For those who may not know, maladaptive daydreaming is a kind of excessive daydreaming (more than what may be deemed normal) and can sometimes involve listening to music while doing repetitive movements such as pacing, running, tapping, something like that. I've done a bit of research online and I've noticed that most people who say they do it seem to be writers. Just wondering if there are any here and, if so, what your experience has been and how it has impacted your writing, etc?
Judging by your description of a maladaptive daydreamer, I’d say I am one. Often times I’ll be writing, and when I get stuck, I’ll start daydreaming while doing things like pacing and running. When I am ready to work again, I return to my computer and write any ideas I may have come up with. I tend to daydream about everything, all the time, probably to the point where it’s not the healthiest thing to do. I also write songs and think of most of my lyrics this way. In addition, I visualize just about everything I hear and read, and sometimes I’ll imagine my own characters in a situation explained by a song or another book. How would they react? How would they have gotten into this situation? Could anything like this happen in my book? Apparently it’s weird that I do that, but hey, I’m a weird person, and it helps. In conclusion, daydreaming helps me greatly with my writing, even if I do tend to get a little carried away.
I remember reading the description of maladaptive daydreaming, and I decided (based on no evidence whatsoever) that there must surely be a spectrum, from the point where you can enter a really absorbing daydream but still escape and do what you need to do, to the point where you can't escape. I regularly and actively try to induce the lightweight end of that spectrum. When I can't get there, I know I'm entering a depression. It's fundamentally different from normal "thinking"--it feels a bit like lucid dreaming, which also happens for me.
