what makes a story work in order to, well, make it work.
But rather than be hindered by his lack of technical know-how, Parker seems freed up to take a story in any direction his mind wanders. And I wonder if that’s not an advantage? For example, how else does one come up with anthropomorphic pickles with laser eyes unless they let themselves freely follow their creative mind?
Eventually, he’ll need to learn story structure because he’ll need to know why a story may not be working and how to fix it. But for now, his mind wanders in any direction it pleases, without constraint. This may be a contributing factor to his exceptional creativity, as his mind churns out dozens of ways to answer the question, “What happens next?”
That’s exactly how we wrote Attack of the Monster Pickles! — by me continually asking Parker, “And then what happens?” I let him feed me any ideas that occurred to him, and then I did the work of turning them into a story with a structured plot.
When you turn on the creative faucet and forgo judgment, you may come up with ideas that won’t work. Yet, in his way of doing things, Parker comes up with more ideas than he would otherwise, and some of those ideas are pure gold.
What I’ve Learned From My Son’s Creative Process
Watching my son come up with his ideas without any concern for whether they’ll actually work in a story or become an eventually publishable book has re-inspired me to put more attention on the “sketches” stage of my own writing process.
Over time, I’ve slowly moved toward more rigid outlining for stories. In other words, I’ve been sketching less and planning more. But that feels less creative and more constrained to me since I’m asking myself at the outset, “What elements need to go into this plot?” rather than jotting down scenes as they occur to me, whether or not they’ll make it into the eventual story.
On the other hand, spending more time letting my mind wander and following it wherever it goes is more likely to result in ideas that take my story in new and wonderful directions that I might not have thought of otherwise — and that’s pure magic.
Re-thinking Imagination as a Superpower
In our book, the main character solves his problem (bedtime fears) using the power of his imagination. Hence, I’ve used the tagline “Imagination is your superpower” on a lot of our promotional materials.
But that idea is more than a cute sales tactic. Imagination, or creativity, is the way we solve many of life’s problems — by rethinking them with new and innovative solutions.
Allowing ourselves to think divergently can help us surmount many of the things we thought were insurmountable, whether that’s bedtime fears or solving a global crisis.
Thus, kids with exceptional creativity (or out-of-the-box divergent thinking) have a superpower. Whether or not they have ADHD, divergent thinkers are the world’s creators, innovators, and problem-solvers.
So, if that’s you, never let the world put you in a box. It’s your superpower.
How to Encourage All Kids’ Creativity
Of course, whether or not one is “exceptionally” creative, as human beings, we are all inherently creative. It’s part of what makes us human. Additionally, it’s possible to become more creative by practicing creativity.
I’ve written in the past on kids and creativity. So, if you’d like to encourage your own kid’s creativity, check out these links.