In the first part of episode 5 of Writing While Disabled, Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston discuss some adjustments they'd like to see at science fiction conventions that would help create a more inclusive experience for all science fiction writers and fans, including moderator training, fire safety, a technology mentor-buddy system, and more.

If you prefer, you can watch the full episode with close-caption subtitles here.

Show notes:

• This episode was produced and hosted by Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston, and edited, mixed, and transcribed by Kat Kourbeti.
• The theme song, "Funky - Upbeat Loop" by ispeakwaves, is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
• Want to send us a question? You can do so here!

Transcript

Kristy Anne Cox: Welcome. Let's start over again. Okay. Welcome to Writing While Disabled, welcome for reals. This time for real. And I am still Kristy Anne Cox.

Kate Johnston: And I am once again, Kate Johnston.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes. And today we are going to talk about so many amazing things, but they're going to relate to convention spaces and ageism and disability, and whatever else comes up with those topics, right?

Kate Johnston: Indeed, yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: So, who are we starting with? We were gonna talk about... moderators. This is one of your questions I wanted to ask you about.

So we've talked about conventions and disabled audience members and disabled panelists.

Kate Johnston: Mm-hmm.

Kristy Anne Cox: What we haven't really talked about is moderating. So Kate, what are you thinking? How can we help out moderators?

Kate Johnston: Well, just kind of in general, regardless of who your moderator is, as the people who are running the con, also known as con runners, you should be giving your moderators some guidance so they understand what you are asking of them. 'Cause not everybody's been a moderator before, not everybody thinks they don't have imposter syndrome. There are people out there who are super great moderators who think they're terrible. There are people who are terrible, who think they're super great. So let's give them some guidance about where we wanna go.

For a lot of places, that guidance would be in terms of, why don't you have a sheet, or have this printed on the back of their name tent, of non-gendered greetings for your audience.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh yeah. So for people who might be still learning those speech patterns.

Kate Johnston: Right? Then they don't have to come up with "they-dies and gentle-thems" all by themselves, because these are not necessarily things that everybody does. It's wordplay, and that's not what everyone does.

Kristy Anne Cox: It's also generational. You have a lot of people who are still learning how to navigate spaces that feel very different to them. And they are very different in how we talk about things. So having some of those terms on the back of your name card, that's a great idea.

Kate Johnston: It might be helpful to just break some stuff down. Like you don't have to go into the 87 different labels for stuff. If you just go, "oh, can I use the word queer for that? Yeah, I can use that for everything? Awesome." So there are ways to make it less prone to error, or upset.

Kristy Anne Cox: Or an access barrier.

Kate Johnston: Yes.

Something else for con runners to think about is that you may want to allocate more of your staff to rooms where we have disabled panelists, moderators, or the audience—basically every room—just to make sure we have enough room, we have enough space to move around, that they can help reset the room.

Because if you walk into a room where everybody's been in a circle and you don't have enough time, you aren't planning on doing that, and you have more people in your audience, it may not occur to the audience to just start rearranging chairs.

Kristy Anne Cox: Right.

Kate Johnston: And your disabled moderator may not be able to start rearranging chairs.

Kristy Anne Cox: So having like more modular rooms that the moderator could have more control over?

A big one for me is, can the moderator fit behind the table in their mobility device?

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Do they need to go up a step to get on a little platform? Is there enough room behind the bench for a wheelchair to move past the seating chairs?

I've been thinking about how we arrange the seating of the moderators themselves. Like, who to sit closest to the moderator and who to sit farthest away. And it's worth asking your panelists if they have a preference. I found it really difficult sitting directly next to the moderator in the last panel I was on, because I kept wanting to lip read and if I turn and I'm sitting right next to them, I felt like I was dominating their entire field of vision and no one else downstream—

Kate Johnston: Mm-hmm.

Kristy Anne Cox: —was getting any trickle down moderation.

Kate Johnston: Yep.

Kristy Anne Cox: Which was interesting. I wanted to be at the end for lip reading purposes, just so I wouldn't be blocking anybody while I'm fixated staring at their mouth.

Kate Johnston: At their face. Yeah. And there's something also to be said for, if you are a person who has special moderation needs, please tell your moderator in advance. Email them. We all have email. As far as I know, everything that I've ever done, we have everybody's email previous to the actual panel.

I've been on panels where, you know, the person next to me nudges me, and because I am a person who's very laid back, I will pose a question to a panelist and then let everybody in the panel address it if they would like. And somebody didn't like that, and they elbowed me and said, "are you gonna put me in, are you gonna moderate?" And you know, I've taught school. So what happened after that was that she got the question every time, it was just asked to her, and then she decided that maybe she was gonna keep her critiques to herself until after the panel was over.

Kristy Anne Cox: Please withhold your criticism of my existence until the end of the panel! I mean, there are different moderation styles. There's not necessarily one correct way to do it. Unless there is, and if there is, it needs to be written and given out.

So if you're in an academic panel and there are specific requirements that need to be met for moderators, like behavioral requirements or whatever, people need to know about that.

Kate Johnston: Yep.

Kristy Anne Cox: People need to know who they're moderating.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Like, if the guest of honor's on my panel, I would like to know in advance.

Kate Johnston: Also know who your audience is, in relation to what your subject is. If you are at a panel where we're talking about academic subjects and we have citations and blah, blah, blah, I probably don't wanna hear from that guy going, "well, I don't really have a question, it's more of a comment", you know?

Kristy Anne Cox: In an academic panel, the people that are going, went there specifically to make connections that will further that work that they're working on, they're there to get feedback from their colleagues, and maybe get some more cross-referencing and maybe some collaboration. They need to do that professionally for their tenure sometimes.

Kate Johnston: Which means that Joe Schmo standing there going, "well, I just wanna be in the conversation to hear myself talk", may not be the person the moderator wants to call on.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. That's a good way to frame it, that he wants to be part of the conversation that is maladaptively being addressed in the comments line at the end of the panel. I always think of what would be a good way for those individuals to meet that need and my best idea was, I want all those extra questions and thoughts on a bulletin board out in the lobby. So if I'm standing there waiting, I can read and feel connected to 'Guy in the Line with an Opinion'. I might even agree. And it could even be on technology, it could be a Discord group or...

Kate Johnston: That's what I was gonna say, is that I find those on Discord a lot.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Or the comments threads under a panel. It is very welcome there. And you know, that's kind of like when we were talking about what I had originally thought this podcast was gonna be about, and what it has kind of become, which is the place where we discuss science fiction issues that disabled people can have access to, so the Accessible Con Bar.

Kate Johnston: Yep.

Kristy Anne Cox: So Guy in the Line, I see you. I wanna know what you think about giant turtles in space. I just don't wanna know it in my panel about corn.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. Time and place really matter a lot.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. So we talked a little bit about moderators. I wanna talk about people who have trouble with technology. Can you moderate if you don't understand how to use a computer very well? I don't know, 'cause we rely on email.

Kate Johnston: Well, it depends on what kind of comm accommodation everyone needs, and what they're willing to put up with in terms of having this back and forth go on. How would you assess how your participants need accommodation?

Kristy Anne Cox: I think there are a number of ways to handle it. Some of it is knowing who they are and how they frame things, because a lot of people with disabilities who need accommodations do not identify as disabled people, and do not think they need accommodations, and then inevitably you end up on the panel and no one can hear each other because we're all aging, but nobody wants to frame it that way.

And so I think the best approach is to assume that there will be accommodation needs, the low hanging fruit. Just go ahead and meet those for everybody anyway. So you come prepared with some of the simple, easy things like having the name cards for everyone. The green room prep time beforehand is good. Making sure the email thread people feel like they've had a chance to stay connected.

Some things are gonna be a little bit harder, so you can ask directly, does anyone have a mobility device? So a lot of people will tell you they have a cane, but they will not tell you that they're disabled, they won't do it on a disabled form. So instead you skip that and just go straight to "what mobility devices do you have?" Or "is anyone hard of hearing? Does anyone need a sign language interpreter? Does anyone need live captioning?"

Skipping the general vague question of "does anyone need accommodations" or supplementing it with the specific things that you know in advance are gonna be the things.

Kate Johnston: Can I get one step even nicer about that?

Kristy Anne Cox: Please.

Kate Johnston: They are both four letter words.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh my.

Kate Johnston: But one is easier to deal with for people in denial, and that is changing from "need" to "want". "Would you like to have a sign language interpreter", which is not me saying, "hey, Deaf-y, get over here!" You know what I mean?

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kate Johnston: And actually, that's sort of that moment we were talking about earlier and we laughed, but it's like "disabled" versus "people with disabilities". And there are places, you know, at Dragon Con you could probably get away with Crip Corner, but not everybody—

Kristy Anne Cox: I like Crip as a term.

Kate Johnston: I do too. Yeah, I do too, but not everybody is going to say that.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes. And a lot of people, that will bounce them right off, especially if they come with a guardian or a gatekeeper who is curating their disability experience. I'm trying to think of a way to say this— I'm not even gonna be able to get in the room if you have already said something offensive to my guardian. And some of that you can't avoid, but you can try.

Um, sign language.

Kate Johnston: I don't know that we've really talked about it. For people who have never hired a sign language interpreter before, it's a little bit of a fiddly process, but it's super great.

Kristy Anne Cox: When you did, how would you go about doing that?

Kate Johnston: What I did when I was going to Worldcon this year was I looked for sign language interpretation on Google, or via Google, and I picked kind of a middle of the road, like it was clearly affiliated with a bunch of universities, it wasn't just one person with their interpretation game, you know, sort of thing.

And then I ran into about the things you'd think from that level of organization. So it works the same way that characters work; if you've ever hired like Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck or whatever to come do your thing, it's a half hour on, half hour off. So if you want them there for an hour, you're paying two people, whatever that rate is.

Kristy Anne Cox: I did not know. This is all new information for me, because I'm afraid of Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. Having been Minnie and Mickey Mouse, yeah, I've met you. I've met people like you. It's fine.

Kristy Anne Cox: I'm hiding in the blinds, just hoping that Winnie the Pooh won't come talk to me.

Kate Johnston: Well, and that's totally fine. Like, we're happy to just wave at you from over here. It's the parents with two year olds who are like, "no, no, go hug Mickey!" And the kid's like... (holds hands up) Yeah. That's just not cool at all.

So half hour on, half hour off. You need two of them. So if the rate is 150 bucks an hour, then you're paying 300.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. So for an hour, because you need—

Kate Johnston: Two people.

Kristy Anne Cox: You need two people, 'cause you're covering—you're paying them for a half hour break. Is that how it works?

Kate Johnston: No, they sign for a half an hour, then they sit down and the other person comes up and signs for the other half of the hour, because it's like playing tennis. It's very physically—

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes. Carpal tunnel.

Kate Johnston: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: So for me, my experience with finding an interpreter is all through growing up Mormon, where there's always a volunteer, and they are doing it out of love for the community and wanting to share, which is very different than hiring a professional. But again, these individuals tend to end up with carpal tunnel.

Kate Johnston: Yes, they do.

Kristy Anne Cox: Because they get overused, so.

Kate Johnston: And both of ours were young women, and they were frankly hilarious. They had a really good time. And then going into pay, you're not paying just for their time. You're also paying mileage, you're paying parking.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: You're paying anything else. Like they wanted an extra $200 to research, you know—

Kristy Anne Cox: Vocab?

Kate Johnston: Yeah. Basically because they knew we were gonna be talking about AI, so they wanted to be able to make sure that they could do the stuff, and so we paid for that too.

And so it's gonna end up being more expensive than you think but again, they had a blast. We all had a blast, it was super fun. There weren't that many people at the panel and so I could have felt, "oh, I wasted this money", but I didn't 'cause we had a really good time.

Kristy Anne Cox: You know, I always feel like cons are missing out on not actively recruiting from disabled communities that have built in communities. If you are running a con in Chicago and you wanted to include more deaf and hard of hearing people, you could actively be reaching out to these communities and then eventually end up with a pool of volunteers who might be willing to help you with that. But you can't ask people to volunteer if they're not included, or if they don't know about it, et cetera.

Kate Johnston: Well, and a lot of that has to do with the assumptions that people make. I had a friend of mine who was doing outreach for a small con in Minnesota, and Sage Publications is their local sort of (journal for) Arabic speaking and brown population, of which there's quite a number, and also some of the Hmong community and stuff like that, like, not diaspora brown people.

Kristy Anne Cox: Sage Publications is a publisher?

Kate Johnston: It's a journal.

Kristy Anne Cox: A journal.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay.

Kate Johnston: And so my friend reached out to them and said, "hey, we are running this science fiction convention, maybe you would like to mention it in your publication so that the people who read your journal will know that this is going on, and they can participate if they would like".

And the answer back from the journal was, "we serve people of color" and that this is not any part of their community. And I'm just like... what?

Kristy Anne Cox: Huh?

Kate Johnston: Yeah. Apparently, they just don't think that there's gonna be a future, and they would like to not be in it. Okay.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well...

Kate Johnston: Yeah. You gotta meet people where they are, and those guys are nowhere. So, I don't know how we break into that community, but now I'm angry and now I'm gonna find a way.

Kristy Anne Cox: So this is something we didn't talk about before, but there is this feeling I have that there are certain groups of disabled people who other people still see as, "well, we would reach out, but we're worried they would come".

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: You know what I'm saying? Like, "I would love to include more disabled people, but if I did, wouldn't they be in the same room with me?" Like, this attitude.

Kate Johnston: Oh yeah. I get that.

Kristy Anne Cox: Which, I mean, it's ugly. It's an ugly thing to even say out loud, and I don't know anybody who's like diehard into that, that I would like, keep in my life. But I feel that way when I'm thinking about how to include and involve more people.

Kate Johnston: Well, and I think there's also another perspective on that, which is, "I am a disabled person in this community and I am finding it hard to navigate this community, even though I've been in this community since I was 10 years old".

Kristy Anne Cox: This community meaning disabled, or this community meaning SFF?

Kate Johnston: SFF. And so not only are other people afraid that they might come, I'm a little afraid they might come too, because then they're gonna have the same problems I have dealing with the community, won't they? So I get it, you know, I think there's dread on both sides about that.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. You know, the "what if they come", this is leading me to a completely—it's related, but it feels unrelated.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: So I wanna talk about fire safety.

Kate Johnston: Okay, go ahead. Oh yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: So, "what if they come, what if we invite them and what if they come?" Okay. So if you are looking at your convention hotel, and it's the only place that you can find, it's the only feasible location, I think you need to be very clearly thinking about safety planning for disabled people in the event of a fire. And if you have individuals who will need to be individually carried out by firemen, and you have six of them on the sixth floor in one room and there's a fire, you will have fatalities. They just won't be able to get everybody out in time.

Kate Johnston: Mm-hmm.

Kristy Anne Cox: So if you're gonna have a gathering space for people with mobility devices who may need to be evacuated in the event of the fire, I think that should be on the ground floor.

What do you think?

Kate Johnston: I agree. I am worried that there aren't enough ground floor/disability rooms for all the people who need them. And actually having been a state employee, we had that. We literally had groups of people, every office got together and said, "okay, here are the things that we need for the people to be able to evacuate from the building, which thing are you willing to do?"

And I went from "person willing to help carry people downstairs" to "person who needs to be carried downstairs, but can also run a bunch of the organization", in the space of two years.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: And so yes, we have to make sure that people are coming from the place of their strengths and where to apply them, but yes, you're right. And I think that one of the things that we should think about in terms of young people who are now coming to cons, is they should be on that team. That should be one of the ways that they get into SF is that, "hey, yeah, we're Fire Team. I was Fire Team at Dragoncon, I'll be fire team at Gen Con, I know how to do this."

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: You know, "I am young and strong and those are my attributes right now."

Kristy Anne Cox: My dad's military and so when they did fire drills in his office, everyone was assigned, they knew in advance which person they were in charge of. And it's like, if there is an emergency, this is your partner. You don't leave the building without your partner. You go get them, right?

Kate Johnston: Mm-hmm.

Kristy Anne Cox: And so I like that, because someone was talking to me about possible technology mentors where like a younger person and an older person might be paired together, to have someone you could reach out to explain basic issues, you know? And maybe it's ageist of me to say that, but I think that there are a lot of people who are older who do have technology issues.

Kate Johnston: Mm-hmm.

Kristy Anne Cox: If you're not one of them, then you would be great. Maybe you would be a tech mentor, like, people can sign up to be a technology mentor, but maybe there's emergency evacuation mentor. Or not mentor, but yeah, I don't know. You know?

Kate Johnston: Yeah. Sure. You know, when I used to train horses, we used to say a lot about horses and dogs, "they need jobs". They are beings that need to have a use, they need to know what it is, they need to know how to do it, and they need to know when they've done it well.

Kristy Anne Cox: We domesticated them that way.

Kate Johnston: We did, but we are the same way.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes, we are.

Kate Johnston: And I think for a lot of people, having that kind of job, it doesn't pay you money but it pays you in satisfaction and gratitude, and feeling like you are a part of something. That is so one of the things that we are missing as Americans, is feeling like we are a part of something. And if we can do something about that for our SFF people, we will feel more tied together as a group and as an organization. I don't know that this is gonna be a bad thing for us.

Kristy Anne Cox: No, that's a good thing. People—I think at the root of it, if it's not an academic con, they are going to cons to make friends, or to connect with friends, or to feel connected to a larger community, and it's about friendship.

And so a lot of what we're thinking about is how to facilitate friendships. I think that needs to be age informed, it needs to be disability informed, but yeah, helping people have a connection to others. I've seen a lot of different things we can do with that, but I really like the idea of finding ways to connect generational and clique differences, right?

Kate Johnston: Mm-hmm.

Kristy Anne Cox: So like, maybe you're military SFF and you haven't met anybody in speculative romance. Let's crosspollinate. That's what speculative romance is all about.

Kate Johnston: Mm-hmm.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, I think we have time for one more question. Was there something else that caught your eye?

Kate Johnston: I really, really, really wanna touch on scheduling.

Kristy Anne Cox: Scheduling! Please.

Kate Johnston: Okay. So I've seen this go on a bunch of times and I just don't understand why it keeps happening. I understand that we have a hotel that has a lot of different sizes of meeting rooms, but when you have an author whose name everyone knows, and you have them scheduled in the tiniest room possible, you are asking for trouble.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: I saw, was it Joe Haldeman having a conversation with some other big, huge old science fiction guy, and I was just like, "why are we not in a ballroom?" Everyone knows who you are, we're not sitting around talking about the fabrication of O-rings for Challenger. Like, that's a five people discussion, fine. But no, these two guys talking to each other about science fiction? Yeah, and they're telling stories from like the Reagan administration? Everybody wanna hear that. And those that don't should go do whatever it is they wanna do in the small room, or go do crafts or whatever it is.

But we really need to think more clearly about that, especially since both of these men are 80 plus and that room was tiny, and there was not enough space for all of the mobility devices that needed to be in there.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: There were lots more people that wanted to be in that room and just could not, so that's one of them.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Well, and when you're planning mobility space parking lots, I want people to keep in mind that not everybody is containable in a rectangle. If you and your body have a limb sticking out, or something where you're gonna get bumped into all the time because you've been parked too narrowly, it's really good to have somebody there physically in the space moderating that. You want somebody on the elevators. Your job is to prevent other people from squishing too many wheelchairs onto this elevator.

Kate Johnston: Mm-hmm.

Kristy Anne Cox: And the other people will probably be other disabled people who are being pushed by someone who wants them in there.

Kate Johnston: Yep. The last two crowd control places that I've been to with an elevator that worked really well, they both had elevator operators. Oracle Park and the Masonic had elevator operators, and I know it's annoying and I know they sit in this little tiny room all day, but oh God, it made it happen so much better.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Well, I was gonna say if you end up in a room that is just not big enough, one way to include all of these overflow individuals is to have other rooms where they can sit and watch the same panel.

