Managing My Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (So That I Can Write!)

OCD isn’t something I’ve really discussed much, even though it’s been a part of my life for going on four years. This is partly because, for a long time, I didn’t have the terminology to describe the worsening compulsion that was wreaking havoc on my writing, and partly because, until about a year ago, I wasn’t able to admit to myself that I even had a problem. As infuriating as my disorder was, it was also extremely familiar, and I wasn’t yet ready to face up to the truth and change my counterproductive ways.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the OCD started, but if I had to guess, I’d say it probably crept in around mid-2020, when I was writing the third book in the Changing Ways series. OCD often stems from anxiety, and at that time there was a lot to be anxious about, both in my personal life and with the state of the world. I’ve always struggled with self-doubt, but over the course of that year, my confidence in myself and my writing ability suffered a serious nosedive and I became inundated with a growing fear that I was never going to make it as an author and that all my hard work over the last half-decade was in vain. Concurrently, I became increasingly perfectionistic, feeling the need to reread drafts again and again, making minute changes to words and sentences, and belaboring my writing choices to an extent that I never had before.

It wasn’t until this past year, however, that the OCD changed from a somewhat inconvenient bad habit that I engaged in during times of high stress to a constant, significant hindrance to my work productivity. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the yet-undiagnosed fibromyalgia I’d been struggling with on and off for two years was getting worse, causing brain fog and daytime drowsiness that was further impeding my ability to write. Of course, I didn’t understand why I was suddenly tired more often and couldn’t formulate thoughts or remember ideas–I only had a vague notion that something was wrong. My life once again felt chaotic and out of control, and I sought comfort in the OCD behavior; it also provided me with a false sense of productivity. On the days when the fog was too thick to work through and it probably would’ve been best just to take the day off, I’d spend hours at my computer neither furthering nor improving upon the story but perfecting the formatting, how the text appeared on the Word page. Unfortunately, I became so fixed in this habit that even when I was feeling alert and energized, I still felt the need to engage, and if I tried to resist, I’d feel anxious and unsettled until I at last gave in.

While I struggle with repetitive behaviors and obsessive thinking in other areas of my life, my OCD primarily manifests when I’m writing on a computer, which, until very recently, was the only place I ever wrote. I need the alignment of the margins and the appearance of the sentences to look a certain way on the screen. For starters, the text must be justified, but beyond just that, the spaces between the words must be uniform and not too big. To achieve this uniformity, I’ll often spend an obscene amount of time changing words (“hard” to “difficult”; “but” to “however”) and retyping and/or rearranging sentences.

Obviously, writing this way is extremely time-consuming; writing a single paragraph could take thirty minutes or more, and I was rarely putting away more than 2,000 words a day (in the past, I could often pump out twice that number when I was in a good flow). It was also mentally draining, and at times felt like I was using twice as much of my brain as I otherwise would’ve; no longer was I just trying to write a story; I also needed the look of it to fit into extremely specific parameters. I was giving myself headaches from staring fixedly at my computer screen, my eyes were chronically dry and irritated, and I needed to take frequent breaks to recharge my overworked mind. Worst of all, the quality of my writing was suffering as a result of my compulsion. Writing was no longer fun and freeing but compulsive and meticulous and frustrating, and I was beginning to dread sitting down at my computer every morning. There was no doubt that I was riding a bullet train toward burnout.

One month ago I hit my breaking point. I was about halfway through my current work-in-progress, and the OCD was so bad that my progress was all but stagnant; I knew there was no way I’d finish the book like this. By that point, I’d tried just about everything I could to minimize the urge to engage: changing the font; writing in Web Layout; writing on Google Docs; taping a piece of paper to each side of my computer screen; outlining scenes before writing them; shortening my writing sessions. Nothing had worked, and I was terrified that this book–which I was so excited about and loved so much–was doomed to join the half-dozen other titles I’d already had to shelve that year.

Then I remembered a suggestion my therapist had proposed several months earlier, when I’d first opened up to her about the OCD. At the time I’d rejected it immediately, but in the months since a lot had changed, and I’d reached a place of desperation where I was willing to try almost anything. And so, I found a spiral notebook in my basement, sharpened a couple of Number 2 pencils, and for the first time since high school, I began to write by hand.

To my amazement, it worked. Yes, it was slow-going (but then so was writing with OCD), and yes, my hand hurt and I had to take frequent breaks at the beginning. But in the absence of a Word document and those pesky, imperfect margins, the compulsions were gone, and I could finally write uninhibited again, using the words I wanted to, saying things exactly how I wanted them to be said. It felt like I’d tapped into a creativity that’d been dormant for years. It was an incredible, freeing feeling–and I knew almost from the get-go that this was one change I’d be sticking with.

Since I’ve already written more than half the book on Word, my writing process at the moment is a hybrid between longhand and typing; I’ll write a chapter in my journal, and then type it up onto the computer. (I’ve also been rewriting huge chunks of earlier sections to improve the quality of the work.) I was initially worried I’d want to engage when converting the text, but so far my OCD has been minimal to nonexistent, and for the most part, I’m able to catch and correct myself when an urge arises. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes when it’s time to edit the book.

Writing longhand is still very new, and I’m still sorting out the various kinks of this old-school approach. I have a lovely bump on my middle finger where the pencil rubs against my skin, and without a Delete button, or Cut and Paste, the method sometimes feels disorganized and discombobulating. Additionally, the aforementioned root causes of my compulsion are still things I need to work on (in particular, my self-doubt and fears of failure), and I still feel a strong need to frequently reread my work. But for the first time in a long time, I’m able to write without the confines of OCD, and amid a year of challenges and setbacks, I’d consider that to be a pretty big win.