The Dopamine Draft

This fun, generative workshop is designed for adult writers with ADHD or any writer who needs some stimulation and containment. If you think or write in obsessive, associative tangents and bursts, followed by flatlining, you are not alone.

Tidy, linear progress is not the only kind of progress and structure isn’t always a problem to solve before you begin—it’s a tool that matches how attention actually moves. We'll be studying fiction (and some memoir) that does not apologize for its fixations or fragmentation. The crot, the obsessive or digressive first-person narrator, the collage-novel excerpt, the choose your own adventure.

Each week we'll read stories and long form excerpts by authors like Mary Robison, Jamaica Kincaid, Albertine Clarke, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, Miranda July, Gabe Habash, Cris Kraus, and Ottessa Moshfegh.

Then we’ll consciously distill and model their techniques—and/or dynamics—in one-to-three-page chunks (whether fragment or scene). If you are working on a novel, you are welcome to write into/from that novel, but all work should be new. This class is designed to set free a lot of raw material, not to teach critique, and as such, follows the “hypoxic” workshop model—every student turns in writing every week. Work is shared and applauded briefly as time allows—OR—is used as the material for creative response. Brief written feedback focuses on vicacity and questions to encourage development. We will also discuss outlining hacks for the ADHD writer and alternative structural strategies.

This is a maximum 6 person class in East Austin/Govalle.

8 weeks

Starts February 2027

Class day and time TBA

Please email writersninja@gmail.com if interested.