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“I Love the Way My Brain Works:” Bestselling Author Rebecca Makkai on Her ADHD

“I am so fortunate that I was able to figure out how my mind works at an early age — and use that.”

By Nicole C. Kear Updated on September 30, 2024
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Rebecca Makkai is a New York Times bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than 20 languages. She is a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award finalist. She teaches graduate fiction writing at Northwestern University, among other places, and is artistic director of StoryStudio Chicago. A review of her accomplishments would leave you wondering: What can this woman not do?

The answer? Laundry.

Putting away clean laundry, according to Makkai, is an “insurmountable task.” So is making doctors’ appointments, keeping track of her keys, tolerating conversational lags, and opening a package neatly with scissors. These are the parts of ADHD that Makkai, who was diagnosed just three years ago, finds frustrating. But for Makkai, these annoyances are just a small part of the big neurodivergent picture.

Makkai says ADHD affords her the hyperfocus, bold instinct, and associative thinking that’s allowed her to craft novels like I Have Some Questions for You and The Great Believers, lauded as “spellbinding, “enthralling” and “emotionally riveting” by media outlets including The New York Times Book Review.

“My mind goes in 17 different directions at once, and I’m constantly reaching for new ideas. Everything in the world contains a million things behind it and they’re all fascinating,” Makkai explains. “I’m sure that there are certainly plenty of artists who are linear thinkers but, to me, that feels like a disability. You’re trying to make art and you can only think of one thing after another in a straight line?”

[Download: Your Free Guide to All the Best Parts of ADHD]

Below, Makkai talks about her recent ADHD diagnosis, the gift afforded to her by an unusual education, and how she harnesses the powers of her neurodivergence to create unforgettable stories.

Q: When were you diagnosed?

I was diagnosed two or three years ago, mostly because I have a daughter who is not neurotypical and I was doing these online quizzes for her.

The diagnosis was almost entirely a relief and a revelation. Now, when I lose my keys or mis-manage my time, I know I have reasons other than ‘I’m lazy, I’m spacey, I don’t care.’ It offered me the ability, in certain situations, to stop masking and to help my daughter, who got diagnosed after I did.

[Read: Not Ditzy. Not Lazy. And Definitely Not Dumb.]

It’s been amazing to look back and acknowledge how much of my life I’ve faked, how often it’s like I’m listening to a radio with very poor reception, catching three words and pretending I know what’s going on.

Q: What does your ADHD look like?

I live in a world in which objects move behind my back. I put down my keys and they’re gone. Streets rearrange themselves.

My physical hyperactivity is subtle. If I stand near the food at a party, I will not stop eating — not because I have food issues, but because eating is something to do with my hands. I can only slow down my rapid speech with effort, and I panic at conversational lags. It takes everything I have not to interrupt people constantly.

I have a highly associative brain and a tendency to start several sentences at once. I’ve learned to explain this to my writing students on the first day of class. I’ve learned to start a lot of sentences with “Sidebar” and hold up one finger so students understand that I’m not permanently derailing the conversation.

Q: What was school like for you?

Traditional school can be an ADHD torture chamber. I went to Montessori School until 8th grade, and it was perfect for this kind of mind. It was like, ‘OK, you’re not in the mood for math? You’ll have to do it eventually, but right now, you can go do a report on hedgehogs and knock yourself out doing that for three days. When it’s time for math, you can write your own word problems, or you can do it with a friend, or you can do it in the hall.’

There are so many plusses to this, the biggest one of which is that I learned how my brain works and how I get work done. I’ve been able to carry that with me.

I’m not someone who writes every day. Why would you write every day? If I sit down to work and I’m not in a place to write, then I research. I can do other stuff all week and then I can write for 16 hours if I’m in the mood, so I’m not going to beat myself up for not writing 1,000 words every day.

Before I published my first book, I taught Montessori for 12 years, and that was great for me. There are 30 things going on all the time and you have to pay attention to all of them. I’d be helping a kid with long division, keeping an eye on a discipline issue, answering a question for another kid. Give me that all day long.

Q: How does your ADHD inform your writing?

I’m happiest when I’m doing five things at once. If I could somehow ride a bike and do a Sudoku puzzle and watch a movie and drink a smoothie at the same time, I’d be in heaven. The great news is that the mental juggling you have to do in order to hold a 300-page novel in your mind — ADHDers were built for that.

I teach a lot of really talented writers and I’ve noticed that one of the things that really holds a lot of people back is a dearth of ideas. They start something and they have a couple of elements going on, but they don’t have the urge to add more things that might enrich this. They are marching along this straight and predictable path, which can make for boring writing.

I think a lot of people don’t have good boredom detectors. People who have an above-average sense of patience are going to overestimate the patience of most readers. I am so easily bored that, if I can manage not to bore myself, I probably won’t bore anyone else.

I don’t have infinite patience with a text that’s beautiful but there’s no real craftsmanship to the plot. It’s an art to be able to keep hooking people.

Q: Do you have any ADHD hacks for getting work done?

Deadlines are fantastic for me; they kick me into high gear. Often, I really can’t bring myself to do it until the day before and then I suddenly put my cape on and fly at it and it’s great.

For example, I have a writing group and I know that, if I’ve told them I’m going to get them pages by our meeting on October 1, I have to get those pages to them by then. That helps a lot.

I’ve learned to lean into the sprint in little ways, too. I’ll fail to plug in my computer, realize it’s running low on power, and then try to see how much I can write before it dies. One of the reasons I write well on an airplane is I know I only have so long before they say you have to put away your laptop.

Then, too, so much of the business of writing is not writing. It’s blurbing and interviewing and answering emails. An assistant helps a lot with those things.

Q: What’s your advice to other people with ADHD?

I am so fortunate that I was able to figure out how my mind works at an early age. I’m trying to do that with my daughter now. I tell her, ‘You don’t have to do the same thing everyone else is doing, but you do have to get this done. Let’s analyze: What is your plan? Where do you need to be to get work done? What’s a distraction? What’s a useful distraction? What’s a good break?’

Yes, we need to acknowledge the challenges. And, yes, I frustrate myself, but I love the way my brain works. I’m love my career and how my career is going — and it’s largely due to the brain I have.

The Upsides of ADHD: Next Steps

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