Kate Johnston: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: And then include them by specifically making sure you bring an audience question from each of those other rooms. I've seen that work very successfully in large church settings, and I've seen it in educational settings. Now, what you don't wanna do is end up saying, "this is the disabled room". Maybe you do wanna have a room that is accessible in a particular way, but you just don't wanna make people feel like you're herding them out of sight.

Kate Johnston: Right.

Kristy Anne Cox: Also a mother's lounge, or a parent's lounge.

Kate Johnston: Yes, I was gonna say that. Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Where someone can go with their noisy or crying child if they need to nurse. That's another way to add excellent accessibility.

Kate Johnston: And then I have one other thing, 'cause this actually happens. It's happened twice now in the last two years. Please, please do not schedule all the brown people on DEI day. Don't do that. We actually know each other, we would like to support each other, and if I'm in panels all day but I can't go and see my friends be in panels all day, I'mma be mad. I'm gonna be so mad.

And also, all of the brown people will look at that and go, "well, clearly you didn't want us here for the other two days, so we're gonna leave".

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: And that did happen. You know, so if that's what you want and you're running the SF-KKK, okay, that's how you do that. But I would like to support not doing that.

Kristy Anne Cox: Remember that your panelists and your moderators also want to enjoy the convention. It's worthwhile for people on scheduling just to like, pay attention. "Hey, this person has six things in two days, maybe I should check in with them and make sure they don't just say yes to everything because they don't know how to say no."

Kate Johnston: Mm-hmm.

Kristy Anne Cox: But yeah, not putting everybody on the same day from a particular marginalization group is really, really important, because you're also depriving them of the opportunity to connect with other people and build community in solidarity with their group.

Which is another big reason people come to cons, is to meet their peer writers, the people you're gonna come up with, and you can't meet 'em if they're back to back.

Kate Johnston: And I think one of the things that we have been neglecting is that—and I know we do this at ICFA, but—we really do need to have like a ballroom with really good filtration, where everybody can just freaking mingle.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh yeah.

Kate Johnston: There's not enough space to do that in. There's just not, and we never get enough time with people. And I swear to God, half the time that we're all, you know, freaking out and sad when somebody dies, is that we only managed to have two conversations with them in 35 years because everything was just all happening at once.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Well, we are out of time. I guess for listeners and for our readers, I wanna say, cut yourself a little slack if you're making mistakes when you're learning how to do this. Disability as a community is a very diverse group of littler communities in a trench coat, trying to get into a movie theater where they don't want us to come in.

And a lot of it is trying to find a way to get all those groups to work together, which is similar in larger social justice movements, like disability justice. I think disabled people, it's okay to make mistakes as you're learning this stuff, but you also need to be open to listening and changing behavior.

So if you're listening to this and thinking, I made a mistake in running my local con, well, I'm more focused on "how can you do better?"

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: What are your thoughts to wrap us up here, Kate?

Kate Johnston: Yeah, I would like to second that. Like, I'm less interested in blame than I am in "let's make the next one better than the one I'm talking about". That sort of thing. That's pretty much where I'm going with this.

And actually we have a ton more questions and answers to go with this, so you know, I'm fine with saying this was part one.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: And we'll pick up with part two next time, 'cause we can finish this.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, let's wrap this episode.

So thank you for listening everyone. You can find more episodes of this on the Strange Horizons website. You can also search "Writing While Disabled" and look for either my name, Kristy Anne Cox, or Kate's name. You're going by LM Kate Johnston.

Kate Johnston: Yes, correct.

Kristy Anne Cox: And please feel free to share this with the hashtag #WritingWhileDisabled, and the hashtag #StrangeHorizons, and ask us any questions you have. We wanna hear your thoughts. We probably don't wanna promote your book, but we definitely wanna hear your questions about disability and science fiction spaces and writing.

All right, till we meet again.

Kate Johnston: All right. Excelsior!

In this special episode of Writing While Disabled's second season, hosts Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston speculate about the impact of a space army made up of various species of dinosaurs, and make connections to disability and accommodations as they relate to the real life of disabled people.

If you prefer, you can watch the full episode with close-caption subtitles here.

Show notes:

• This episode was produced and hosted by Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston, and edited, mixed, and transcribed by Kat Kourbeti.
• The theme song, "Funky - Upbeat Loop" by ispeakwaves, is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
• Want to send us a question? You can do so here!

Transcript​

Kristy Anne Cox: All right. Welcome to Writing While Disabled. I am Kristy Anne Cox.

Kate Johnston: And I'm Kate Johnston.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes. Here we are at the Accessible Con Bar. We are gonna do a fun episode this time. And what is our topic, Kate?

Kate Johnston: Our topic is... dinosaur armies.

Kristy Anne Cox: Velociraptor dinosaur armies, and/or dinosaur related creatures that may not technically be dinosaurs, but might possibly be used in science fiction, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Kate Johnston: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: Readers, listeners, viewers, you are at a convention and you are going to the Con Bar to hang out after that amazing panel, but this is the Accessible Con Bar! You can hear everything. You can see everything. Eye contact is or is not a thing, depending on your preferences. This is the conversation you want to be included at, at those cons, but you can't.

Well, now you can. Here on Writing While Disabled Accessible Con Bar, Special Episode: Velociraptor Space Army. Shall we get into it?

Kate Johnston: We should. Welcome pilots, poets, and platypuses. Let's go.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes, welcome plumbers and poets. Wait, no, you already said poets. Gosh darn it. What's a good contrast of plumbers?

Kate Johnston: No one ever uses poets. We can use poets twice.

Kristy Anne Cox: You know what? Welcomes are difficult for people, and for aliens.

Kate Johnston: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: So, Kate, you had a question to start us off, you said, "how does designing aliens help us think about accommodations?"

Kate Johnston: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: I think that's a really interesting question. Tell me what you're thinking along these lines.

Kate Johnston: I think about it in this framework: there are a certain number of things that a living being has to do every single day, pretty much, in order to continue the species. So ingestion, what are we putting in; evacuation, what's coming out and where's it go; and then we have sleeping and we have mating. I know for humans, you don't actually have to mate, but I think most people sometimes want to and then sometimes really don't, depending on who they're standing next to, often.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, and in this context we might be doing animal husbandry in space, right? Like—

Kate Johnston: Or even animal wifery.

Kristy Anne Cox: Right? Artificial insemination in a zero G environment. There are a lot of things we could discuss, depending on if we're talking about dinosaurs as astronauts, or dinosaurs as animal companions.

In science fiction, I have seen dinosaurs or dinosaur shaped creatures used as animals. Right, a hoard of wolves, you release them on a planet, they eat everyone. You release them onto a spaceship, they eat everyone. I've seen a couple of things where they're mounts, usually planet side, and I haven't seen a ton of things where they're astronauts. So you were saying, why does it always have to be, we are higher than them, they're animals, we're humans. We are astronauts, they're mounts. Does that sound familiar?

Kate Johnston: Yep. It does. It does. And there's a few things I wanna say about that. One is that in the most recent episode of Love, Death and Robots, my friend Stant Litore has an episode where there are tyrannosaurs on a space station. They are used as mounts. It's a really good story, and it's the way that we usually think of them as mindless killing machines and yet the whole thing.

I think one of the reasons I'm writing the book that I'm writing is that if we think about parrots, which have little tiny brains, as being about the same intelligence level as of a four or 5-year-old— they can do math, they remember numbers, color, shapes, associative groups, they can do all sorts of inductive and deductive reasoning if you pose the questions to them correctly... Now, scale that up to a ton. How dumb do you think they really have to be? Because I don't think they do.

They are limited by not having handy hands, and that is something that we can, if we choose, augment with technology. So we can decide how these beings get to interact with their world, but I think the "they are just mindless killing machines 24/7" doesn't even explain how they would've evolved on this planet, because things that are mindless killing machines 24/7 don't. I mean, we don't have those things.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: There are things that kill stuff for fun, and kill lots of things, sure. Your basic house cat does that.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, we have army ants. But they don't do it 24/7, right? They go on the march. Yeah.

Kate Johnston: If they have a reason to be traveling and that's why they're Sherman-ing their way through the jungle. You know, tyrannosaurs — if you think about a tyrannosaur as like kind of a big lizard, right? So, you look at a monitor lizard, a big one, something that's six feet long... Those things eat like once every two or three weeks, and the rest of the time they're doing stuff. Reptile stuff.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, and if we had more bird direction, then they've gotta eat constantly. So it really depends on what animal analog we're using.

Kate Johnston: I think if you're a bird, for the amount of heartbeats that you spend eating versus the amount you spend doing other things, you don't— you spend a bunch of time on your nest and gestating young and, you know, having ant baths and stuff like that. Like they don't just eat and just lay eggs and poop. They have whole other things going on.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. But they do eat a lot more than your average Komodo dragon in terms of meals.

Kate Johnston: Sure.

Kristy Anne Cox: I wanna go back to your question though, about how smart does the T-Rex need to be.

Kate Johnston: Yep.

Kristy Anne Cox: 'Cause I'm thinking about this like, big dumb animal paradigm versus the intelligent being who is our co-explorer of the universe as an astronaut, and then I guess the other end would be someone way above and beyond us so we can't possibly understand, akin to magic, whatever. Like a dinosaur, it depends on if we've uplifted them or not, right? Like, did we just bring them from their environments? Because then it's gonna be what environmental slot are they filling?

Like sheep don't need to evolve to be smarter, because it doesn't benefit them. It serves no survival advantage. T-Rexes, it really depends on their hunting strategy, and I'm not sure we're a hundred percent sure yet on hunting strategy, right? For T-Rexes? I mean, pack hunting animals tend to be pretty intelligent, pro-social behavior.

Kate Johnston: No, we don't have that information from the scientific community yet, which leaves a, you know, lovely and large space for fiction to inhabit.

Kristy Anne Cox: We don't think they're scavengers anymore. We used to think that T-Rexes were just straight scavengers, right? We're not there still.

Kate Johnston: No. I mean, they could run, they could swim. I think that there are some things that we don't think about in terms of dinosaur anatomy that we have yet to incorporate into the way that we think about them, because we are thinking about Barney and Jurassic Park, and those are not necessarily great representations of what we know about dinosaurs.

Like one of the things that I just saw go by me in Facebook the other day was, if you have a bird that has injured its foot or is injured in a way that you don't understand, you need to build up a little like donut of cardboard to sit the bird in because of the way it breathes. Birds and dinosaurs both had air sacks in their bones and in other parts of their body, and those are feeding air to their lungs. And if you leave them on their side long enough— and this also goes for dolphins— you leave them on their side long enough in a one G field, they're going to suffocate, because their air sacks on that side of their body can't inflate/deflate. So, we don't think of T-Rex in that sort of mode, and we should.

Kristy Anne Cox: So if you're a veterinarian, it's advantageous to be treating your dinosaur clients in a zero G environment, right? But if you're on the ground, you're worried about them suffocating if they lay down for too long, is what you're saying for a larger dinosaur or for any like Dromaeosaurid?

Kate Johnston: Possibly. We don't know. We'd have to find out when we grow them, whether they can do that. But it also means that we don't know, when you start looking at forced air pressure breathing units, what kind of—

Kristy Anne Cox: How would that pressure—

Kate Johnston: —does a dinosaur need? Ah-ha! Yeah. Do they actually need to have a space suit to keep all their stuff from just sort of exploding, the way ours does? Or is there internal skin, like where their skin is and how it's put together, is that strong enough to keep them from suffering a bunch of the things that happen to us in a zero G environment?

You could do this with bears too; bears have this really thick armor-like layer, of keratin under their skin, so it's really hard to like, slash a bear. That's why people shoot them and they don't attack them with knives, because it doesn't work very well.

So there's all of these things that we don't think about in terms of how do they live in just a regular thing? I mean, probably T-Rexes did not eat every single minute of the day because you just don't have that kind of prey available to you either. But if they eat once a week, then they're spending six whole days and probably 20 plus hours after that, doing other stuff. We dunno what that stuff is.

Kristy Anne Cox: I'm kind of thinking them in terms of lifestyle, and this is just in my head here, they're living like a tiger, or maybe they're living like wolves, or maybe they're doing something else. But I like those two analogies, 'cause a tiger has time to lay around. Lions have time to lay around and rest, it's part of their strategy. Wolves tend to keep it busy, they've got a more packed agenda. Oh, this is interesting. So we're talking behavioral, right? We're talking biological in space, 'cause like a lot of the issues we've run into with human astronauts were because body parts reacted in ways we did not expect when living in zero G environments for long periods of time.

Kate Johnston: Right.

Kristy Anne Cox: So body parts that dinosaurs have that we don't: so their bones are different, right? Eyeballs are different. Some of the marine reptiles have that bone disc, right? An ichthyosaurus fossil has the—

Kate Johnston: Oh, a sclerotic ring. Yeah, land animals have those too.

Kristy Anne Cox: I'm wondering if it would be advantageous or disadvantageous to do veterinary medicine in a zero G environment. I think the air sack leads me to say advantageous.

Kate Johnston: No. Unfortunately, I found out an awful lot recently about how the body reacts to a zero G environment and the answer in just about every way is poorly. One of the things that The Expanse did really well was that in a zero G environment, blood travels differently. So you have the problem with it stacking up over the wound and not actually clotting.

Kristy Anne Cox: Which is why they needed to get a ship with gravity to treat all the wounded.

Kate Johnston: Right. And so that's a thing. We don't know how that's gonna go.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, we haven't had a traumatic injury in space yet, thankfully.

Kate Johnston: Knock on wood. Well, not that anyone survived, no.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: All the way out there in space, at the ISS. Right, we haven't had a chance to do surgery there yet.

Kate Johnston: No. No, and I don't know that we're going to anytime soon, 'cause we don't tend to send up surgeons.

Kristy Anne Cox: Usually there's medically trained people though, like for that type of situation. In a crew, there's somebody who would be like—

Kate Johnston: No, there's not actually. This is why you have to have your appendix removed and your wisdom teeth removed, because they don't wanna have those types of things happen in space.

Kristy Anne Cox: Or like in combat. I'm thinking more combat medic type skills. I wasn't thinking like,

Kate Johnston: Sure. It's sort of a "patch you up and get you to the nearest thing". So these are things we don't know, and like we were saying earlier on, we have other issues like, we don't know what they needed to eat. You asked, did they need to have live prey? Like snakes, you may not need it to be alive, but you may need that corpse to be moved around so you think it's alive and that's why they strike, and that's why you don't use your hand to do that, you use a forceps.

So they may need to have the prey shooting gallery, when they make a hit, it delivers you a, a frozen embryo or something. So yeah, there's a whole thing about that. How long are they in torper after they eat? So if we all have like a dining room situation, a mess hall, and everyone eats and then they go down for their two hour nap afterward, what happens if you get attacked during dinner? You have to think about how you are going to rotate your army, how you're going to use when they are the most alert for their job.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, if you have to carry that many chickens with you in space, let's just say they eat chickens, right? How many chickens per day does a Velociraptor need under these environmental conditions, with this workload? What is the method of transport? How fast are we getting from solar system to solar system or planet to planet? How much of your spaceship is just chickens? I feel like you're gonna need a lot of chickens.

Kate Johnston: A lot of chicken. I'm gonna eat every chicken in this way. Not only that, but if they're gonna be eating all those chickens, what's coming out the other end? And what is it in sheer tonnage?

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, do they have sphincter control? Like, ducks definitely don't.

Kate Johnston: No.

Kristy Anne Cox: So if we're assuming a duck situation, then you need velociraptor diapers.

Kate Johnston: A lot of cloaca-trons.

Kristy Anne Cox: So, cloaca-trons, is this like a little, uh—

Kate Johnston: I don't know. I just made up the word. So we can be anything we want, but yeah, it's something like a Roomba that would follow you around and just scoop your poop up.

Kristy Anne Cox: A Roomba? Hahaha! See, I think that's a terrible idea because from what I understand, we already have a problem of little floating mystery pellets in the International Space Station.

Kate Johnston: We do. Yes, we do.

Kristy Anne Cox: So it would just be that on a much, much larger scale, which makes their diet super important, 'cause you wanna keep the consistency— oh, this is going gross places. People, I'm sorry. Writing While Disabled, we're writing right now, we're disabled, we have no boundaries about what is and isn't appropriate.

Kate Johnston: But think about how many people in our audience have a disability that affects their digestive system!

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh my gosh. What is acid reflux like in zero G? Do we know this already?

Kate Johnston: Uh, we don't, and it's probably not good. This is already the reason we know that we don't want carbonated liquids in space because it tends to sit right up under that valve and just spew carbon dioxide and acid up your windpipe at you.

Kristy Anne Cox: So I can postulate on this a little bit because I have dysphagia, right? So after the brain injury, I lost full control of the part of your musculature that keeps you from choking when you're eating.

Kate Johnston: Lovely.

Kristy Anne Cox: I also can no longer hold my breath underwater without pinching my nose, which I thought was interesting.

So having lost those two very specific skills, I'm thinking in zero G, that would be even a bigger problem. We evolved to have our food generally pulled downward. Right?

Kate Johnston: Yep.

Kristy Anne Cox: What about birds? Because they have gallstones too, like parakeets, that little pouch where they grind up their seeds.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. Crop.

Kristy Anne Cox: Crop, yes. Do dinosaurs have crops?

Kate Johnston: We don't know. That's a soft tissue, and I don't know that we know that. We have found some gastrolids with fossils that make it look like, yes, there was probably a pouch here, which is where all these little rocks work, 'cause they're abnormally smooth, and we dunno why they would be there, but we don't actually know. And so yes, they might have crops, in which case there may be a little pebble dispenser somewhere on the ship, to keep everybody healthy.

Kristy Anne Cox: And then those little cuttlefish chew bone things that you put on the side of a parakeet cage that they need to chew to keep their beaks. Like dinosaurs with beaks need to have beak maintenance. Dinosaurs with claws need to maintain their claws.

So if I'm a dinosaur astronaut and I am on the deck of my ship, I think I need claw holes with a button at the bottom. What do you think? Because I think it would hurt to constantly be pushing human buttons with a claw tip.

Kate Johnston: Okay. I actually was thinking about that. So, here's that thing about the way animals think that it's not the way we think about things. So specifically velociraptors and other Dromeosaurs, wouldn't their keyboards and keys be sized to the end of their snout, rather than their claws? Because my cats will shove their face into the crack of a door and shove the door open, rather than reaching out a paw and pulling it open, because they don't think about their hands that way.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, for opening a door, yeah, but I don't imagine snout typing is very efficient, right?

Kate Johnston: But it's what they've got and it's what makes sense to them. It's just gonna be a giant thing, or they're gonna have very few things that it does.

Kristy Anne Cox: That depends on who designed their spaceship.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, but they don't think about doing key typey things with claws, because they're really curved too.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Yeah. In CJ Cherryh's Chanur series, there is a human astronaut who is brought on to a ship of lion people, and he can't use any of their keyboards or devices because they have retractable claws, and they just kind of like push their claw into a hole until there's enough pressure on whatever the cone shape or whatever it is that it works. So he has to use an ice pick.

That's a disability. We're interrogating the way different bodies need different accommodations in different environments, and he is effectively disabled in that environment. Not because there's anything wrong with him, but because this environment is designed to accommodate people with five fingers and retractable claws that are a lot more sensitive, more nerve endings.

I don't know, 'cause Velociraptors and all the Dromeosaurids, their claws aren't being used for the same purpose as lions. How sensitive would their claw be? Because if you're ripping something—

Kate Johnston: That's good question. Like, parrots are really sensitive.

Kristy Anne Cox: But then meanwhile you have like ducks and other waterfowl who can stand on ice and sleep that way, and it doesn't hurt their feet, or at least enough to stop them from doing that. So I assume their little claws are also not that sensitive. I guess it would depend on the environmental needs that those claws evolved for.

So Velociraptors, they used their claws, we think, to kind of latch on a little bit while they were eviscerating them with the back claws, right? So if I'm following that through, what gear does my Velociraptor astronaut need? Does he have a vac suit?

