The Challenges of Writing with Dyslexia

I asked author Alicia Kat Dillman to tell me how she overcame dyslexia to write her debut novel, Daemons in the Mist. 

This is her answer:

“It is my great strength that gets me where I want to go, but it is my flaws, my weaknesses, that made me who I am.”

Sometimes I am so determined in my need to succeed that I forget just how much I have accomplished and just how far I have come.

I don’t like to dwell on things I can’t change or things that I have no control over. Instead, I just keeping moving forward toward the goals I set for myself.

I have dyslexia; in fact I have all three forms.

When I write, sometimes I move letters or words around out of order. And half the time when I read it back, I'll miss the error because my brain is auto-correcting it for me. This is made even worse, if I’m trying to write while the TV is on or someone is trying to talk to me. I will literally start transcribing the audio into the sentences inter-spaced with what I was trying to write. Sometimes words just end up there that are out of the blue and completely unrelated to anything I was thinking.

Because I know this happens, I work around it.

It’s all about focusing on what you need to do instead of focusing on what prevents you from doing it.

I listen to music that won’t distract me and try to write mostly when everyone is asleep, which means about 90% of my writing is done between 11pm-4am. For example, I’m writing this at 2am.

Dyslexia isn’t something that goes away or something you grow out of. It’s something you have to deal with every day, something that’s just a part of what makes you, you.

The point is not to let it run your life.

Sure, nearly every time I write “me” it comes out “my,” instead or vice versa. And I will forever type “chnage” instead of “change,” even though I know how it’s spelled. And I can read a sentence a dozen times and still not see the mistakes, because my brain corrects it for me.

I used to feel embarrassed about this, but you know what? Dyslexia is a disability and those are nothing to be ashamed of.

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About Alicia Kat Dillman

Indie author & illustrator Alicia Kat Dillman is a lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. Kat illustrates and designs book covers & computer game art by day and writes teen fiction by night. The owner of two very crazy studio cats and nine overfull bookcases, Kat can usually be found performing, watching anime, or hanging out in twitter chats when not playing in the imaginary worlds within her head. 

Daemons in the Mist

Seventeen year old Patrick Connolly has been hopelessly infatuated with Nualla for years but he is all but invisible to her. Until, that is, he rescues her from a confrontation with her ex. Little does Patrick know he’s just set off a dangerous chain reaction that will thrust him into a world of life-altering secrets and things that shouldn’t exist, because the fog and mist of San Francisco are concealing more than just buildings.

Website Link: http://www.katgirlstudio.com/

Book Link: http://www.katgirlstudio.com/book/daemons-in-the-mist-book/