Imagination vs Expression - storytelling as ADHD and autistic

I relate to this so much. I could have made this video myself (suspected neurodivergent). Currently I am planning to make an entire animated movie even though I don't know how yet. I am always collecting ideas and making scenes in my head. But the disconnect between imagination and execution is frustrating, inevitable. Anyway, I liked how you expressed this in this video. Nice to see others with a similar problem, though of course I wish nobody had this problem.

I’ve said for over a decade that I want to be a writer, once I have the chance I procrastinate, because it feels like what I write doesn’t match how it feels in my head. So I can relate.

This just helped click something for me, I’ve been trying to write this big story for years and years of my life but if feels like every image, scene, idea has an ocean of something in between my brain refuses to fully grasp. I keep coming up with ideas but I have no framework for execution. Even when I look up writing advice online none of it takes this into account. It’s like if you could only imagine the cool hard hitting parts of a movie but you have no clue how to get yourself to create the buildup and strings in between the big scenes

1. I feel you on that drive for storytelling. It has been the one throughline of my life - that whatever I do, I want to tell stories with it. 2. My personal approach to the limitations of expression is to see them as a feature, not a bug. By deciding what to express and what to exclude, you turn an idea into art. And art is at its heart about what not to say, and where we put our focus. 3. the most important lesson I've ever learned about starting anything is "just do it. learn as you go. grow as you learn. and watch your projects grow and flourish alongside you." This year, I am trying to finish a short story each month, and I am still learning. But the fact that I am doing it at all proves to me that I can turn my imagination into something worthwhile, and that is so valuable. 4. Experimenting with methods of expression, and staying flexible, can also help a lot with the process. Just simple things like switching between typing, hand-writing, and voice-to-text recording one's speech can be really useful, especially if one gets stuck with either of the methods.

STORY OF MY LIFE, I got like 1000s of notes for story ideas but I'm a perfectionist so every time I start writing I eventually scrap it, This problem has bothered me so much that I feel like the perfect character for my story is someone who is a perfectionist and struggle with this and expression. Idk why but the thought of just baking the theme of not being to express it all into my world and character I think somewhat makes me reliefs me of the stress of knowing I won't ever get all my ideas down and I've made way more progress lately. ( I just found out I'm autistic at 25) Thank you for this video it's great

wow- I never knew how to articulate this for myself. you’re really making things make sense for me

EXACTLY! Like I don't have enough hand skills to get the ideas from my head to my hand. Sooooo many ideas! 😍

my brain imagines many future scanarios and much of the past. its like a little internal movie theatre with moving pictures, sound and sometimes other imaginery sensory experiences. im not sure we want to dump out the contents of our brains. keep most of it in reserve like a wood pile. keep your brain content stacked high with dry wood. share some kindling and a few logs with your friends, family and audience. we dont want to set the house on fire and burn it all up in one blaze. your you tube channel can be your storytelling platform. your personal story is your greatest gift to the neurodivergent community.

This is so therapeutic. I just turned it to I want to experience it. I’ll grab my little sticks and draw out what I can as I go. But it’s not to always be expressed. It’s mainly to find joy in experiencing it solely. The rest is extra.

I can't believe I wrote about this EXACT experience in my journal yesterday and today I was recommended this video. Is the algorithm slowly creeping into my brain or is this the fabled telepathic link of the neurodivergent community? It becomes especially challenging when my dopamine-addled brain decides it’s a good idea to give up on a stable job essentially pursue this very unstable, very elusive dream that at the moment exists mostly in my head and not at all on paper (I’ve never managed to finish a single long project in my life, only a handful of short stories). It’s frustrating to have such a strong emotional desire for something but have your brain also actively defy that desire by procrastinating and second-guessing your abilities. Something I get bogged down by is definitely the hyper-awareness of different outcomes when plotting a story, or even the myriad of ways I could structure a sentence, to the point that the entire process becomes an overwhelming slog and I have to give up after dredging up a single paragraph from my supersonic soup of thoughts.

Mm… yes this was like listening to a part of myself. The “I don’t have to share everything” is a poignant thought I had the other day. How I’ve always cherished secrets within my self and my imagination… and how that’s okay to do that again.

This makes me feel seen. Thank you!