Kate Johnston: We don't know if he needs one. This is where fiction comes in. You can go either way with that. You're just going to have to have an explanation, you know? You're gonna have to say he's wearing only mag boots, because even though he has claws, he can't dig into the side of the spacecraft. So he is wearing mag boots and maybe a sternum magnet, and then the claws, if you think about it, they can't do this— they cannot pronate.

Kristy Anne Cox: Viewers— Kate is moving her wrists down to the side.

Kate Johnston: Demonstrating that palm down is the way that Dromeosaurus joints looked. They could not rotate their hands very far inward so they could climb a tree, for example. They didn't have the clavicle and sternum construction that would make them strong in that direction.

Kristy Anne Cox: It depends on if these are uplifted dinosaurs, where they have some traits that have changed over time, or if they have prosthetic arms which, if you've got these short arms, the imagination for me goes to, they're holding cannons or they've got mechanical arms to do things. And I like thinking about prosthetics in the terms of disability, but I also like thinking about who designed the accommodations and do they suck because I'm imagining like, you're out walking on the hull of a ship in grav boots, some human thought this was a great idea to accommodate you, the Velociraptor pilot, but you're in grav boots and that doesn't work for you because your body is different and it really sucks. And then I'm thinking, why does it suck? Because he wants to pounce on the other astronaut and eviscerate him and he can't, he's stuck to the ship with magnetism, curses.

Kate Johnston: In the Dinosaur Space Navy story that I'm writing, I have a whole thing about choosing what your augments are gonna be because that tells you where in the army structure you're gonna go. But one of the intro moments that they're having during training is, one of the instructors is basically going, "if you wanna scratch your nose, get it all out now because the minute we put that canon on, you ain't doing that no more."

So yeah, there's a lot of that. I was gonna say, I had an ex who used to use her cellphone with her nose, because she had to have the phone so close to her face 'cause she had really bad eyesight, so she would just operate it with her nose because it was right there. So not all animals use things the way you might think they would.

Kristy Anne Cox: That is true. And I like the idea of exploring muzzle, 'cause I'm rejecting the idea of a muzzle keyboard based on me imagining these giant buttons, but maybe they would be using that like trace typing, like on a cell phone. So I'm imagining now, you're a giant T-Rex in a T-Rex shaped spaceship, and he is got what? A touch screen and he is texting his mom by tracing the words instead of pushing each button. Is that what you're thinking? Are you thinking individual?

Kate Johnston: No, I'm thinking of individual. Like, dromeosaurids weren't that big, and the end of their face is not huge. It's like the size of your fist. And so I can see, in the same way that dogs use those buttons.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Kate Johnston: Talk like that, like a dog.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. What about prosthetic arms? What if we gave our Dromeosaurus, let's say it's a Utah Raptor, we've rigged him up with fully cybernetic arms that are capable of typing on a human keyboard. Why did we do that? Because we're humans and we're thinking about everything from that perspective. I wanna think about why that

Kate Johnston: I didn't realize that if it's male, it's gonna spend the first week just scratching its crotch, right?

Kristy Anne Cox: The evolutionary purpose of itching, that's gonna take us down a whole rabbit hole.

Kate Johnston: Well—

Kristy Anne Cox: Don't scratch the rabbit hole, but,

Okay, so some human engineer has given you, a Utah Raptor, two amazing cyborg arms. They have canons built in, they can type on a human keyboard. What sucks about it? I feel like keyboards require you to look at a certain direction with a certain type of head and neck shape, right?

Kate Johnston: Have you ever talked to somebody with a prosthetic limb?

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes.

Kate Johnston: I would imagine that grafting something onto your bones never stops really hurting. It's a low level ache that you can just deal with, but it's always there in the same way that people with titanium knees, when they are in the winter, they can feel that inside their body.

Kristy Anne Cox: Readers and writers and listeners, I wanna hear from you. If you have a prosthesis and you have thoughts on this, I would love to hear your take on this.

Okay, so you're gonna have probably physical sensation of some sort, and it won't be like with an amputee where you have like the ghost limb, because we are adding an extra limb to you, or length that doesn't exist. It's not like your instincts are hardwired. It would be equivalent of like, wearing stilts, or like operating a surgical robot. So you're adding complications and length and dimensions. Your proprioception is off.

Kate Johnston: Right, and I would imagine that you would wanna be able to take them off at some point. Like you wouldn't want them hard wired or hard attached. You would want there to be an interface.

Kristy Anne Cox: Have you ever used that claw thing that you can get for disabled people? They market it as if it's for dumb people, but really it's for disabled people. It's like a claw, you wanna get something out of the top cupboard and there's—

Kate Johnston: Oh yeah, I have a clamp.

Kristy Anne Cox: So I got one out the other day and I was pretending in my kitchen that I was a Dakota Raptor, and I've got this claw and I could not get a can down from the top shelf to save my life, so I'm not gonna make it in the Space Marines. I am a civilian Dakota Raptor, clearly. But it's really hard to operate that. It's gonna take me hours of practice before I can do that. And that's just in earth gravity.

Kate Johnston: And that's using your actual hands. Imagine if you were trying to use your shoulder muscles to do this, which is what artificial arms do, that's how that's done. You open and close the grippers by how your shoulder is articulating. So that's definitely a thing to think about is like, how would you decide what nerve nodes, whatever you are going to map onto this prosthetic arm— and they're already using theirs, so you're gonna add new ones for them, and that'll be definitely a period of learning and experimentation for them to figure out how to use all this stuff.

And like I've said a gajillion times before, and I will continue to say it, they also have to deal with the fact that if they are in an environment where someone is building them augments, how are they going to keep up with the pace of technological change? Because there's always gonna be a bigger and better gun. And when you get out of the service, what happens? Do they take those away? Do they give you civilian ones? What happens? What kind of society do you come from and how well are they going to take care of you?

Ooh, ooh. Wait, I have one more design issue: in the Space Navy thing I'm writing, they're in a situation where there's a whole bunch of people of different species, the way the army works, and they're in a ship that is foreign to all of that. So they need to figure out how to navigate through this ship, and it has like lights and buttons and, you know, okay. But how do you know how to drive it? How do you know that when you push this button, it actually does this other thing? What does green mean to the people who built this? Our lights are not green and red because we're omnivores, they're green and red because they're parts of the UV spectrum that we can see clearly from a distance and are widely separate from each other.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, and also because of the colors, we can see green being the predominant color in a forest environment or a Savannah environment, right, and red being the polar opposite. So the brightest and most easy to see, signaling danger the same way animals use red.

Kate Johnston: Well, but is it?

Kristy Anne Cox: Danger? I mean, blood is red.

Kate Johnston: Like animals aren't necessarily red when they're dangerous.

Kristy Anne Cox: Not always, but some of them are, right, like a bright red tree frog, don't eat it. If it's a green tree frog, I'm eating it every time.

Kate Johnston: Oh, you're gonna die.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. Haha!

Kate Johnston: But yeah, you can't necessarily make the same assumptions. You know, that purple button, what do you think it does? I don't know. It could give us all like self cut bangs. No one wants that.

Kristy Anne Cox: It's a bowl cut for everyone, but it's feathers this time because we're dinosaurs. Right?

Kate Johnston: Right. But like—

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh my gosh, do dinosaurs in the Space Marines get crew cuts on their feathers?

Kate Johnston: You know? Do you trim some of the flyers so they can't fly so they're not as annoying around in the spaceship?

Kristy Anne Cox: Can you imagine molting season? Like—

Kate Johnston: Yes!

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. Ducks completely molt out their feathers seasonally. And I'm talking mallards. So twice a year they're shedding all their feathers. Those float around, even in this gravity. I feel like you're gonna be breathing down 24/7 if you're an animal husbandry tech on one of these, if they're like on a generation ship.

Kate Johnston: So one of the very highly, highly respected and decorated people on this ship is going to be the filtration team.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, yeah, because there's gonna be poop.

Kate Johnston: There's gonna be poop, there's gonna be dander, there's gonna be whatever that powdery shit that comes off birds...?

Kristy Anne Cox: Bird powder?

Kate Johnston: Thank you.

Kristy Anne Cox: The technical term!

Kate Johnston: A scientific term called "poudre de avian"!

Kristy Anne Cox: There's gonna be a lot of things. And then food particles, right? And then you have everything the chickens produce. There's gonna be a lot of dust, you have chicken feed.

Kate Johnston: And I was thinking about people who may not have mates or their group on the ship with them. There would have to be like a room with all those rotating bristle things that you find in like cow barns, so that they could stand there and get scratched and stuff. That also helps get molting skin off. Because we don't know that they didn't molt their skin either. It wasn't an exoskeleton. Although it's fiction, you could do that.

Kristy Anne Cox: I wanna switch topics entirely to be sure we get to this, 'cause I think we're gonna run outta time. But can we talk strategy and tactics in different environments for your Velociraptor Space Army? Because let's say I'm breaching an airlock with my Velociraptor Space Army. Is it more advantageous for me to send in Velociraptor astronauts or human astronauts to kill all the space pirates in this space station? And why?

Kate Johnston: It depends on who built the ship, to start with. Because if the Velociraptors are too big to fit through the hallways, it's humans.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, Velociraptors are smaller than us, but like, Utah Raptors are bigger.

Kate Johnston: They're bigger than we are, and they weigh a lot more than we do.

Kristy Anne Cox: Dakota Raptors, if they're real, are definitely way bigger. We just don't know if it's one species or two species mixed together in a bag.

Kate Johnston: But this is what I mean. Space strategy and tactics has far less to do with what we think in every way than it does, "what are the physics of this issue?"

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. What if I'm on the planet, who's my infantry?

Kate Johnston: Depends on what you wanna do and what the terrain is.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. If I've got a just boring as possible, plain, two armies facing off on a plane, which is the baseline boring scenario. My infantry, I feel like armored T-Rexes feels like a good idea. I'm going to put canons in each of their hands and I'm going to armor them up very heavily and I'm gonna put a knight on the back and he's gonna have, I don't know, a tank launcher. Tell me what you think of my tactics.

Kate Johnston: What are you facing?

Kristy Anne Cox: I'm facing—

Kate Johnston: You know, if you're facing planaria, that's overkill.

Kristy Anne Cox: Let's assume I am facing a ground army, mixed units, and that this sounds like somebody who knows what they're talking about because I don't.

Kate Johnston: Okay, yeah. Basically, you wanna have bigger guns that fire farther from your opponents. But I can definitely see where if you've got a thousand pounds of very, very excited T-Rex, I think your tactics may go right down the shitter very quickly, because I don't know that they're going to have the ability to reject their instinctual impulses long enough to execute strategy on the battlefield.

Like, yes, parrots will rip you up six ways from Sunday, but if you have two parrots who don't know each other, they're not necessarily going to bond together to fight you.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. They're not gonna cooperate.

Kate Johnston: No. And so I'm worried about how the cooperation of large animals goes because generally, unless they're doing it for themselves and it's their own family group, screw you and everybody. You can get horses to do it a little bit. Rhinos? Eh, not so much.

This is what I mean though, in space battles and as you just demonstrated in a lot of battles on land too, it doesn't matter what species you are, it matters what kind of armament you have versus what kind of armament your opponents have.

Because yes, you could be a big scary T-Rex with a giant gun, however, if you're going up against parasites that are specifically T-Rex, you're probably gonna come outta that with a bunch of parasites. You know, sharks are really scary and remoras hang out on them all the time.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. You mean what, parasites are hanging on the T-Rexes?

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: I'm thinking corridors, narrow corridors, like in these human built space stations.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. Not going to be good for T-Rexes.

Kristy Anne Cox: But they would be good for Velociraptors. Wouldn't those claws help them navigate better? 'Cause they can grab onto like walls and stuff and kick off with those powerful back legs. Wouldn't they be really good in zero G, close combat quarters if they could figure out how to— I feel like they would be wanting to bite you though, which would be less effective in a space suit like we've got now, like NASA's current space suits aren't designed to be terribly chewable.

Kate Johnston: No. And that the helmets are not designed to let them bite you.

Kristy Anne Cox: I wonder how much bite pressure you would need as a dinosaur to crack an astronaut helmet?

Kate Johnston: So it depends on where you're biting it. Like at the edge of the glass bubble, probably not a lot.

Kristy Anne Cox: I just wanna get to the chewy astronaut inside. I'd like to eat him. What skills do I need?

Kate Johnston: You need to rip the front of the suit open. We're like shrimp. You wanna eat the body.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. So if we were just talking NASA's current space suit, I feel like they look pretty sturdy, but I don't know if they could take a Dromeosaurid claw to the rib cage. I feel like they're not designed for that.

Kate Johnston: They were not designed for that. You know who designed the first astronaut suits, right? And sewed them, mostly.

Kristy Anne Cox: Humans?

Kate Johnston: Well, no, the ladies from Playtex.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, really?

Kate Johnston: Because those suits have to be sewn together and it's like six layers, and every single stitch has to be airtight. Those ladies were already used to doing that type of construction. They basically said, "here's what we need". And they're like, "oh, all right, let's go."

Kristy Anne Cox: What about feathers in zero G? Like, let's say our astronaut only needs a helmet and the rest of their body is okay in space. Would feathers help them navigate zero g?

Kate Johnston: If they were in an oxygen or gas environment, yes, because you can use that. If you were in a zero G environment and you were trapped in the middle of a room, if you had a pair of fans, one in each hand, you would be able to flap your way to one side.

What about the four legged feathered dinosaurs? We don't have a lot of those. Most of them came from China. Microraptor and Anchiornis, they have four legs, all four legs are feathered. And I think those would be fantastic for the inside of the spaceship. And again, one of those things too is that this is a lot like D&D: not every dinosaur is a tank.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh no. Yeah, we could talk combat roles.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, right. And it doesn't need to be, like Anchiornis and Microraptor would be great pilots. They'd be fantastic, but they would stuck at infantry.

Kristy Anne Cox: But I was gonna say, if we're stepping out of just straight dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs as pilots, right? Because they're used to this underwater environment, they evolved to navigate three dimensionally instead of being a terrestrial gravity. More gravity bound, right, animals. So I imagine that they would make really great pilots.

I would think they would be good marksmen because sonar, right? Well, actually we don't know if ichthyosauruses and pleisiosauruses used sonar, but I mean, they had to find a way to find their prey. So I don't know that they would be very good at shooting things... Well no, maybe they would. I'm waffling on this. Would they be good marksmen?

Kate Johnston: Ichthyosaurs did not have echolocation.

Kristy Anne Cox: Also, they have eyes on the side of their head.

Kate Johnston: Rely on sight. Yep.

Kristy Anne Cox: But they're not flat faced like us.

Kate Johnston: We are also not ruling out that they didn't have like, the electrical sensory set up. So they had lateral lines like electric eels, and so they could sense the electricity of their prey in the water.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Kate Johnston: And that would not work outside of water.

Kristy Anne Cox: No. Well, in space, would you be able to sense electricity? No, 'cause the particles are too far apart, right?

Kate Johnston: Yeah, I think you need a medium.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. I'm saying there is a medium, there are particles, they're just so far apart, they can't carry sound... I really don't know how electricity works.

Kate Johnston: Well, the interstellar medium is much more of a small—

Kristy Anne Cox: If I'm a giant electric ichthyosaurus, and I evolved in the asteroid belt, and I'm coming towards your spaceship...

Kate Johnston: Do I know that it's electric? Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: You can sense it because electricity is surging through your spaceship and you're dying. Right? How am I doing that? Or am I not doing that? Because that's not how it would work because the interstellar medium, or the particles are too far apart.

Kate Johnston: I think as long as you don't start talking about the particles, you can get away with it in fiction.

Kristy Anne Cox: So we're hand waving it.

Kate Johnston: We're gonna hand wave that, yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: I was like, "electric eels"...

Kate Johnston: I think it's a great idea. I'm willing to write the story, but it's definitely handwaving them.

Kristy Anne Cox: So, readers, listeners, tell me how do electric eels work if they evolved in the asteroid belt and they're about to kill Kate's spaceship? Please, I need to know the science, use your physics skills for good and not evil.

How much time do we have left? We have time for one more question.

Kate Johnston: I have one more comment though.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, go ahead, please.

Kate Johnston: It was the end of the in-space battles. It doesn't matter what kind of species you are, it matters what kind of ship you have. However, there may be things like cats are more likely to chase things, so you want them on picket duty. So they're looking for weirdness and the first thing they wanna do is go play with the weirdness.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: And so you want that, or dogs who will just point at it and go, there is weirdness right over there. Go, go.

Kristy Anne Cox: I feel like cat base would be recon too, like ambush predators in general would be good scouts.

Kate Johnston: Mm-hmm.

Kristy Anne Cox: And recon. Yeah, dogs and wolf like psychology, if that's their group psychology, that's more like the cavalry, right? Like you're highly mobile, quick, efficient. Is it wrong for me to compare wolves to cavalry?

Kate Johnston: I mean, horses might be offended, but how would we know?

Kristy Anne Cox: Horses are offended by everything.

Kate Johnston: Well, I mean, camels are worse. Camels are offended by, you know, air existing.

Kristy Anne Cox: Another thing that I wanted to talk about was mounts, right? So we've kind of gone into astronauts, but like if we're talking dinosaurs as mounts, as cool as it is, is there a practical reason for me to ride my Dakota Raptor into battle in zero G, alone while I'm drifting through a battle in space? Or while I'm working on my ship? Like why do I need a mount? Because I want to have a mount, so why do I need my mount in space outside the ship?

Kate Johnston: I have no idea.

Kristy Anne Cox: So emotional support reasons. Probably.

Kate Johnston: Do you have a communication system?

Kristy Anne Cox: I mean—

Kate Johnston: If you do, it can just talk you through it.

Kristy Anne Cox: He's the cutest Dakota Raptor you've ever seen.

Kate Johnston: I mean, the only reason I can think of is if you were placing something really big that you needed him to hold onto, or her to hold onto, while you welded it or whatever.

Kristy Anne Cox: Muscles. They're big muscular animals. So if I need to turn a wheel on a door... I feel like that's a thing that happens a lot in space, is somebody has a door on their airlock and there's a wheel for some reason, and you have to turn it, like an old submarine. I feel like muscles might be good, right? Like I can tie a rope to it, and then have him pull. If I'm too weak to turn that wheel, is that gonna help? Is his musculature helpful in space?

Kate Johnston: Maybe. This would again be related to, how does its body work? Because that rotating motion of an airlock wheel, that's a really weird motion and it's a really odd way of applying force to something. And I don't know that their shoulders or elbows or wrists are gonna do that very well. I think the articulated arms would help.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, no, I'm gonna have him with the saddle on. I'm gonna put a bungee on, and I'm gonna hook it to, you know, different parts of the wheel, pull it a little bit, then hook it to a different part of the wheel, pull it a little bit...

Kate Johnston: If you've got enough room on either side of it, sure. I wouldn't use a bungee, I'd use something rigid.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, yeah, obviously something like— okay, so if you're riding a jet pack in space, that's a useful tool. So he could basically be a jet pack if I strapped enough jets to him, right? Or would it be more efficacious just to strap them to a surfboard?

Kate Johnston: It's up to you. I just think that the amount of jet fuel you would need to move 1,200 pounds rather than 200 pounds is going to be an issue.

Kristy Anne Cox: So these are the problems that come when you start with an idea, because it's awesome.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Then you try to figure out why it has to be that way in the world building.

Kate Johnston: Hi, and welcome to fiction writing! But yeah, no, I get that. And it's like that thing of, you know, you wake up in the middle of the night and you're like, "oh my God, it's such a cool idea!" And you wake up in the morning and you look at it and it says, "monkey, dumpster, mouse, scissors". And you're like, what?

Kristy Anne Cox: I know exactly what I meant.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Writes a sonnet.

Kate Johnston: But seriously, this is something that we really have to think about. Like, when you have a ship full of Velociraptors, what do they do in their off time?

Kristy Anne Cox: Parkour.

Kate Johnston: You know, I dunno that they're playing pickleball, that's all I'm saying.

Kristy Anne Cox: Pickleball parkour.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. And then like, on my ship I have entire rooms that are just basically a big litter box.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. So I think there's gonna be diapering. Unless we have uplifted their cloacas, I think there's gonna be extensive diapering, and I think it needs to have some kind of a suction system with a really good seal, because diapering is a lot more difficult in space.

Kate Johnston: Can I tell you one of the reasons why?

Kristy Anne Cox: Please do.

Kate Johnston: Because in space there is no gravity, and unfortunately liquid tends to move via capillary action in the absence of gravity. So yes, you can wear a diaper, but it doesn't mean that that's where the urine is going. Once you exude it, it's crawling along your skin.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. Uh, I'm— I'm dead. This, this killed me. It's crawling?! It's actively crawling?

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Like an amoeba?

Kate Johnston: Kind of.

Kristy Anne Cox: Or more like molasses downhill?

Kate Johnston: There's no hill, hun.

Kristy Anne Cox: Is this "in space, everything is—"

Kate Johnston: And it's not very thick, so yeah, it's crawling pretty fast.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. This is, I feel like... the worst possible place to end this episode. We need a different topic for our last question!

Kate Johnston: Well, I can tell you how we know this.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh my God.

Kate Johnston: Which is not helping.

Kristy Anne Cox: And I don't want to— yes, tell me! My curiosity is stronger than my despair.

Kate Johnston: We know this because many women went up on the shuttle before we knew that it was safe for them to not have periods at all while they go. And so now everybody just does a hormonal birth control and doesn't bleed up there anymore. But that's what we found out. They were like, "okay, no pads only tampons", because the space shuttle toilet is bad enough.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah...

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: I wanna talk hatching in space. I dunno if we have time for that. Or do you wanna talk prosthetics? Is there something you wanna talk about?

Kate Johnston: Well, I wanna talk about the fact that we really, really, really, really, 1000000% do not know enough about reproduction in space to say anything about it at all. What we do have is we have several studies that put pregnant rats in space at various points in their gestation, and some of them gave birth in space and some of them didn't. But we have never actually taken, I don't think, one from the point of fertilization all the way through two weeks after birth, so we could assess the offspring.

However, we do have rats that were shot into space after fertilization but before birth, and then were monitored all the way through birth, and then the newborns were assessed and then they were destroyed. What they found was that about 30% of them were viable and looked okay. The rest did not.

Kristy Anne Cox: Congenital defects or...?

Kate Johnston: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: Or like gravity, I guess. I don't know what you would call them.

Kate Johnston: Well, but how do we know?

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, that's true. We don't know. We don't know.

Kate Johnston: So they had very large heads. They had large eyes, often they were mismatched. A lot of them had what we would consider in adults to be spina bifida, so the tops of their spinal columns didn't close over the spinal cord correctly. There was a lot of failure to thrive.

Kristy Anne Cox: It's interesting because we do not know as an embryo starts diversifying its parts, we don't know if there's gravity triggers that are necessary.

Kate Johnston: Well, this is how we find out.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, I mean, if the different sides of the body are no longer symmetrical, it's fascinating to think that gravity might be related to that.

Okay, so eggs though... hear me out. We know that there is a limit to how big an egg can be because shell size, oxygen through the membrane. We know that birds, having hatched a lot of ducks, they need the experience of hatching out of that egg to finish their development and not end up with major problems after hatching. And the ducklings that I helped get out of the egg ended up with leg issues very often. You have to be very patient and some of the ducklings will die in the hatching process, and it's very stressful, but that hatching is part of what they do.

We know this for butterflies too, right? They have to have the experience of fighting out of the chrysalis in order to fully develop. What if you're hatching that egg in zero G?

Kate Johnston: Yeah. That answer is, we don't know. We have done a bunch of studies in lizards and the news is not great.

Kristy Anne Cox: So no. I mean, egg rotation would be easier.

Kate Johnston: It would, but so you have all of these long termists and weird ass rich white guys who are like, "oh yes, we can just send entire populations into space, we're gonna live on Mars and blah, blah"... No.

Kristy Anne Cox: I heard about that.

Kate Johnston: You know, because you don't even know that sperm work in space, 'cause we don't know that for sure, but we absolutely do not know enough to say what kind of babies we can have, if any. The news is not great, so I actually think For All Mankind did a very good job with that, in saying that, "no, you absolutely need to be in at least some version of microgravity, one sixth or higher, in order to have a healthy baby".

I mean, we do help babies out. We have the cesarean section, they don't die. But it sounds like ducks do, it sounds like there are lots of animals who do. And I think the more variables we change about birth inputs, the greater the effects are gonna be on the resulting product. It's sort of like if you are a degree off when you send the spaceship, it's gonna be way off when you get where you're going.

Kristy Anne Cox: Right. And in medicine we are just within humans, still struggling with the differences between cisgender male and cisgender female bodies and why like, heart disease progresses differently, which is why being a veterinarian is like going to medical school a hundred different times, but in the same period, 'cause you have all these different species.

And so when you think of like, all the stuff that I learned about horses and about ducks and about cats and about dogs through my own experiences leads me to believe this is gonna be different for each species of dinosaur in ways that we'll find out when it goes terribly wrong.

I think disability would be a major part of those stories of uplifted astronauts too, because what are the ethics of uplifting somebody, right? You wanna have a velociraptor who's an astronaut, so you're going to increase their brain size. How do you decide whether or not they wanna keep their arms the way they are? Is it desirable to give them human hands? I mean, they never evolved that, that wasn't necessarily for their environment. Wouldn't that kind of be like somebody saying, I'm gonna give you tentacles and you're gonna spend the next three years learning to use them? Do you want that?

My answer would be no, because I don't wanna do physical therapy for three years to learn how to use tentacles right now.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. But if your choice was, you can either have stumps or tentacles...

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, that's different.

Kate Johnston: I know, but that's the trade off we give disabled people more often than not.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh yeah.

Kate Johnston: You know, and we really don't think about that. And we should.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, and the choice needs to be the bodily autonomy of the person, which I don't feel like that's there for uplift stories that I've seen, or like stories where humans have augmented dogs or cats or whatever species to make them just as smart as us. Generally humans are the ones driving all of that for the first, what, 80, 90% of the process at least. So the ethics there...

Kate Johnston: Oh yeah. Like, what if the dog doesn't wanna be uplifted? What if they don't want that? What if they're perfectly happy being what they are and who they are and how they are.

Kristy Anne Cox: I mean, there's a lot of disability related thoughts that readers, listeners, viewers, we're gonna leave you with these because I think we're over our time limit. But I want you all to think about disability related issues, dinosaurs in space, velociraptors in space, space armies, any of the topics we've talked about. Questions.

Kate, what do you want them to think about?

Kate Johnston: I want them to think about a story that I read and now I can't think of who wrote it or what the name of it is, but it's about a dancer, a ballerina, and she has this uplifted dog who basically, it can't talk, but it can say a couple of words, right? And it's her security. Basically all the new dancers are all augmented with genetic whatever, and so they have a perfect 10 turnout without destroying their knees. And so she is one of the very last of the original bio dancers, and she's been fighting this, and the rest of the story is, you know, do you fight this? How do you fight this? When do you stop?

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: And a lot of it is through the point of view of the dog.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh wait, is the point of view character the dog?

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: That's awesome.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. That's super great. Super great. I cannot think of the name of it, I'll find it and then we will get it into the show notes.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. So readers, viewers, we would love to hear from you on social media. You can use the hashtag Writing While Disabled, you can also use the hashtag for our publisher Strange Horizons, so it's hashtag Strange Horizons. And you can just converse, join the conversation with us. We will look for those comments and we could definitely revisit this topic again.

But Velociraptor Space Armies, I think this was pretty great. Thank you.

Kate Johnston: Thank you so much. And you guys have a great night.

In the third episode of Writing While Disabled, Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston sit down with author Donyae Coles for a frank and candid discussion around adjusting one's life and writing processes around one's disability, finding support to help with the tasks that become difficult, and how genre can lend itself to telling disabled stories authentically.

If you prefer, you can watch the full interview with close-caption subtitles here.

Show notes:

• This episode was produced and hosted by Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston, and edited, mixed, and transcribed by Kat Kourbeti.
• The theme song, "Funky - Upbeat Loop" by ispeakwaves, is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
• Want to send us a question? You can do so here!
• Buy 'Midnight Rooms' by Donyae Coles here.
• Find Donyae's short fiction linked on her website.
• Follow Donyae on Bluesky and Instagram.
• Find Kristy on her website here.

Join the Strange Horizons 2025 Fund Drive!

• Contribute to funding our next year on Kickstarter and get awesome rewards like signed books by your favorite authors, ebook copies of the magazine, a special iron-on patch, your name in the credits of a poem, artwork or review, and much more.
• Read the 2025 Fund Drive issue.

Vote for Strange Horizons in the Hugo Awards

• We have two poems, a novelette, and the magazine all on the ballot! Get your WSFS and/or virtual Seattle Worldcon membership on their website, and you can cast your vote now.

​Transcript

Kristy Anne Cox: Welcome everyone, to Writing While Disabled. Very excited to be here today with the fabulous Donyae Coles, and also with our co-host Kate. We're gonna go ahead and introduce ourselves. My name is Kristy Anne Cox. I have been working on the Writing While Disabled series for a while, and I also have some short fiction out.

Turn over to Kate for your intro.

Kate Johnston: Hi, I'm Kate Johnston. I am a writer and editor and now an anthologist living in currently Oakland, California. I also have ADHD and some other stuff. So it's one of the reasons I am here doing this.

Donyae Coles: Hi, I'm Donyae Coles. I am an author and artist. I live in Minnesota. Midnight Rooms is my debut novel and I've also written a number of short stories. I have ADHD, and I'm here to talk to you all today.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yay. I also have ADHD, so this is like the ADHD fan club today. Okay, good.

Donyae Coles: ADHD high five!

Kristy Anne Cox: ADHD high five! Disorganized, walking away, forgetting what we're doing.

Should we start with the book? Midnight Rooms. I do not have the physical copy of the book to hold up, but I'm gonna describe this cover for you.

So we have this beautiful young girl holding a fawn with a cup of tea, a really intricately colored teacup with butterflies, and it's haunting, it's beautiful, but also creepy. This is on a black cover. This is a novel, and this is Donyae's debut novel, which you can find at your local favorite bookstore. I really like this cover.

Donyae, can you tell us about this book?

Donyae Coles: Yeah. So it's a gothic horror novel. It's a true gothic horror, and what I mean by that is it is everything you loved about the gothic, here it is, in the modern world— only it's not the modern world, it's Victorian England. But it is about a young woman named Orabella, who has been raised by her aunt and uncle because her own parents have passed away some years back. And she's getting older and they're like, "you can't just live here forever." And a man, Elias, comes and says, "I have proposition for you. Come be my wife. I will take care of you. I need a wife." But he does not actually explain why he needs a wife. That's not made clear to her, or anyone about why this man would need a wife. And she is whisked away with the idea that she's going to be taken care of and she's going to live this lovely dream life. And there's dreaming, but it's not exactly the fairytale that she had in mind.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. So nightmare elements.

Donyae Coles: Yeah. And it's been described as a fever dream quite a bit.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah, I saw that review. All the reviews I read were very, very warm and complimentary, and they sounded terrified.

Donyae Coles: Good. That's the point.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: That sounds amazing. I have not had a chance to read it yet, but I've got it on my Kindle and I'm very excited.

Usually we start by doing our methodology questions, so shall we jump right in?

Donyae Coles: Go for it.

Kristy Anne Cox: All right. What does your writing space look like? Where do you write?

Donyae Coles: Here, this is where I write. I didn't write Midnight Rooms in this space because I had just had a major upheaval in my life. So I used to have an office. So a year ago if this interview was happening, same computer, but behind me, instead of my bed, you would've seen easels and bookcases and art supplies because it's all in one room. But now it's my bedroom.

Kristy Anne Cox: Just for our viewers or readers who aren't seeing this, could you describe, are you sitting at a desk? It looks like you're in a bedroom.

Donyae Coles: I am in a bedroom. Behind me is a bed. I am sitting at a desk. You cannot see this, but I'm sitting at a desk with a desktop computer, standard keyboard. It actually glows, it's very nice. Not my nicest, it's just normal keys, but I've been thinking about switching that out for typewriter keys again.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, yeah.

Donyae Coles: By the by, the typewriter keys make you more cognizant of what you're doing. I guess we can talk more about that in the accommodations you make for yourself.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Yeah.

Donyae Coles: That's why I've been thinking about switching them out. Actually now I've said that I should just go ahead and buy 'em off Amazon. I should just go ahead and do that.

Anyway. This is a desk, it's a very normal desk. This is actually not my usual desk, this is a secondary desk I had because my usual desk was too big and it would not fit in this room. So on this desk is the PC, like the actual tower, a screen, a couple crystals and stuff that I like to have around, and just a lot of clutter to be honest. And a lamp. It's a pink lamp.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. You said crystals?

Donyae Coles: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Can we see one? [Donyae shows one on camera.] Ooh!

Donyae Coles: Is this how they do it on the TikTok, with the hand behind?

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Are you superstitious about them at all? 'Cause I have crystals back here for luck, and I'm very superstitious about it.

Donyae Coles: I don't like to use the term superstitious, but yeah, I do think that they be doing stuff.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: That was a question that I had. How does your workspace reflect the mind space that helps you write?

Donyae Coles: It's just my space. I think that is the important thing is just, my space. This is space that I occupy, space that I own. And I think that's a really important difference for me because now, this is all I do right now. But prior to this, I worked in an office, I worked for the state of Pennsylvania, so I was at a computer all of the time. And sure, I put little trinkets in my cubicle and I personalized it a little bit, as we all do so that we don't lose ourselves— lose our mind in the great cubicles.

But that wasn't my space, whereas this is my space. This is my chair. And I went through— especially after I moved, because I couldn't bring the chair that I wrote Midnight Rooms in, so I had to get a new chair and it was a process of going through four or five different chairs and cushions to find one that I could sit in that worked well. And I don't know if it was just— this is probably a couple of things, but I am a fat black woman, so like, I need the space in my chair. Important.

So that for me is just, this is just my space. These are my crystals that are at my workspace. This is my little dream doll at my workspace. This is my keyboard. This is my little drawer seats that I'm keeping for reasons I don't understand right now, but will become clear to you at some point in time.

I have books here like, to my left are three bookshelves, three mid-size bookshelves. One brown, two pink, full of books. They are full, like shelves overflowing, full of books. So it's just that reclamation of space, and that allows me to be just free with my thoughts, because I'm in my space and I don't believe in thought crimes. So you know, it allows me to have these thoughts that some people would be like, "oh, that's terrible". And I don't mean I'm having intrusive thoughts, I mean like, "I'm gonna kill this guy, and this is the horrible way I'm going to do it".

Kristy Anne Cox: Fictionally.

Donyae Coles: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: Fictionally, yes.

Donyae Coles: If he keeps talking to me about—

Kristy Anne Cox: But also there's some neighbors around here that we could fictionally... fictionally.

Donyae Coles: Actually, I really like my neighbors. My neighbors on the one side are also writers. I live next to Sam Richard from Weirdpunk Books and Joe Coach, are my neighbors. That's awesome. They're awesome, but they're also having dark thoughts.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, that's our job. I'm hearing you say that the objects around you have personal meaning and that is empowering. And you have a door you can shut.

Donyae Coles: That is super important. But my door being shut is really just about— and it's funny 'cause I like, wrote about this a little bit for something else. There's an anthology on motherhood and horror movies that is coming out that I'm part of. But I talked about it, because the door being able to close and being able to be like "this is now..." [gestures with hands like delineating space, pushing outward] is not really about my disability or my comfort level. It's just to be like, "children, I'm done with you now."

Kate Johnston: Yeah. I wondered about that. Cause how well do you deal with background noise?

Donyae Coles: So that is touch and go. I am usually pretty okay, but if I've been going too much during the day, like a day like today where I've been outside and I've been doing a ton of things, especially—I've been doing a ton of things for the last couple days because both of my sons had birthdays within a week of each other, so I've been outside, I've been running around. So during this kind of time period, my sensitivity to sound is going to go way up, and I will start snapping at people. And then my daughter comes in and she is like, "all right, it's time to turn off the big light. You don't need that anymore." My daughter's 19. So, yeah, I do have a little bit of sound sensitivity.

It's funny because I didn't realize that's what was going on. But I, one day I sat down and I was listening to music—I generally listen to music while I write—and I was ready to fight someone when the song was playing and I was like, this is one of my favorite songs. And it was, it's The Running Free by Coheed and Cambria. And I was like, ooh. And I turned the song off and I got better. And I was like, that's so weird. Because that is one of my favorite, I can listen to that song on repeat, but if you catch me on one of these days, one of these timeframes where I'm overstimulated, I have no more patience, I can't handle whatever it is... absolutely not. I gotta turn it off.

Kristy Anne Cox: You turn off the light sometimes though? Do you write in the dark?

Donyae Coles: Yes, I do turn off the light. I don't write 'in the dark', 'cause I just don't, I think I have a little weirdness. I'm always worried about insects, but I live in the frozen north now, so I'm hoping that fear goes away. But what I use to accommodate that—so I have a bedside lamp, which is behind me up against the back wall, and that has three settings on the bulb. So I will turn that one on and then turn the overhead light off if I'm having a really bad day. I have a little, they're called sunset lamps.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Donyae Coles: And I have one of those on my desk, like a USB powered one that's plugged into a USB port. It provides like a little bit of light, just so I can get around and navigate the space around me. And then if I really need to do something where I'm like, "I need a brighter light", like I knit— if you see me on the internet, you see me knitting. So what I'll do is I have my pink desk light has a very bright bulb in it, but it's adjustable. So I'll put that, and I'll adjust it downward so it's just focused on what I'm doing.

I will also use that light if I'm drawing at my desk and I don't want the overhead light, but the light in the background's a little too far away for me to like really be able to see what I'm doing because my eyesight is poor—it's not like blind-poor, but it is not great—then I will use that light. So I have the use of lamps.

But yeah, I will turn off this big light. This big light is actually only on right now because I was doing this, the video.

Kate Johnston: Do you ever seek out non-home workspaces, like coffee shops?

Donyae Coles: No, but that has to do in part because I write on a desktop, as opposed to a laptop. I have a laptop right now. It's really funny, I'm going with a friend outside to write next week, I think. We were just talking about it, and I do have a laptop, but my son is using it for school right now, so it's segued into being his laptop.

So when I go out, I'm going to try and use my iPad and the pen feature to write on, but I don't really write outside the home, and it is one where in the situation I was in previous, I did not leave the house, period, ever. And like, that's a whole thing. And now, even though I go outside more, I can't drag my computer with me.

Kristy Anne Cox: I was gonna say, it sounds like the way you're controlling your soundscape and your lightscape is accommodative for you with the ADHD, like when you're getting overstimulated or when you're having different situations within ADHD from day to day, that you're using your sound and your light to help. Is that accurate?

Donyae Coles: Yeah, and I think the thing about the ADHD for me is, and I don't know how true it is for everyone, but I find that mine is really hormonal controlled. I am not in control of the kind of day I'm going to have when it comes to that, my ovaries are.

I could have a day where I'm outside like all day, and then I come home and I am still good to go. Everything's fine. I am on point. And then I could have a day where I have to take the trash out one time and I'm losing track of everything. It's just really all dependent. So it is constantly fluctuating inside of those kind of parameters.

Kristy Anne Cox: We were gonna ask about accommodation, so that kind of segues into that. Like, what other accommodations do you use as part of your process?

Donyae Coles: I was talking about those key caps and I am gonna change them back, 'cause I don't hate these, I like them a lot. But like, the keyboard I have is a clicky keyboard. I've got the loud keys, so when you're typing, you really hear that sound. I think these ones are blue caps, in case anybody's wondering. So that is a way to keep me like, "keyed in". My keyboard also glows, which is not something I've always had, but having the glow also helps because it makes it this novel thing.