Will be 62 this year and my YouTube suggestions are filling with new creators that I resonate with. There's a lot of background in my life, and many months ago self diagnosed Autism Spectrum. It's become clearer why things are as they are. It seems like I'll be needing to be careful navigating all this, like I had to in trauma therapy for childhood ptsd. There's more to that as well. Take care, best wishes. Hope your birthday was nice.

I've been taking online tests and researching and i think im autistic. I'm glad to hear about your very active imagination, I'm also very imaginative. I played pretend as a kid so much with my siblings and cousins and friends and just anybody. people loved it, they were being welcomed into a world of magic, it was really cool. I never wanted to grow up because i thought then I'll b a boring adult with no imagination

i believe i'm autistic and have loved writing for most of my life, so i really related to a lot of this. the last several years i've struggled to make myself write (the world has been way too stressful lol but also that's no excuse bc i know i could if i tried hard enough.. alas.) but before that, i found that editing was such a revelation for me. my stories went from making me cringe and hate things on rereading and not getting across the emotions i wanted properly, through then thinking about them and characters for long amounts of time and fleshing things out and adjusting where needed and getting deep into the details of word choices, i was able to make the words+emotions get sooooooo much closer to how i imagined them in my head from the start. this made me love the editing process so much more than i ever thought i could've—the problem only then became knowing when to stop and let something be 'finished' 😂😩😩

Probably the most I’ve ever related to an ADHD/autism related vid. I’ve had worlds built in my head since childhood, but my expression of these worlds has been pretty limited over the years, mostly due to (in the case of long form novels) being overwhelmed by the minutiae of it all. I even got bored one week and somewhat recently wrote “last chapters” of some of the stories I wrote as a kid, pretty much as a way to resolve their character arcs. (It was honestly a pretty cool concept; I put myself in the story to “end their world” and resolve their story, but also to bring them home into my mind as a heaven of sorts, and then they in turn will be with God in the end along with me. Like a Russian nesting doll of creation) I also was/am a prolific poet hahaha I guess I would say that in my own view, our unrequited imaginative endeavors are gifts to God, Who sees them as we intended them and is pleased by them like the loving Father He is. It may suck to not fully feel like you can express what’s in your head, but there’s at least Someone else who sees exactly what you’re striving for This seems kind of weird and self-centered-ish seeing it written out, but I hope it doesn’t come off that way to y’all

I relate so much to this.

Thank you for this video :) The video may have small reach, but for those who it impacts, it's really helpful. I see this as the permission (...forgiveness, even) to let go of all the bad/mediocre/unfinished ideas I've ever had. Our imaginations will outrun our abilities and that's okay. If I can make good on the 10% of actually good ideas, and make peace with letting go of the rest, that's a better tradeoff than constantly being stuck under the guilt of having a bazillion ideas and never doing anything with any of them. It's no understatement that this is a life-changing, effort-focusing revelation for you - and me too. Thank you again :)

Last year I finished a series of short novels. They're not perfect, but they don't have to be. That was really the gift of a Brit friend. He paraphrased a quote, "Perfect is the enemy of done." That idea freed me to finish projects. This is so important because as I wrote book four, my writing had improved significantly. I didn't allow myself to go back and endlessly revise. I can now that the books are done. I've gone through and fixed a lot of grammar that I got wrong, and one day I'll update the books. The other thing I really believe in is being incremental. I renovated a house we moved into in three years just by doing one 15 min task a day. I learned to write by writing a 1000 word blog post a day for several years. Nobody reads them. But I finished my novel series by writing a chapter to a half chapter a day. (My chapters are short.) This is the "write every day" advice, but I really see it as an effective method of tackling any larger project. Just start writing. Don't worry about which idea is going to be "the one." You really can't tell. Try it out and the great ideas will energize you. One of the nice things about having a lot of ideas is you can switch when you burn out. I work on a project until I can't stand it anymore and then switch to another.

Relating so hard! I’m not sure exactly what kind of neurodivergence I possess, but it’s certainly there. The people I relate the most to are people who are neurodivergent. Thank you so much for making this expression of your imagination 😊 It encourages me so much. I’m almost 30, and I totally relate to writing emo journal entries and poetry 😄