So here's the thing. I go through a lot of keyboards, because I type so much. So the keyboards wear out. This one that I have now, I have it set so it changes color, like a flow state of changing color. But the ones that I really like can be set so that my actual typing changes the colors of the keys.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, like when you hit it, it changes color, that particular brand does that?

Donyae Coles: It makes a light effect that happens, and I'm not always paying attention to it, but it is a thing that keeps me drawn into the process. So it's like the light and the sound become their own sort of stims that help me stay in the process of what I'm doing.

So this is like one of those keyboards that you can swap out the keys and the caps as they wear out. Because again, I was running through keyboards like crazy, so it was like a lot of money every time I had to repair it. The ones that I was using before had typewriter keys, which are the round keys, and I like this. This one has normal keys in the sense that they're the square keys, but they have cats on them, so they're very cute. And that's another little trick, have tools that you're really excited to use.

I learned that actually from art. Like my visual art, because if you are excited about using the paint or the paper or the pencils or whatever, then you are more likely to use them as opposed to stuff that you're using just because it's there. But I also found that having the round key caps, my typing got really precise, because the space between the keys is different, but in a good way.

Kate Johnston: I was gonna ask, did you take typing in school?

Donyae Coles: I did take typing in school, but I failed it. I failed it every single time. I did terrible. I think about that all the time.

Kate Johnston: 'Cause that's something that happens to those of us who either didn't take it or didn't cotton onto it very well. We tend to type really hard.

Donyae Coles: Yeah, I do type hard. Okay. So a side note about the typing, because I think this story is hilarious and I wanna tell it because it's so freaking funny. One—this is not the story I wanna tell, but since you brought it up, I did take typing 'cause I am of the nineties. And I felt it terribly. I could not learn to type for anything, and I did not learn to type until AOL chat rooms. That is what taught me to type. Like that tactical, "I need to communicate"—

Kate Johnston: Yep.

Donyae Coles: —Like process, is how I learned how to type. And then I had to get really good at typing to get a job, 'cause again, I worked for the state.

But when I moved to Minnesota, I went to interview for this one job, which was for the sheriff's department up here, in fingerprinting, 'cause I'm not gonna work for the sheriff's department, but I was like, "but fingerprinting is okay".

So I went to go take this, and the lady was like, "oh, there's a typing test." And it was like the most ridiculous, weird thing, 'cause the typing test was just a free website. So I'm like, whatever, okay, I'll take your typing test. And she's like, "don't worry about it. It's not that serious, you know, just however you can do it, doesn't matter." And I was like, okay. And she's like, "I'll be right back".

So she walked away and I did my typing test and I was like, "there's a problem with the website. I had to start over." And she was like, "oh, it's fine, don't worry. I usually let people go two or three times. So if you need to go do it again, that's no problem." And I was like, "that's very sweet of you, but I don't need to do this again."

"Oh, what, how did you do?" She pulled my score. She was like "oh my God! You... you definitely passed." And they took me to my interview and they looked at the score and they're like, "oh, you're a typing pro!" And I was like, "yeah, that's how you get a book out!"

Kristy Anne Cox: Right? You're hired, this isn't even a typing related job.

Kate Johnston: I had a really stupid typing test for the state of California, and it was another one of those free sites, and it was one of the things where you couldn't backspace.

Donyae Coles: Yes. I was like, what?

Kate Johnston: Yeah, you just had to keep going, which drove me insane. And she was like "yeah, you can do it multiple times." I'm like, "oh no, because by the fourth time, I'm gonna be able to do this by heart." And yeah, I got further than anyone had ever gotten with zero mistakes and, yeah. The whole thing.

Donyae Coles: I was like, because the state of Pennsylvania also has a typing test, right? So I had already done type, but that was like a serious closed thing. Then you got a paper to type all the, you gotta, yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: The keyboard, the program, all of this affects your writing, because it either slows you down or it speeds you up. Maybe it forces you to work harder to enter each word. Like, when I have to put in more calories to type in a word, because I'm, I don't know, the keys are farther apart or whatever, I find myself writing fewer words.

Is that the same with you guys?

Donyae Coles: So let's talk about software. I did not have this when I was working on the earlier drafts of Midnight Rooms, so this is something I discovered later. I use a program called StimuWrite. It's available on itch.io, I think it's free, and then the theme packs cost money, I don't remember. It's made by another writer, her name is Eve Harms. I'm just name dropping all the homies today. It's a software that she made that is just a no frills writing program with fun backgrounds and emojis.

So like, as you reach a writing goal—let's say I have mine set for low numbers, right? I like quick things. So like, as you write 200 words, it'll have an emoji explosion on the screen and then every time you type, a bunch of emojis come up. There's sounds that you can put in, like they have their own built in typing sounds and stuff. I obviously don't need that 'cause I already have a keyboard that does it. There's no spell check, there's no grammar check, there's nothing being changed. So you know when you're in Word and you type and it'll be like "you actually meant to type this." And I was like, I said what I said! There's none of that. It is just the words you wrote.

Now, that copy that I write in that... full of errors. Full, just absolutely steadily full of errors. But I can just put that in a document and then I have the basis for my first draft and it'll keep me going, especially when I'm still trying to figure out the story. And I find that using that program, it will make me write because of all of the interaction that this program is having with all of my different senses, right? Like my sound and visual. But what I also found was, and I don't know if it's just because it's taken out of Word or what, but when I'm in that program I am not so fixated on getting the perfect sentence. And it allows me just to get the idea around whatever I'm writing, around that scene, and find my way into the story. So I use that program for a lot of the initial writing, and then I copy and paste it into Word because I have to, because that is the industry standard. I have to use Word.

What also I found, and I don't know if this is available on the web based program—'cause I know some people just use the free web version of Word, I don't know if it's in there. Google also has this, but it's not as good. There's a diction option, that you can just talk to the thing. And again, there's gonna be mistakes in that, that you're gonna have to go back and you're gonna have to edit, but you should be editing anyway. You should be editing. But on days where the typing is not really working out, I might be like, now it's time to talk to my computer.

And I will use that to just get those basic ideas down and those overall concepts down. You know with the ADHD, part of the thing is your thoughts run really fast. So with the diction, that is instantaneous. As soon as the thought comes in, it is out my mouth and we are off to the races, as opposed to the process of actually typing it. So if my thoughts are running really fast, especially around something that I'm trying to work on an idea or process for, that has been a real lifesaver.

Thank you Microsoft Word for that feature, I really appreciate it. If you could gimme more of that and less of that Co-pilot stuff, that would be great.

Kristy Anne Cox: So voice dictation works for you?

Donyae Coles: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: What's your process overall? You talked a little bit about your first draft.

Donyae Coles: So the first step is the idea, right? Whatever the idea is going to be. And I actually keep those ideas and I use Google Keep, like the Keep notes app on your phone. It's web based. I learned that trick from somebody at FIYAH Con. I have a folder full of various ideas, various notes. Anytime I get an idea that I'm like, I wanna put this with this idea, I add it to that note.

So everything starts in one folder that says Story Ideas, and they're color coded. And then when that idea becomes larger where I'm like, "okay, I'm really getting to choofs this thing", then that idea gets its own folder with whatever its call sign's gonna be. The Sunken, The Adored is the name of my next book, so that has a folder called TSTA. And that is where we start putting in all of the concepts, all of the ideas, all of the notes, pictures. I don't do Pinterest boards, I don't do mood boards. I do this folder and I upload all the stuff that I see that I'm like, "this is a thing that pertains to this. This is an idea I have. This is a comp title."

And I make notes about that. These are my characters. That's one note. These are the themes that this book is playing in. That's one note. This is this work that work is in conversation with. That's a note. And I keep all these notes. There is no organization in that because it's organized by date. And that is amazingly freeing because then this process of note keeping does not become its own mini process. I don't get wrapped up in any sort of "this needs to be organized alphabetically, this needs to"— no, it's in the pile. And when I need to find something, I have to search it in the search bar. Okay. Done.

So then we start drafting. Usually nowadays (my draft) starts in the StimuWrite app where I start writing out these ideas, and then I copy and paste each day's writing session into the Word document that is the rough draft of the book. So the first drafting is the rough draft, and that is a mess. It is awful. But I usually take at most about 30,000 words to really get the feeling of the book, and how this is gonna work and what I really wanna say here. Sometimes that first 30,000 words gets deleted. But I'm getting better in my craft. I'm getting more comfortable with my own style and deeper understanding of how I work, so we have not been seeing the first 30 k deletion in a while, so yay.

So I get to the end of the first draft, or the rough draft, and then that's done. Then I have to go back and make that rough draft readable. Now at some point in the rough draft, sometime within the 20-30 K range, I will have switched from using StimuWrite to just writing directly on the document because I have found the thread of the story, and that allows me to really start crafting the sentences closer to the form that they will appear in the final draft. And so I'm writing directly by the end of the rough draft in the Word document, that will eventually be the document that goes on to my agent and my editor. And so I finish the rough draft, I usually let it sit for a week, work on some short stories, work on nothing. Then I go back and I start editing.

Now, at that point I know a hundred percent how the story ends up. So I have to make sure that everything that is at the back end is supported by the front end, which is a process in and of itself. This is a difficult process with the ADHD because the memory is bad, which is why I usually have in the note app a note that is started at some point during the rough draft, that is "things to add when we do our first edit". And it's just a bullet list of different stuff that I need to go back and make sure exists.

Sometimes this stuff is pretty easy and I can just do a find-and-replace around a keyword or a group of keywords to get me to the right part of the document. And then I could just be like, "ah, here you go. I knew I talked about this thing here." Sometimes it's a little bit difficult and I have to just kinda remember what I'm doing. But I also during this process understand it doesn't have to be perfect.

This is not actionable advice for anyone who is not already at this traditional publishing stage of their career. But if you are there and you are in your first round, the work doesn't need to necessarily be absolutely stunningly perfect when it goes to your editor, because you're going to get it back like twice, and then you're going to get it back two more times after that, and then again three more times. You're going to get that work back and every time you get the book back, it just gets cleaner and cleaner.

And even with Midnight Rooms, there was stuff. By the last pass page, there was nothing to correct, but even with the first level of pass pages, I found stuff that I was like, "oh God. Yeah. How did this get so far?" that I had to be like, "oh, we just need to rewrite this line." And they weren't big things. It was just like, I need to rewrite this sentence, it got moved to the wrong place or whatever. And I say that because, especially with the ADHD, especially with that neurodivergence, just knowing that "oh, this is coming back to me," 'cause it's hard to have that conversation with yourself and convince yourself that it doesn't need to be perfect, so that you can get to the next stage, but it truly does not need to be a hundred percent perfect. It will be a hundred percent perfect when it goes to print, but you have seven more read throughs before it gets there.

Kate Johnston: I was gonna ask you if you used an outline and your description is so pants, that it's a skirt.

Donyae Coles: There is an outline actually! (laughs)

So no, I do a lot of pantsing, because I gotta let the story tell me, I gotta let the story guide me. But there is an outline at about—okay, when I sold The Sunken, The Adored, the outline came before the book because I sold that on proposal. So they had to have an outline, they had to know where this thing was going, what was gonna happen. So I had to make the outline before the book was done. But the other book I sold in that same deal, which was What Kills You, that book I just wrote and the only time when I started to outline it, I was like maybe 50, 60,000 words into it. Like I was far into that story.

And the reason any sort of outline around that book exists, and the same thing with Midnight Rooms, was because I was at a point where I was like, I have to connect two parts, and I need to know what happens in those two parts without having to write those two parts because I had to figure that out. So my outlining process, if I'm not selling it on proposal, like if I'm just writing, the outline itself will not start really appearing until I am pretty far into a book, like halfway through. And it is just so I can be like, these are the things that happen. These are the things I want to make sure happen. This is me trying not to be incredibly long-winded about what's gonna happen, but I'm still writing a hundred K words.

But that's where I outline. I think there is this kind of draw to be like, "oh, I'm both of these things. I'm the combination of the pantser and the plotter", but I'm not. I'm still really pantsing because even with an outline, I will write that out and just be like, "nah, I got a better idea."

Kate Johnston: Yep. Yeah. Oh, that's the thing. An outline is still just a guide. It's never the thing that you have to absolutely hue to, because if you wanted to do that, you'd be writing academic stuff.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: And don't get me wrong, in fiction, I love me a good footnote, but it's not required.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. And an outline can also be a diagnostic tool instead of a planning tool. Or you can be like, there's something wrong, what exactly is it? Or it can just be a way for me, for memory, I'm trying to remember the sequence of events correctly, particularly if I'm layering in clues or I'm looking at a relationship arc and I wanna make sure that I had enough buildup for each of the satisfying steps along the way. An outline really helps me see if I'm missing any big scenes or pieces.

Donyae Coles: Sometimes that outline is just a map that you draw after you get most of the way there.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. And the thing to remember there is that the map is not the territory.

Kristy Anne Cox: I don't know if I'm following you. The map is not the territory... Okay. You're saying it's literally not a piece of ground. Now I'm with you. Now I'm with you.

Kate Johnston: It's that old thing of, the map may show that this is 200 feet away. It doesn't show you that it's straight up a cliff.

Donyae Coles: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: Gotcha.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. But one of the things we do talk about and mostly because, oh my God, I need this—is permission. And I think that what a lot of younger writers—not chronologically, but young in their craft—what they really need to hear is, "yes, you can do this funky, weird thing that you have to do in order to put out 10,000 words. That's fine. Go do that. If it means that you have to do this after eating 12 chocolate chip cookies and standing on your head for five minutes, fine, do that then."

Kristy Anne Cox: That's what I mean about superstitious for me. There's this book called, not the War of Art. Wait, there's The Art of War, which is the original, it's the War of Art, and I don't actually like the book, but there's this one part where the guy is, he's collected all these different tchotchkes from his trips in places, and he has lined them up because they remind him of interesting places he's been. And I was thinking about what we draw energy from, and your process can be as arcane and weird and mystical, or as boring and routine as you want. It can change every time, every story might require a different process.

Donyae Coles: So what I have to say about that is I think that is a really big, important piece, especially when you're working with neurodivergence, and this is something that I really learned with visual art, especially after I was medicated and I was like, wait a second. A lot of the advice you hear is "you have to show up. This is how you do it. You have to show up every day. You have to sit down every day and the work will come for you." And I'm like, "that's never gonna work, 'cause lots of things can come. Do you know what it's like up here? I can sit in front of a blank screen for hours, okay? I don't know what y'all be looking at."

And I didn't realize (it) until I was medicated, because I got to this understanding about the process and about repetition and showing up and what that actually means, 'cause of visual art. I was like, "oh, this needs to be realigned", because what happens is the same advice is given for visual artists. "If you wanna be an artist, you gotta show up every day. You gotta do art every day, whether you feel like it or not. You gotta sit down and paint, baby."

And I tried that advice, but what I found that was happening was I would have days where I could do a beautiful piece of artwork, beautiful, post it online, everyone's like, "oh my god, girl", right? And then the next day, apropos of nothing, couldn't draw a circle. And I didn't understand why that was happening to me. I have ruined so many pieces that I was working on because I tried to follow that advice to show up every day and to do art whether I felt like it or not. Just do it every day. But when I got medicated, I recognized very quickly, like day one, that suddenly I could do art whether I wanted to or not. I could draw whether I wanted to or not. I had all of the skills that I had struggled with—that I could only access sometimes—all of the time, as long as I was medicated.

I realized that the advice that I was being given, that this is stuff you have to show up every day, that is not for the neurodiverse ring. That is a neurotypical brain that can do that. Mine don't work like that. Mine is paywalled behind my attention. I can't access it. I can't just be like, "I'm gonna sit down and paint and it's gonna be beautiful as it was yesterday." No, it will not. It will be garbage, because I can't access those skills.

And the same thing happens with writing. I cannot access those skills every single day. There are days where I am completely on top of my game and I can hyperfocus and I can get 50,000 words done in a day. Not 50,000 words, maybe 5,000 words done in a day. And there are days where I can get five words done. Because I don't have that, I don't have that focus. I can't tap into the story. I can't do the things that I need to do. And that's okay. That is fine. There's nothing wrong with that being the reality. I just need to know that that's the reality.

And I think more people who are dealing with neurodivergence have to understand that that is the reality. And the secondary reality is, a lot of times we're using our writing as our hyper-focus emotional thing that we do. That's our daydream. So when we get medicated, we cannot do it. We have a different relationship for writing, which is why I write at night. Which I guess is the secondary accommodation: my meds wear off at night.

Kate Johnston: When it's quiet, the kids are in bed, ain't nobody coming to bug you. The night is your time.

Donyae Coles: Exactly. Yeah. I have a couple, I have a writing group that I write with. I used to write during the day too, I used to run sprints with a friend of mine, but I'm not able to do that now because my son is homeschooled. But I write at night with a group, we run tomato timers, the Pomodoro method. And I only do this with this group, I don't do this in my normal, I'm not doing all that. But we run these Pomodoro timers at night, and I will write from six to like midnight with them. And if I don't have to do anything in the morning, I will write until three, four o'clock in the morning nonstop. No problem. I get a second wind at 1:30, which I think is also part of the neurodivergent brain, 'cause a lot of us are night owls. A lot of us really start coming online, and we've got that delayed sleep phase stuff. So I think that's a little bit of the neurodivergence too.

But yeah, that's one of my accommodations.

Kristy Anne Cox: I wanna ask you a medication question, if that's okay. So like, when you talk about this set of complications and problems that come with not being properly medicated. So sometimes writer's block is: you need proper medical care and access to the right medications and it takes time to get there, right? But sometimes it's about adjusting to a new medication and figuring out what your cycle is, how your brain works with the extended release version versus with all the other different versions you're trying.

So let's say you've got a medication that's working for you, for health and everything, and now you're trying to rewrite your writing routine into that. I think it's really helpful to pay attention to exactly what you're talking about. Is this the time of day on this new medication that I should be drafting? Or do I need to wait until it's starting to wear off? Is the medication gonna help me get the rest of my life done, so I've got everything off of the plate before I write? Particularly with hyper-focus medications, 'cause I take one for ADHD where it's like, I have three good hours, but I'm gonna be writing a particular type of prose during those three good hours. If I wanna write brooding melancholy poetry, that's a different time of day. It needs to have worn off a little bit more, if that makes sense.

Donyae Coles: No, it makes perfect sense. So like, about a year ago actually, I had the worst March. I got really sick, and during this time period my doctor changed my meds, 'cause she wanted to try me on something else. I take the extended release version of Guanfacine, which I know does not work for everyone.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Donyae Coles: So she switched me to standard release version but more often, because on the Guanfacine I was on, I was only getting I think six hours of focus time, which is what I call normal brain time. I would take it and it was wearing off as I was moving around or whatever. So she switched me to the standard release, take twice a day. I had an allergic reaction to that.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh.

Donyae Coles: It's really weird because I'm fine on the extended release, but I can't take the standard release. I had to go to the ER. It was wild. So it was like a weekend, they had to take me off of the medication because I had this allergic reaction, and then we had to wait for my doctor to get back into the office so that she could look at what was going on and then reorder my medication. But now we've ordered all these different pills, so the insurance is giving us a hard time, so we gotta fight with them, et cetera, et cetera.

So during this time, I go off my meds, as one does. And that had been the first time in a really long time that I had—or not a long time, but like in over a year that I had been without. I had been consistently taking meds, I take my meds every day. You shouldn't just go off of the meds that are helping your brain. So then I had a little bit of withdrawal, and that was not fun. And then I started to get over that and I started to feel better, but I was like, "I'm back to not being able to function. Like, this is not good. Like, how did I make it this long, people? How are my children still alive? What is going on? I'm struggling." I have due dates at this point, like I have deadlines and I am on the phone with my agent like, "look, you gotta talk to these people, because I'm having a medical emergency." And he's great. He took care of everything. He's wonderful. He completely understood. And it's not my fault.

But it is important that I had a deadline during this, because what happened was I got back on the correct medication, but at that point it already walked outta my system. Yeah. So then it took time, it took like a solid two weeks for my meds to come back, and I was struggling with this assignment I was doing. I could not write it for anything. It is a nonfiction assignment. I wrote a card deck on numerology, it's called Everyday Numerology, it's available now, it's really pretty. But I could not focus, I could not concentrate on doing, and this is spiritual work that I'm doing.

And I could not focus, I could not get it. Even with my medication, I couldn't get it until one day I woke up, took my medication, I felt it kick in. Like as soon as it kicked in, two weeks later, I was like "oh yeah, this is, I'm back now." This is again, I'm at baseline, at normal again. But from that experience I learned—I was like, I can't. I used to be able to do this kind of work, like just normal, 'cause I used to write about spirituality all the time.

But I learned this like, oh, this is how this affects my writing. This is how this affects me. This is how being in that state, that unmedicated state, I have to wait for that hyperfocus, 'cause I can't do anything else otherwise. I have to wait until my brain says, "you can have a couple drops of inspiration now". And I think that's so important 'cause you have to learn that, but unfortunately you only learn that through error.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. And readers, listeners, if you're new to a medication, it can take two to six weeks before you start seeing those changes. And that whole time is an interruption of your process. So it takes years to find the right psychiatric medication. Cut yourself a break. If you're struggling, if you're struggling during that process, you've got good reason to struggle.

Kate, what were you saying?

Kate Johnston: Especially first timers, they think that, oh, my doctor knows everything. First mistake. And they are going to prescribe the absolute right thing and I'm gonna be fine. No. Like, even getting medicated is this long sort of train of, is this working well? It's working well, but I can't do the things I need to do, so we need to do something else. And because it's like a 90 day cycle of getting on and off, this is going to consume your life for four to six months until you really find a thing that's gonna work for you. And yeah, there are a lot of things that are going to flow down the river in that time.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. This is part of the reason why disabled writers and neurodiverse writers often take longer to progress in our careers, because we have all these interruptions and they might involve big process changes, and that involves reinventing the wheel for yourself sometimes. And it's frustrating, it's demoralizing. You have to keep on top of the positive thinking, because you can think "I've lost my gift". And it's like, no, you need the extended release.

Donyae Coles: And you know what, I do wanna say one more thing, and this is not directly about the medication, but it is about what you just said, Kristy, about how it takes us longer. Because if I hadn't had an agent who was gonna field all those phone calls and send the emails, that would've been a much different situation. Because there were times earlier in my career, not with fiction but with other stuff, because I did a lot of nonfiction work for a long time, where I would just be unable to function. And I didn't know at those times. I had no idea, because I'm late diagnosed, so I didn't know what was going on. I thought I was just lazy. Especially jobs that I would get where I didn't feel immediately qualified, because I had never done them before. But obviously if I got the job, I was qualified.

Kristy Anne Cox: This is writing work, writing jobs?

Donyae Coles: This is all writing stuff, but I would get these gigs and I would just freeze up and I didn't know why, and it is because of the Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which I suffer from. But also that causes—like I have trouble like sending an email. That was one of the things that when I got medication, finally I was talking to my doctor and they were like, how are you doing? And I was like, "today I sent an email in 15 minutes!" And they were like, "oh, that seems like a lot of time". And I was like, "it used to take me two hours".

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. That's a big deal.

Donyae Coles: But like, I had a legitimate medical emergency around my medication where I had to be taken off, and if I at that time had not been able to just send a text to my agent and say, "hey, this is going on, please deal with this," I would have lost those gigs, because I would not have been able to communicate for myself that I was having this problem. And I know a lot of people are like, "why not? Like you're having a medical emergency, you should be able to just send an email." 'Cause I can't, I don't have a reason. If I had a reason, I would be able to solve the problem, but I don't.

And the reason I'm saying this, and I'm being so candid about this, is because I know I spent a lot of time earlier on in my career, beating myself up for opportunities that I lost. But the reason I lost those opportunities at that time was because in those moments I did not have the kind of support that I needed. Obviously getting an agent is not easy. That is not simple. But like, babes, if you got a friend who can send an email, have them come sit with you and get in your email and just respond to people, and send those emails that you are nervous about sending. They don't need to understand publishing, they don't need to understand writing. They just need to be able to sit down and go, "I'm so sorry, I'm having a medical emergency. Please gimme a two week extension," or whatever. I talk to people all day, every day who are just afraid to be like, I need an extension. And nine times outta ten they'll give it to you, because you're the talent.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Donyae Coles: The whole thing runs because you showed up. But that, I think, is like an accommodation that people can give themselves: get a friend. They do not have to be a writing friend, they do not have to be a publishing friend. They just have to be able to type, to help you.

Kate Johnston: I have a friend who did a bunch of that for me in Minneapolis, when I lived there. So a lot of the talking to publishing people and stuff, she would just do for me.

Donyae Coles: Yay. Yeah. I have a friend who sends emails for people because it's just too much, and you have your own baggage with those. You feel like a failure. Your buddy, however doesn't. They can just send an email.

Kristy Anne Cox: Donyae, for our readers and listeners who may not be familiar with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, could you briefly explain what that is?

Donyae Coles: Yeah, so it's just like a outsized sense of bad feelings around rejection or perceived rejection. So I used to think I just had imposter syndrome, and I bet a lot of people who are neurodiverse just think, I just have imposter syndrome. Because that's what you're told, that the reason why you are like sabotaging your own stuff, and why you are ruining your own day is because you feel that you're inferior. No, you have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, okay?

So you are worried that this person is going to reject you and it's gonna cause you to feel very bad. And this is not in your head. It is in your head because that's where the feelings are coming from, it's your brain. But like you also, when you are rejected, right? And rejection here is just someone having a negative reaction to something. So you said something, and it didn't come out right and your friend's like, "Hey, that wasn't cool". That is rejection. That is a kind of rejection that's going to trigger this.

That's actually a really good example, 'cause this happens to me all the time. So you say something, it doesn't come out quite right, and your friend's like, I don't like that. It's not, I don't like it. And then you feel like, oh my God, you've ruined this friendship. This person now hates you, they're never gonna talk to you anymore. You are incredibly embarrassed, you're incredibly guilty, you feel like you wanna die. You are sick to your stomach. That's where I feel a lot of my negative feelings. It's in my stomach, getting shaky, your face is hot 'cause you're really embarrassed. It's just a whole physical manifestation. And all your friend said was, "I didn't really like that". Which is very reasonable and everything.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Yeah.

Donyae Coles: And then you are now in a position where you think you've ruined everything. The person you're talking to has moved on because that was a little blip. It means nothing.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Donyae Coles: You have had an outsized reaction to a sense of rejection.

So there's debate about where this is coming from. I think it's a little bit of nature and nurture. I think that we are a little bit more prone to have these, 'cause we are—or neurodiverse people, ADHD, autism, PTSD, that whole thing—we do tend to be very sensitive as a base. I see this in my own kids who would never have had any real negative things ever said or done to them, and they're still crying 'cause they dropped a pencil and I'm like, "guys!"

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Donyae Coles: "That's you being a lot." So we're already sensitive as a base, but then I think we get a lot of negative feedback.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Donyae Coles: Especially when we're growing up. But that is what Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is. So it will cause you, when you are doing writing stuff, to sometimes sabotage yourself and convince yourself that you can't do the thing. And so you do stuff like, don't answer your emails.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Donyae Coles: Because you are afraid of having that interaction that you are already perceiving as being negative. And it might be, right? They could be like, "we're firing you". Which I mean is fine, but it's also not the end of the world.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. It's also very typical of ADHD. So if you're listening and you have ADHD, this is something to look into and see, just consider if it fits your symptom set. For me it triggers irrational sudden suicide ideation. So if I make a mistake in a conversation in particular with someone that I really care about and I think I've upset them, I'm gonna go straight from that zero to catastrophe thing, and then I know I'm gonna have suicide ideation. So now that I know that's gonna happen, I can plan for it and be like, this is the script I'm gonna use for myself. This is the self-care I'm gonna plan.

Like when I go to a convention, I plan for a day off in the middle to have a meltdown, because I know I'm going to say something on a panel, somebody is gonna react in a way that I feel has ruined my reputation. I'll never write again, I'll never speak again, I should never be allowed in public. And I just need to have a meltdown the next day. And it doesn't matter if those feelings are logical, they're symptomatic, and I know they're gonna happen. So preparing for them is an accommodation.

Kate, do you ever have rejection sensitivity?

Kate Johnston: Yes. I just think I hide it really well.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: I have a hard time both honoring that and continuing to live in society. Especially living in Minnesota where my experience of being black in Minnesota was horrific, and I hated it. Every minute of it. And so there's a certain point of rejection sensitivity I don't get to have, or I'd spend my entire life just being insane about it. So yeah, there's a lot of that that I just internalize and probably is the source of a bunch of physical maladies that I'm not sure about.

We will find out in the next year as I am no longer working and doing the things that I wanna do and not having to deal with other people. We'll see whether things get better, but I don't know.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Shall we move from process to the deep questions about disability or science fiction or whatever we're gonna talk about. You guys ready?

Donyae Coles: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: I know Donyae, we talked briefly about writing neurodiverse characters when it's not explicitly on the page.

Donyae Coles: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: How do you approach your neurodiverse and disabled characters?

Donyae Coles: So I don't think I ever like explicitly say. Like, I know I definitely didn't say it in Midnight Rooms, and I'm not gonna explicitly say anything in The Sunken, The Adored because it's the 1800s! Like, black girls can't get diagnosed with ADHD and autism now, right? In the year of our Lord 2025, right? We are still out here struggling. Like even for my own diagnosis, it was a process of multiple doctors, of facing humiliation and being told that I just need to get my stuff together.

So that's a process of: I'm writing historical gothic, I'm writing historical horror, and it would be wild to be like, "yeah, she's a little attention deficit". So you have to just write those characters. You just have to say like, "this is what is happening. This is how this person is perceiving the world," which creates, by its very nature, a very close point of view which I—now I'm gonna be a little bit craft-y.

That close point of view is both because you need to have that to understand that nature, but it is also a metaphor for living like that, where this, whoever you are, you're your whole world. People who have neurodivergence are often isolated. We often deal with that. Just as a reality, we often do not understand the points of views of others in so much of, not "I don't understand when someone's like, my feelings are hurt". That's not what I mean. What I mean is like, you see someone do something and you're like, "I don't know why they did that. I don't know why they didn't like that. I don't know why they had that response. That is not how I would've responded." And there's no one to explain that to you. You just gotta figure it out.

So in writing these characters I am taking that approach. I didn't realize I was taking that approach when I started, 'cause I wasn't diagnosed. I just thought this is how the world worked. But now I know. So it was interesting actually to get into the editorial process in that, because now I've got people reading my work and they are redlining. And I remember I got an edit back that was like, "this is not how people act". Like it was that comment. And I was like, "I would have done that. That is how I would've acted if faced with this problem". Not saying that this particular character is doing all the things that I would have done with my life, right? She is not me. We make lots of different choices. I made all of her choices actually because I created her.

It was that moment that I was like, "oh, I'm gonna have to like address this directly with my editorial staff to be like, hey, actually you have to understand, this is what's going on."

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Donyae Coles: When you're not explicitly saying things like that, you are gonna get—I don't read my Goodreads reviews, but I know these things exist—you are gonna get people who are like, "I don't know why this person did this. I would not do that. People don't act like that." And they see that as a flaw in the text as opposed to, this is how this person is acting, so maybe you have to accept that sometimes people act different than what you are aware of.

Kristy Anne Cox: There's a really ugly feeling to being told that your reality is not realistic.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Donyae Coles: Absolutely. Absolutely. It stayed in my memory because it was such a jarring moment. I know you like the book! You bought the book, you paid me money for it. So I know it's not like you saying that this work is wrong, right? So then there's that rejection sensitive piece, right? Because now I've been able to rationalize it. I know that this is not a statement about the work itself. This is a statement about the understanding of what is happening from the outside. And that kind of changed how I was processing some of these edits. And I had to sit down and be like, "hey, so have you heard of fawning?"

Kristy Anne Cox: There's what people find believable. That's like a whole rabbit hole we could go down for an entire podcast, 'cause I feel like a lot of our work gets rejected because the people reading it or the gatekeepers don't find it realistic because it's outside of their experience, and it doesn't feel believable to them.

And that works at a lot of different marginalizations. And when you're multiply marginalized, you're coming at this with a lot of different intersections of identity. It can feel more and more unbelievable to your typical editors, which I believe editors in general, and the agents in the industry, are still largely white women between I think ages 25 and 45. We're getting more diversity now, but still, if the majority of the readers are primed to understand one set of experiences, then you get rejected more often right off the bat.

And then you get feedback, right? Like workshop feedback and peer feedback.

Donyae Coles: I don't go to workshops.

Kristy Anne Cox: But a lot of people, that's where they're getting discouraged and giving up because somebody told them somewhere that what happened to them wasn't realistic.

Donyae Coles: It can't happen this way. What I will say in addition to that, so one: my editorial staff is actually all black women. Outlier! But I will say that I don't think in general any work should have to explicitly say, "this is the thing that is going on in this person's brain." I don't think that it is necessary. I don't care. I don't care if it's ADHD, autism, schizophrenia. It does not matter, unless the story is explicitly about dealing with or living with or handling those conditions. I don't think that it matters at all to tell the reader this is what is going on with this person's mind. Because you, the reader, are reading their experiences and you should be accepting their experiences for whatever it is.

So if this person is having hallucinations and that's part of the work, you just gotta accept that. It doesn't matter why it's happening, it doesn't matter if it's a hallucination from schizophrenia, it doesn't matter if it's just like temporary psychosis. It does not matter unless that story is about that thing. You know what I mean?

And when you come into a work and you're like, this person has ADHD, then you expect the work to be that, and that puts it in inside of a certain context. It's like, no, the context is the work, that is all the context you need. If you didn't need to know that explicitly, you didn't need to know it. If you needed to know it, the author would have put it in there. They didn't tell you for a reason. Accept it. I'm brutal that way.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, no, I love that though because there are pieces that I have left information out on purpose and I get a lot of reviews just going "I needed to know that". I'm like, clearly you did not, 'cause you still alive and you read it.

Donyae Coles: You read it and I told you what you needed to know to get through this.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Donyae Coles: And I also think explicitly not saying, this is what is going on in this person, that is the experience, right? That is an authentic experience to living with neurodiversity or any mental health thing. Most of us go through life like that for a variety, especially if you are otherwise marginalized, right? If you are black or you are femme, if you are any of these other things, chances are you're walking through the life, living day in and day out with this as your worldview. This is your perspective, this is your understanding, and you have absolutely no idea why you are living like that, until you randomly see a TikTok video one day.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. And then, it can also be the opposite, where you are so incredibly medicalized that you have a million diagnostic labels and, you know, Turtles All the Way Down is a really good example of a book where I feel like—so John Green is the author— and it deals with OCD, and it deals with the type of OCD that I have. And because it's a lot of her [Aza, the protagonist] is in and out of like doctor's offices and she's dealing with the actual OCD, she does use a lot of diagnostic labels. But I still run into people with OCD who are like, "I didn't find that realistic". And I'm like, "there are different types of OCD. And the type that she has is the type I have. Doesn't sound like it's the type you have."

There's a TV show where a group of autistic young adults are living together and having experiences. And there's a lot of people in the commentary who are autistic saying that this is not a realistic portrayal of autism, because those are differently autistic people. So some of the pushback we get is from within our own communities.

Donyae Coles: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: Yep. Yep.

I have one question that comes from the internet. Because I went and looked through some reviews of Midnight Rooms—

Donyae Coles: Okay.

Kate Johnston: And this question kept coming up. So now I'm gonna ask you: is there gonna be a sequel?

Donyae Coles: People were asking that? I didn't know people were asking that!

Kristy Anne Cox: They are now.

Donyae Coles: Okay, hold on. Wait a second. I need a moment to process this because I had no idea. I thought what you were gonna ask me was what happened at the end? Was he lying?

Kristy Anne Cox: Don't ruin it. I'm not, I haven't finished yet!

Kate Johnston: There was some talk about that. Like, "the ending left me wanting more, so where's the sequel?" And I was like, okay.

Donyae Coles: I didn't know people were asking that. My publisher didn't say anything. Let's give people what they want.

Kristy Anne Cox: Give them what they want, yes!

Donyae Coles: Is there gonna be a sequel... So I would say this: I'm not going to say never. I am going to say that you get some more information about the universe that this takes place in, in The Sunken, The Adored. Another book that happens in the same universe. It does not involve the same characters, but if you have read Midnight Rooms, there will be things that come up that you're like (gasp!)

Kristy Anne Cox: When is that coming out?

Donyae Coles: That is currently slated, I believe, for the summer of 2026. So probably July 2026, is probably when that would drop.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. All right. So readers, you can definitely check that out. The Sunken, the Adored, when that comes out. The original book is Midnight Rooms. Midnight Rooms. This is my marketing. The more often you repeat the word, the more— Donyae Coles, Midnight Rooms.

I did have another question for you about horror. Is it all right if I ask you a scary question?

Donyae Coles: Yeah, go ahead, please.

Kristy Anne Cox: Do you, as a horror writer, feel that there are unique ways to get at disability and at the lived experiences of disabled people, through horror? Like, what tools does horror give you, if any?

Donyae Coles: I think there are. So, I say this with the caveat that I don't think the genre has been kind to disability in a lot of ways. I think that it has taken a very probably stereotypical approach to disability, because the way that it usually is handled is the horror is the disability.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Donyae Coles: "This is a metaphor for losing your leg", you know what I mean?

Kristy Anne Cox: Exactly. Yeah.

Donyae Coles: Or the other kind of way I've seen it done is that like, "oh, this person isn't susceptible to whatever is happening, because they're on antipsychotics." Yay, it's a superpower now (sarcasm). And I also don't think that is necessarily the best way to go about this. But I do think that horror itself gives a way for people to kind of, not necessarily grapple, but really dive into the process of examining disability and its impact on the lives of the people who are living with it, right?

So I have ADHD, and my disability is in my brain, right? It is in my head. It is in the way I perceive the world, it's is in the way I move through the world, it is in the way I operate, the choices I make, how I interact with other people, right? And I think that it can be examined in those ways. Like, horror really provides a really beautiful and unique way to explain those experiences.

Because let's be real, when you are living with a disability, it's not all sunshine and roses. Like, it's not the end of the world, you keep on living, right? That's the living part of living with a disability. But there's stuff you struggle with. There's stuff you have a hard time with. And I think horror can be used to examine those spaces and bring them to new light. Especially if you do not have a primitive view of what horror is, right?

So a lot of people are like, "horror is just the scary stuff". It's the stuff that's scary and it's bloody and it's gory, and like sure it is, but there's also the process of transformation. You can also really dive into understanding beliefs, and understanding your place in the world, and how you move through the world. And coming to terms with big feeling concepts like grief or trauma, those are big ones.But even like joy and ecstasy.

The story I just had published in Nightmare, the name escapes me, but this is like the last one I had published in there. Go find it. But that one's about like ecstasy and release, like you can discuss these really big feelings in horror and not in a sense of "and now everyone lived happily", but through the construction of the form, right? That's what I like. I'm a body horror girlie.

But I do think that this genre has a unique and beautiful way that you can really explore disability and that effect on the self, and that effect on the self through society and reverse, in a way that is non reductive, in a way that is non stereotypical. But I also think that those stories in a lot of cases must be—I don't like to use the term but I can't think of a better one—but like 'own stories', right? You have to be the person writing it. You cannot just be a casual observer, because your observation is always going to be tainted by the grief it caused you.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. There's a big difference between a story where it's somebody else's madness, and it's interesting to you as a concept, so I'm gonna write a horror story, as opposed to your processing your own experiences. Oh, there's a lot of people who write through bad dreams and that turns into a story, who write through PTSD or through hallucinations, and then pull out of that. Horror stories that they're telling. And that's very different than using them as the monster when that's not your lived experience. Is that kind of where you're going?

Donyae Coles: Yes, 'cause you're making disability the monster, when it's not your lived experience, nine times outta ten, you're gonna be like, the scary thing is surprise disability or racism, right?

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: And actually the new super ability right now is queer. I'm seeing a lot of stories come through the transom that are "I clearly wrote this as a heterosexual pair of people doing stuff, and I'm just gonna change the gender of one of them because it doesn't really matter". And I'm like, uhuh.

Donyae Coles: But it matters.

Kristy Anne Cox: It does matter.

Kate Johnston: It does. It matters a lot.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, Kate, did you have another deep question before we wrap up?

Kate Johnston: I think that possibly the story you were talking about was The Ascension of Magdalene?

Donyae Coles: Yes. Thank you.

Kate Johnston: Okay.

Donyae Coles: I dunno why, I love that story. I have no idea why my mind just blinked probably.

Kate Johnston: It happens. But I did this wonderful piece of artwork for you.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh. I can see your background.

Kate Johnston: Lemme turn off my background.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. If you turn off your background we should be able to see it.

Kate Johnston: Oh, now you can see the cat in the background.

Kristy Anne Cox: There's a kitty.

Donyae Coles: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: Alright, let's see this masterpiece. Midnight Rooms.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Kate is holding up a notebook with the new cover art for the new edition of Midnight Rooms. It shows a door opening, but it's also, it could be a book.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, it could be all sorts of things. I don't know. I'm not an artist.

Donyae Coles: That's really funny because there are doors in the book when you read it, but one of the cut scenes that the editor was like, "no"... I wrote this piece—and I think about this all the time, so it's like I should have fought for that more—but I wrote this part where I was explaining that the way that she thinks is like all of these things that's happened, all these experiences, they go behind these doors in her mind and she shuts them, and then she stops thinking about them. Like, her parents are behind one door who have passed, the treatment of her aunt and uncles behind another door of these tea parties, and she shuts them until she needs them again.

Kristy Anne Cox: The idea that this character has stuff behind doors that when the door is shut, she can't remember, that's so ADHD. Like the doom piles, like the whole thing where if you don't physically see something, you lack the object permanence to remember it exists.

Kate Johnston: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: That's really convenient for a horror story, because you get jump scared more often by your own stuff.

Donyae Coles: Then she's in this terrible situation and people are telling her, "no, the thing that you think happened isn't what happened. You're wrong. You are mistaken." And then like, how does she know? How can she trust herself when she doesn't remember anything? Because her memory's bad.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Yeah. And then it becomes a therapeutic technique too, where eventually you're working through stuff and you're learning to control that. My therapist is like, "imagine a book and you've shut that chapter. You're not there anymore. That is a chapter in the past." But I'm like, "that's great. I wish that was something I could do right now." I'm not there yet, but in fiction, right? This is the way we process this too.

Donyae Coles: Yep. Writing your fiction is, it's literally gone. It's literally the last chapter.

Kristy Anne Cox: It's the therapy method that we do because we couldn't have medical care. We became writers.

Kate Johnston: Pretty much. But I'll do the one thing that will help you a little with serotonin. I generally don't read horror, but in the prep for this interview I read Sometimes Boys Don't Know. Oh my God, that is creepy AF, that's great.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. I really liked it.

Donyae Coles: Thank you. Love that little story. I think it's so fun. I think the thing that throws people off about it is because it's played straight. It's played a hundred percent straight. That is a girl who's absolutely in love, absolutely. Hundred percent.

Kristy Anne Cox: Readers, if horror doesn't really do it for you, I would recommend you take a look at the broad diversity of horror that's available, because there are so many sub genres and it is likely there is one out there that will help you with your serotonin hit. People have different needs, and it is a broad genre, but an excellent example is Midnight Rooms by Donyae Coles. Midnight Rooms, which you can find at your local bookseller or online at a bookseller of your choice.

Kate Johnston: And the audiobook exists.

Donyae Coles: Yes. It is available in ebook, audiobook, and physical book. The paperback is coming out this summer.

Kate Johnston: Excellent.

Donyae Coles: It is available anywhere fine books are sold, or even not so fine books. So all of the websites, your local indie team get it. Get it from your library, I don't care. Yeah, as long as you get it.

Kristy Anne Cox: If you are wanting to support an author's work and you cannot afford to buy the book right now, one great way to support them is to call your library and ask them to stock that book, because then they will order it in and that helps the author build fans in that area.

Also your school library, your kids' school library, if you call and you ask them to stock this book—

Donyae Coles: Not this one. They'll not stock this. Okay. But I do have a YA story, it's in All These Sunken Souls, which is a black YA anthology that came out in 2022, I think. Or maybe 2023. Anyway, it's not important. It's called All These Sunken Souls and that one you can request your children's school library carry.

Kristy Anne Cox: Excellent. All right, we should wrap up. Thank you for joining us. This was an excellent discussion. It was delightful having you.

Donyae Coles: Thank you so much. I loved being here. This was an excellent discussion. I had such a great time.

Kate Johnston: Yay.

Kristy Anne Cox: Thank you again for Writing While Disabled, everyone. Hopefully we'll see you online, please join us with the hashtag Writing While Disabled, or hashtag Strange Horizons.

And you can ask us questions, which we may or may not reply to, but we'll enjoy seeing. Thank you.

In the second audio episode of Writing While Disabled, hosts Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston welcome Farah Mendlesohn, acclaimed SFF scholar and conrunner, to talk all things hearing, dyslexia, and more ADHD adjustments, as well as what fandom could and should be doing better for accessibility at conventions, for both volunteers and attendees.

If you prefer, you can watch the full interview on video with close-caption subtitles below:

Show notes:

• This episode was produced by Kristy Anne Cox, and edited & transcribed by Kat Kourbeti.
• The theme song, "Funky - Upbeat Loop" by ispeakwaves, is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
• Want to send us a question? You can do so here!
• Find Farah on her website, farahmendlesohn.com, or follow her on Bluesky @effjayem.bsky.social.
• Pre-order Farah's upcoming book on Joanna Russ's The Female Man on the Luna Press website.
• Find Kristy on her website here.

Don't forget: this year, Strange Horizons is celebrating our 25th birthday!

• Want to leave us a happy 25th birthday message? Click here to record an audio message, and here for video.
• Join our Patreon for early episode access, or donate through PayPal or other means here.

Transcript

Kristy Anne Cox: Welcome to Writing While Disabled. I am Kristy Anne Cox, and with me is Kate Johnston and the fabulous guest for today, Farah Mendlesohn.

I am going to just briefly introduce our guest here. Farah is a retired university professor. She currently works for a small charity. She has won the Hugo and the World Fantasy Award for her scholarship and has a number of scholarly works out, as well as a novel, Spring Flowering, in 2017.

And Kate, would you mind saying your name and introducing yourself?

Kate Johnston: My name is Kate Johnston, and I am an author and an editor who lives in Oakland, California.

Kristy Anne Cox: And Farah is calling in from Scotland. We are doing this interview in Zoom, so there should be a transcript for those of you who want to lip read. There should also be a video. And if you have questions or want to participate with this conversation, you can go to the Strange Horizons website and we have a question form there that you can join in with any questions you have for our guest of honor, or for either of us, or any thoughts you have.

All right. Shall we get go?

Kate Johnston: We shall. Yes, ma'am.

Kristy Anne Cox: All right. I would like Farah to start by asking you the secrets of writing. The writing while disabled.

Farah Mendlesohn: Place bum on seat and start writing. I am a great fan of Anthony Trollop, who, when he used to finish a book, if he finished while he still had time to write that morning, he put a line underneath what he'd written and started the next one.

And I'm not that good. I'm not, but because I have never particularly wanted to write, to me it's always been a job. It's always been a thing I did because this is the thing I needed to do. So waiting around for inspiration isn't a thing I do, because I would wait forever.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. So you're approaching it from a very workman-like standpoint.

Farah Mendlesohn: I realized fairly recently that if I was 30 years younger, I'd be making TikTok videos and TED Talks. I wasn't a good writer at university. I had writer's block for most of it. I didn't start writing until I switched to a keyboard because it actually turns out that I'm dyslexic. In fact, it was switching to a keyboard that got me diagnosed as dyslexic.

I have arthritis in my hands, so using a pen was uncomfortable, and I don't have what I think of as a creative imagination. Most of my friends who are novelists, their happiest time was when a teacher said to them, "we've got a little time. You can write anything you want." And I would panic. I don't think that way.

So I came very late to writing, and I came late to writing because I had to be able to learn to write, in order to say the things I wanted to say in ways that other people would have access to, which is why my comment, if I was much younger, I'm not sure I'd be a writer. I would've found a different way to express things.

One of the things I did was to become assistant editor of the academic journal Foundation. And there's nothing like reading and correcting other people's work to help you understand how it fits together, how an argument is structured, how you add the evidence in what analysis looks like, and to start to think about what you want to achieve with your writing, what writing you admire, what writing you want to emulate.

The two aren't necessarily the same thing. Yeah, I'll leave that question there because I've forgotten what the question was, which is one of my other disabilities. I have very little short term memory these days.

Kristy Anne Cox: I'm working off of ADHD and Kate, you're on team ADHD too, right?

Farah Mendlesohn: And so am I, as we found out.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes!

Farah Mendlesohn: When I went to the doctor after long Covid and said "I'm struggling, none of my coping mechanisms seem to work anymore." And the doctor looked at me and said, "and coping for what exactly?"

Kate Johnston: Oh, no.

Farah Mendlesohn: And I went, that's a really good question. And he sent me home with a form, and then we had some conversations, particularly about the fact that I have been writing my books in 15 minute intervals my entire life, and walked away with a diagnosis of ADHD. I have the concentration span of a flea. This idea that I am this, I've had people say to me, "oh, you are so disciplined." No. I'm very good about coming back to the thing I'm writing, but I come back to the thing I'm doing over and over again during the day. My partner starts at 9:00 AM and finishes at four. How?

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Farah Mendlesohn: How? And when he's writing, he is writing consistently. He starts at A, he works through to Z. Me, I add a section here, I add a section there. I have an idea that I write down on my phone. Thank you God, for whoever invented Scrivener. Scrivener is just the greatest program if you have ADHD.

And although I do place bum on seat and start writing, and before I had a dog, I actually had a motto of 500 words before breakfast. It's now dog walk before breakfast. That focus is short. That focus is something that is interrupted by everything from cups of tea, using a couple of weights, tidying up some books on the shelves, and long term switching to another article when I got bored.

So I almost always have two projects on the go. It's rare for me to be only working on one thing at a time.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. I think one of the things I get out of this interview series is just so much permission. You have to work the way that you work. And it's exactly what we do in medicine, which is if you're prescribing a medicine that the patient isn't gonna take, don't waste your time.

Farah Mendlesohn: I used to say this to my students, figure out what time of day you normally write, because I spent at least a decade promising myself that I would work when I got home, from whatever home was. I've never done anything when I get home, if I need to extend my day, I have to stay in the office. The moment I leave, we are done.

And I can get up at three in the morning and get you that paper by nine, but I cannot work at 5:00 PM. It's just pointless. And over the years I've come to accept that. I have a close writer friend who used to constantly talk about how they would try to write their book in three months and then he had to take time off. And I finally said, no, this is never going to happen. Stop doing this to yourself. This is not how you work.

So I do think figuring out how you work best, is really the only way to succeed. And for some people that's burning the midnight oil, for some people it's writing 60,000 words in three weeks. Me, if I have a big piece of writing to do, then I will aim for a thousand words every single day. Because although I can write more than that, I can't write more than that every single day. If I go up to 1500, I won't sustain more than about 10 days. If I got up to 2000, I'd only manage three, but a thousand words a day, I can do.

But that's me. That's not other people. So it can often sound as if you're lecturing people as to how they should do that. It doesn't work that way. It really doesn't.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Farah Mendlesohn: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: You said that you do most of your writing in the office. Is that correct?

Farah Mendlesohn: Yes. That's new. When I was younger, it would've been a cafe.

Kristy Anne Cox: Are you in your office right now? Is that what we're looking at?

Farah Mendlesohn: No, you are actually looking at the dining room, but we have books absolutely everywhere. This is just where the wifi is strongest.

Kristy Anne Cox: If I could ask you, could you describe your workspace to us? What does it look like, specifically from an accessibility standpoint?

Farah Mendlesohn: So I should say here that my primary disability is hearing, which means that as far as accessibility at my desk is concerned, that isn't an issue. But I do have joint problems, so I have to have a really good office chair. My last one lasted 20 years, so it's worth spending a lot of money for me on that office chair so that I'm not dealing with backache, I'm not dealing with joint issues all the time.

So here is where the flags going up, going, "you are neurospicy". My office is actually the front room of this flat and it's a very big room, but my office section years ago, I hit lucky, I picked up a long thin library desk in a sale. It's made of oak. It's absolutely beautiful. So you have to imagine that there are bookcases behind me, as there are here, there is my feet, and then there is my desk. And then in front of that is a chest of drawers, which has a lot of my art material in it, and a couple of other drawers. So it creates a small space in the large space. And as long as I can remember, I've needed that sense of coziness. Even as a child, I preferred the small bedroom to a big bedroom. I need to feel hemmed in.

So the shape I've described for you is exactly the way I constructed my office in the previous house. There was a sofa in front of my desk, but it created kind of a wall between me and the rest of the room. And you'd think that would mean that I could work in a small room, but I can't. And I can't because, and this is an accessibility issue, I need huge amounts of daylight.

This is one of those where there's no name for it, but the optician has confirmed, I don't see well in gloom, and I don't see well in bright light. I have a fairly narrow range in which I see. So I spend two thirds of the year in sunglasses and the rest of the year going, "oh, it's too dark for me to function."

So I need the big windows, I need the big space. I have all the lights on when I'm working. I have uplighters to add extra light. I was able to get them when I was working for university, they were willing to accommodate that. So my space is very bright.

Kristy Anne Cox: That sounds lovely.

Farah Mendlesohn: And it doesn't sound like an accessibility issue, but it is.

So I have Celiac, but before I was diagnosed with that, I had chronic migraine, and I had migraine every day of my life. And one of the issues that used to trigger it is that I'm very light sensitive, so get the wrong color light, the wrong kind of fluorescent, and I'd have a migraine within minutes. I can't have blue carpets. Any kind of blue ink, blue carpets, anything like that distorts my ability to read. So some of that is part of the setup.

And I suppose the only other issue is I can't use a mouse because I've got a problem with my shoulder. So I'm on a laptop and I use a track pad. And again, this is something people who aren't disabled don't always quite get, is that if you get your accessibility set up right, you can forget that you've got a disability.

Two jobs ago, they insisted I use a desktop and I knew there was a reason why this was a bad idea, but I could not remember. And it turned out to be because one week with a mouse, I couldn't feel my fingers.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Farah Mendlesohn: But you do forget. You don't think about this. I have to wear orthotics in my shoes and one day I was in a hurry, I slid on some trainers, I walked into town and ended up having to call home for a new pair of shoes. 15 minutes without them. And I remember, do I wear them? Whereas a lot of the time, I don't think twice because it's sorted, it's dealt with.

This is drifting a bit from the writing; I have to have something on the radio because I have tinnitus, so I can't cope with pure silence anymore, which is a shame because I was somebody who prefers silence— well, I prefer the thought of silence, in that I've always liked a certain level of white noise. And that's why when I was younger, I tended to write in cafes a lot. We didn't call that white noise then, but that gentle buzz created the cone of silent space for me that I need, and now the radio does it, but I can't work in complete silence anymore. And that's a bit sad.

Kristy Anne Cox: Methodologies change over our lives. What works for you at one period of time may not be the best thing in the next decade of your life.

Farah Mendlesohn: The tinnitus is definitely a problem, and that came on in my thirties. And this I'm just going to mention to anybody out there who has developing tinnitus, hearing aids improve tinnitus. Nobody quite knows why, but if you have tinnitus, get your ears checked because of the chance you're going deaf, and there is a chance that hearing aids will actively help. And nobody knows why they actively help, but they do.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, I don't think that most people are aware of how important light is and the right kind. I have very dark eyes. My partner has lighter eyes. I like a higher level of light than they do. So they walk into my office, they're like [vampire hiss].

Farah Mendlesohn: I walk in, I go, "how can you see this? There are no lights on."

Kristy Anne Cox: Readers of the transcript: Kate just held her hands up in front of her face as if seeing a vampire. It was a deeply humorous moment for all involved.

Farah, are you using an ergonomic keyboard when you don't use a laptop?

Farah Mendlesohn: No, because I have tiny hands, and ergonomic keyboards are made for men. So I take an American five and a half in a shoe, and I have hands to match. Yeah, I'll hold them up. I have very small hands. You can't tell on the screen, but I, yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Readers, Farah is holding up delightfully small hands, and all of us are very appreciative.

Farah Mendlesohn: So the complication is, I was taught to type when I was about five. My mother trained to teach art and drama and they couldn't find her a school, 'cause in those days they used to place training teachers, and they said, "oh, but you used to be a secretary. We desperately need commerce and typing teachers."

Now my mother had actually slightly lied about her qualifications and she had to figure out how to teach typing very quickly, so she practiced on her 5-year-old, which is partially how nobody noticed I was dyslexic. Because I learned to read partially through learning to type.

What I was getting to here is, I learned to type on a manual and my mother always promised me that when I was older I'd be able to reach the A key, and I never was. Ever, on a manual. Hands just not big enough.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: Piano lessons were not your forte.

Kristy Anne Cox: Kate, I don't wanna monopolize all the questions, but I have another question. Feel free to interrupt me and jump in whenever you want.

Kate Johnston: I am waiting till we get to the con part, so.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. So I have two more questions about your method, if that's okay, Farah.

Farah Mendlesohn: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: You mentioned that you are really good at coming back after interruptions. How do you do that? That sounds like witchcraft to me.

Farah Mendlesohn: Because I get bored by the interruption. It's just that I'm bored of an interest, bored of an interest, bored of an interest. It's that simple.

When I was first starting out, a lecturer called Joanna de Groot told me that the biggest problem of getting a PhD is boredom, and that you have to find a way not to be bored.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Farah Mendlesohn: It was possibly the only really useful piece of advice anybody ever gave me. And I watched as colleagues fell by the wayside because they got bored with their PhDs. I got bored by my PhD, so I went and wrote an article on something totally different, and then I got bored with that. So I went back to the PhD.

So right now, book number one is out with readers. I am currently finishing off some bits of admin writing an overview book report, et cetera. And while the book is out with readers, I'll move back to book two, and by the time book one comes back, I will be desperate for the distraction because book two will be boring me.

And the same is true in miniature, I get distracted, I go move some books, and then I finish moving some books. By that point, I'm ready to go back to work again. And it is really just a cycle of boredom, distraction, boredom, distraction, all the way through. It looks like deep commitment. That's not what's going on.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, I've heard that before. Somebody said the other day that they have to have one thing that they're working on, so that they can procrastinate from that by writing the other thing. And when they write the other thing, then they procrastinate, they go back. And I was just like, if I would've known this 20 years ago, I would've been a much more prolific writer by now.

Farah Mendlesohn: This is how the house stays clean.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes.

Farah Mendlesohn: Because I get bored. I notice the carpet needs scraping 'cause we have pets. So I do that, by which time I'm ready to go back and write a bit.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Farah Mendlesohn: And then I'm bored again, so I go wipe a table. But I'm never interested enough or committed enough to the housework for that to become like a total distraction.

The only thing I think I really focus on is possibly cooking, which I love. But even then, I don't tend to cook anything that requires focused attention in any kind of delicate way, because that's asking for trouble. I'm a good cook and I'm a decent baker, but I couldn't make sweets or anything that required you to be stirring a lot. I would get distracted. I do get distracted. Wander off and it starts burning.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: What happens if you are taking a break and you're cleaning something, it's gonna take you like five minutes, and someone starts talking to you. What do you do?

Farah Mendlesohn: Snarl at them. That one's easy. Snarl. My partner has mastered the art of placing the cup of coffee on my desk at 10:30, and I don't even notice him. It appears like magic, because when I am focused, I've got the hyper focus. If you break my hyper focus, I'm not very nice. I'm really not very nice. It's just something that people have had to accept. Oh, and complicated by the fact that if you really do break my focus and I haven't heard you come in, I'll jump sky high because I can't hear you come in.

I listen to a lot of audio books, so that kind of helps as well. I started listening to audio books during a period of really difficult depression. I'd had a very bad breakup and I wasn't functioning, but it became a way of training my ability to listen. And one of my books, the Diana Wynne Jones book, was very profoundly affected by listening to the books rather than just reading them, because I read too fast, and listening to them forced me to slow right down.

I say I use audio books, but I actually use audio books as a way of teaching myself to listen, as well as to listen to the thing. And even then, half the time I have to go back and re-listen to something I've just missed. I'm listening to Ada Palmer's Inventing the Renaissance, which is superb, but I'm going to have to restart the chapter tomorrow morning because I got distracted.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Yeah.

Farah Mendlesohn: Ada Palmer clearly has exactly the same kind of mind. I thought I was bad. One minute she's talking about Florence, and the next she's talking about Iceland. Fine. You go for it, Ada.

Kristy Anne Cox: One of the issues I run into in alternating between hyperfocus and distractibility, is I forget what I wanted to come back to. So instead of alternating between two things, I'm alternating between 25 things, and none of them get done.

Do either of you experience that?

Farah Mendlesohn: One of the things I notice is I do a kind of circuit, and it's interesting the degree to which I've set things up without even thinking about it, so that I will do the washing up, I'll move to the thing I'm chopping, I will clean a bit of the fridge, I'll turn—there will be that sense of moving in a circle. And everything that I function around has a kind of circular structure to it.

But the forgetting what it was you were doing, the biggie: I leave notes to myself everywhere. And when I do leave a piece of writing, I will often write down what I want to do next.

Kate Johnston: Yep.

Farah Mendlesohn: So I will write a line so I know where I'm coming in, depending on the kind of work I'm doing.

So I have two kinds of work. One is the rhetoric for fantasy kind of work, which is very thinking through things line by line. But the other is the much more historical work, where I'm often throwing things down on paper. I will often spend a bit of time before I finish a writing session, writing the outline of the next chunk. Not because I will follow that outline, but because it would at least remind me what I was thinking of.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Farah Mendlesohn: Not least because there's always that thing: is the person you're going to be tomorrow, going to write the thing that the person you are today would've written. And sometimes I get a bit stressed about that, trying to maintain that.

That one's really affecting me at the moment, because I am completing books that were supposed to be written in 2020, and I was very ill in 2020, the short version for your listeners, as I managed to get surgery, covid and cancer all in six months. And it's taken a long time to recover, and part of the recovery was having to relearn to write, because I had basically brain damage from the covid. And the book I have just finished or just sent off to readers, probably isn't the book I would've written in 2020, and that's a bit of a struggle to accept.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Farah Mendlesohn: And I don't mean, it's worse or better or anything like that. I just mean it's not the same book.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. I hear you on that. I feel that way about finishing a draft that I've walked away from for a long time. There's kind of a grief over what the old story could have been or the old piece could have been, but I also am excited about the new thing. It's just not the same thing.

Farah Mendlesohn: I'm gonna introduce our guest for, for our sensory folks. Freddy loves absolutely everybody.

Kristy Anne Cox: Can I just briefly describe Freddy for our readers? Freddy is amazing. Imagine the cutest cat you've seen, and double it.

Farah Mendlesohn: So Freddy is a gray point Siamese cat, he has blue eyes, he's very delicate. A cat show judge once described him as, and you'll have to imagine the Belgian accent, "a perfect piece of art."

He is also a nasty, horrible, murdering boss boy kitty who kills all the mice. A mouse a day helps you work, rest, and play. But he's also the most social cat I have ever had in my life. He spent his days playing with the Siamese kitten at the back of the house called Rhea, and he pops into everybody's houses to say hello. He's got more friends on the block than I do.

Kristy Anne Cox: Our next podcast, Kate, we should do just the cats of science fiction writers, because—

Kate Johnston: Absolutely.

Farah Mendlesohn: I did once do a fundraising calendar called the Cats of Science Fiction, but unfortunately the Science Fiction Foundation Board said no.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh.

Farah Mendlesohn: Thought we would've made quite a lot of money.

Kristy Anne Cox: You can fundraise for us with cats. That's fine.

Kate Johnston: Although, Farah does have a bi-pet household, and so I don't know that it would be fair to ignore Phryne completely.

Kristy Anne Cox: That's true. Wouldn't it be a tri-pet household? Are we saying dog versus cat? Yeah. Tri-pet, bi-species.

Farah Mendlesohn: Yes. There's the Orange Major who is wandering around, and he is Major Thomas WSFS, because he had a Hugo Rocket on his nose, and asleep on the sofa in the other room is my bassett hound, Phryne. Yeah. Miss Phryne Bassett, that has a morbid taste for bones, which some of your readers will understand.

Kristy Anne Cox: I think a lot of them will. We have a lot of zombies in our audience, I'm pretty sure.

All right. This is my last accessibility question for you. You said Scrivener is great for ADHD. Why? Tell us about that.

Farah Mendlesohn: Okay, so with Scrivener, you can open up lots of files, and you can stick whatever you are thinking about down on the file. It stays there when you want it. You can come get it. If you discover that your structure isn't working, you can use Scrivener to divide it up, move things around, and stick them back together again.

I don't use it for everything, but I use it for anything longer than 1500 words. Basically it allows you to cut and paste without doing what I did back in the 1990s, which was to print out, cut up, and move around on the desk. It's wonderful. It's really helpful.

However, I do know some people with the ADHD who find it overwhelming, so it's not for everybody, but if you are the kind of person for whom structure really matters, but you tend to get distracted within what you are writing, so you find yourself writing aside that you know you're going to want later, Scrivener is brilliant because you can hold onto that material, and you can navigate within the material.

Oh, and also with Word, when you get above a certain amount, Word just collapses. Scrivener doesn't, Scrivener can hold an entire book.

Kate Johnston: Good to know. Thank you.

Kristy Anne Cox: Part two is, Kate is gonna run part two with another set of questions. So readers, listeners, if you have any thoughts about our methodology or any compliments to give to all of us, please put them on the Strange Horizons website and we will read them.

Now, Kate, please lead us into the next section.

Kate Johnston: Ah. One of the things that we do as science fiction people, most of us, is go to a con every so often, and that is where we meet the rest of our family and hang out. However, there are some issues that as disabled people are very common to all cons, that have to do with the built environment. And then there's a bunch of things that each different disability is going to need out of that built environment that we are often not getting.

Now one of the things that I want to ask Farah is like, who volunteers? And I wanna preface that with "how does that overdetermine the services that you get and the insights you get out of that?"

Farah Mendlesohn: We should probably back up a little bit and just say, I'm a con-runner. Because I don't think we've actually said that. And although I didn't always work on accessibility, I've been drawn further and further into it, initially because I got involved in accessibility at work as a lecturer, supporting students, and students came to me because they knew I had a disability, and I am really out about being deaf, and I'm out about being deaf because my mother couldn't be. I realized that being able to say I was deaf, actually made it easier to do my job because I could get accommodation. And by that I don't mean that my workplace gave me accommodation, 'cause that's a mixed bag, but just that I wasn't trying to function as a hearing person.

So I got into con-running, and one of the shifts that was happening as I got into con-running, was a move from creating labels for disability and saying, "if you have this disability, you will need this, and if you have this disability, you will need this," and actually starting to ask people what they needed.

My first real encounter with this was in fact at work, because we used to get a list of the students in our class who had disabilities, and one year I got a list that said, you have three blind students. No, you have three students with visual impairments. And I went, "okay, what do they need?" Oh, we don't know. We know they have visual impairments. It turned out I had one student who needed braille, I had one student who needed large print, and one student who needed audio. These three students had nothing in common. Nothing.

And that really started to get me thinking about the way we were doing disability support in conventions, which was very much, you need a ramp because you've got wheelchairs. You need a large enough elevator. You need large print. You need sign language, except we hadn't got that far yet. And I was finding this unhelpful. And I also had a couple of experiences, not actually with con runners, but with con hotels, of abled people telling me that they knew what I needed and that was just infuriating.

So one of my little wrinkles is that I can walk upstairs very easily, but I find walking downstairs really painful. So there is a venue I go to for work where there's only one escalator, and you can guarantee it's going the wrong way for me. Okay. So things like that where somebody would say, oh, it's perfectly accessible because.

So I got involved with that and discovered, top of the list is that, to come back to your question, the people who volunteer in accessibility are overwhelmingly people with accessibility issues. The remaining people are people who, whether at work or at home, support somebody with accessibility issues, if that makes sense. There's always a connection. And I do think this isn't actually understood very well.

One of the reasons why I wanted to have this chat with you, is because we've had incidents at conventions where the person seeking support has not recognized that the person on the other side of the desk may also have their issues, which can vary.

But let's just say there is not a lot of point. You shouldn't be yelling at the access people anyway, but you are really not going to get a lot of help from the access person if the person you are talking to has autism. At that point they're gonna just shut down on you. That's failure to recognize that, but at the same time, those are the people we want, because that big shift where we stopped using labels was a real move to respecting lived experience.

And that the phrase, I'm sure you've all heard, "nothing about us without us."

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes.

Farah Mendlesohn: Which is essential. And one of the people I've been working with on this is Karen Fishwick, who is running World Fantasy this year. And I worked for Meredith Peruzzi for WorldCon in Glasgow, she was head of access. And all of us were very much, rather than just having forms where you tick what you need, or we have some of those because it's a shortcut for some things, are actually saying to people, tell us what you need, because that's our best way of supporting you.

But that means when you are recruiting people for access, you are very much looking for people with that mindset that goes, tell us what you need, and hopefully we will try and do it, but not the—and I'm not trying to put anybody down because I'm very much part of this—not the service sector mentality of "this is what we're providing, this is what we have."

Does that make sense?

Kate Johnston: It does. How does that change your people management?

Farah Mendlesohn: To start with, it does mean that everybody I'm working with has their own access needs. We tend to keep the shifts relatively short. They're not usually much longer than two hours, because the people doing the shifts are often people who tire easily.

We try to make sure that people are doing the role that suits their personality type; there's no point putting somebody who does not handle stress well in that first morning of everybody picking up their mobile scooters. But somebody who's really good at checking things off and really methodical, which by the way I'm not, is ideal for that, if they have somebody else to support them.

It also means that we want to create a space that's very comfortable to hang out in, because a lot of the ways we get our volunteers is people who have been helped early in the convention. So we often start with quite a small pool and by the end, people who've received support come back and do a few hours. And that's really nice 'cause it tells you you're doing it right.

The other thing I think is, quite a lot of my people turn up looking uncomfortable and nervous to volunteer, because they're used to being turned down and excluded. Now, I'm not talking about conventions here, and I can't speak for America, but there's a wrinkle in discrimination law in the UK.

Discrimination law in the UK doesn't apply to voluntary organizations. And I had one experience where I offered to help out at a literary festival, and the second they heard that I can't stand—and again, not something people will notice 'cause I just keep moving, but I can't stand, it hurts—they drop me.

We wouldn't do that. We would find a role for somebody. But quite a few people who come to us have had that experience of being rejected because of their disabilities, rather than being thought of in terms of "this is a person with abilities, how do we find them the right role? How we find 'em a role that uses their abilities, and supports them to maybe stretch it a bit." Because lots of us find that we can do things if we get enough support.

I mean, and I realize this is gonna sound funny, but I am extremely shy and extremely introverted. But it turns out if you put a desk between me and people, or give me a stage, I'm good. Okay? So one of the things I need to be doing in an event is having a role. Otherwise I start to get panic attacks, basically. And I still do, I'm 56 and I still have panic attacks. Anything like that is something you can support people with.

Does that answer your question, Kate? I feel like I've wandered off a little.

Kate Johnston: No, that is exactly what I wanted to get to.

Kristy Anne Cox: Can I jump in on that for a second? Yeah.

So I don't know what the law is here in the US, but I have certainly been turned down from volunteering by tons of organizations, because of explicitly disability reasons. And they will tell you straight up, we don't need people who can't do those things. So volunteering at pet shelters, volunteering at animal rescues or rehabilitation, volunteering at museums or even the local library, they will often say you have to be able to stand up, carry X number of pounds. You have to be able to do every task on this list, instead of focusing on the one task you can do.

And so I was speaking to someone on the phone from a local animal rescue and she asked me, what can we do to encourage disabled volunteers? And I said, what if you let them tell you what they're good at doing and what they think they could do to help? Because maybe this person could come in five hours a week, and describe the animal that you rescued, and put together the copy. Or maybe this person is going to be able to come in as a drop-in volunteer, and feed baby squirrels. That's all they can do. Maybe this person can come in and trim the fingernails of kittens you're trying to adopt.

There are ways to make space for people. And I always remember this story that was in the newspaper about this elderly man in his nineties, and he lived right next to a cat shelter, and he went over there in person and took a nap on the couch, and all the cats came and sat on him. And that was his job. He came in every day, and he took a three hour nap on that couch with as many cats as wanted to sit on him. And that socialized those cats and made them more optimal.

Farah Mendlesohn: But this is the way that we really try to think, and I don't see it outside in the world so much. I did a charity management conversion course, and was sent to work for a charity I won't name, but at the end, I said to them, "I don't see anybody in this office with the disability that you are supposed to be supporting." They'd not even thought about it. It wasn't even the question that they gave me excuses, they had not even considered the fact that they had a very top down model.

I think that's changing, but it's changed a lot in the con running world and to the better. But our motto has always been, "we will find a job for you." It may not be a very interesting one, but we will find you something. And I do think it terribly important.

I mean, the other thing I would say in terms of management though, is again, I have sometimes hit the thing where somebody is quite focused on their own disability, and loses sight of the fact that everybody they're working with has issues as well. As long as everybody is acknowledging that everybody has issues, we're good. But this mentality I sometimes see that I am disabled, therefore you aren't, and I don't quite know where it comes from, but it is something I would like to see disappear.

It's difficult to tell within the community. I asked Glasgow for their stats, and they had only 5% of people identifying as needing accessibility support at Glasgow. But we all know that if disability is something that comes to you, it can take quite a long time for you to start thinking of it as disability. And my guess is that the actual numbers are much, much higher than that.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Yeah. And that's something we've talked about on the podcast before too. I feel like, in general, people massively underestimate the amount of people that either have disabilities but don't identify that way, or who have disabilities and don't understand it from that framework, or who just have impairments, or who—the stigma, they will not identify that way.

So it's like, what percentage of con-goers are in a group that's likely to have age related disabilities? It's best just to assume a large proportion of them are going to have impairments.

Farah Mendlesohn: 40% of the population experience hearing loss in old age. 40%. But of course, until relatively recently, the stigma was so bad that people just wouldn't admit it. I personally would like to have pink sparkly hearing aids, thank you very much. I want people to see them. It's an absolute nuisance to have to constantly tell people I'm deaf, but stigma means the emphasis being on designing hearing aids which are invisible.

And one thing we've not talked about is self identification, because there are different takes on this. Some people want to be able to make their disabilities visible, some people don't. And we need to be able to support people who don't want to make their disabilities visible as graciously as possible. So one thing we do as a community, and I think we do quite well, is that we are constantly lifting our standards of accessibility.

One of the things, again, I often have to explain to people, is every time you make a space a bit more accessible, it's not just that the people for whom that works will turn up, it's that the people on the edge of that will turn up. Because they will think, "if they're doing this, maybe I'll be able to cope."

So a very obvious example is, we now have wheelchair accessible toilets everywhere. Because we have wheelchair accessible toilets everywhere, we have a growing demand for people who need hoists in those wheelchair accessible toilets. And it's not that those people didn't exist before, it's that until we had wheelchair accessible toilets, there was no point them asking for a hoist because there was nowhere to put one. So, everything you do will extend the next thing you are going to need to do. And I think that's sometimes a little tricky to get through.

It comes up a lot in education. People would ask me, "why do we have so many disabled students now? What's going on? Why do so many students need support?" And I'd say, well, when I was a kid, I just didn't attend school 'cause I was so sick. Nobody bothered. Nobody sent any work home. The fact that I did as well as I did is mostly to do with my cultural support, and the passion for a particular subject. I've not been quite so dedicated to one subject. So kids like me often didn't finish school.

And then we got to the point where they got the support to finish school, and then they got the support to do their A levels, and then they started getting support in the form of note takers or whatever else they needed to go to university. And now they're in our graduate schools, they need support. And far from this being some kind of hand wringing students these days, this is wonderful.

It means we're getting it better. I don't wanna say we're getting it right, but we're getting it more right. You know, we are keeping kids in school, and now we're dealing with long covid. We do have a better sense of how to keep kids engaged. How to understand that losing six months at school is not the disaster people used to think it was. You can catch up, you've gotta focus on things.

But that's all part of that con-running experience as well. I think I have to say for me, that supporting students with disabilities and supporting con-runners with disabilities constantly fed in that something I learnt in one aspect of the environment, would feed into the other and back again. And that's been enormously valuable.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. I keep running into this in every aspect of everything, of just that the siloing of information or people or disciplines or whatever, that is never a good thing.

Farah Mendlesohn: No, never. And the people you have contributing, which is the other reason why recruiting accessibility people with experiences of disability is so important, because it's always going to be something that you miss, that you don't think of.

For WorldCon in 2014—I wasn't actually running access, I was running the exhibits hall—but we'd had a very funny incident at work the previous summer in 2013. The system of point scoring for the exams our students take to get into university had changed, and somebody in the office had produced this absolutely brilliant cheat sheet, which would tell us what the new things were worth according to the old points, so that we could figure out what we were doing, 'cause it was still very new. And they handed it out to everybody.

The problem was it had almost certainly been done by somebody in their twenties, and they'd done it in eight point font to get it on the paper. And at break time, I walked to the nearest pharmacy and bought every pair of magnifying spectacles they'd got, because all the people doing the acceptances on the phone were over 40. Over 40, everybody needs reading glasses, everybody. And it told me something. So for Worldcon in 2014 for the exhibit hall, I went out and I bought 10 flat magnifying glasses. And people could come and borrow them, and at any given point, at least eight were out on loan. And I wouldn't have even thought of it, had I not had that experience.

But also, and on the other way round, one of the things I learned from convention running, is that anything you wish to display you never do in less than 18 point font. I still go to academic conferences where they've got badges in 12 point font. Nobody can read them. Pointless. So the things feed into each other all the time.

We've talked a lot about physical access, but there are other issues. And by that I don't mean neurodivergence in the sense of physical access. As our communities have diversified, some of our traditions have had to bend.

So in the UK, it has always been traditional that science fiction meetings take place in pubs. We are now more aware of and responsive to the numbers of fans who do not feel comfortable in pubs for religious reasons, for medical reasons, for social personal reasons, whatever. And this one is proving a big problem, because we don't have much in the way of alternative provision. You can get the pub room for free. A village hall costs a couple of hundred quid we don't have, a library room can cost as much as 400.

Now the advent of Zoom has created a view full of accessibility, and increasingly, I think one of the things people are thinking of is, we can't make one event accessible in all ways, but we can treat this as a buffet, in which we have many events and we set them up in different environments. We use different technology. We have different participation approaches, which means that nobody's cut out of the community, but we can't always guarantee that they can get to a particular event.

And I have seen one or two comments that goes, oh, we should find the perfect convention site. We don't have that kind of money. We can't build an entire convention center for WorldCon. And by the way, even if we did, remember what I said about accessibility being a movable line. So I went to university at the University of York, but when it was built in the 1960s, it was considered a model of accessibility, an absolute model. And by the 2000s, people were saying, yes, but I can't get my Moby up that ramp. There weren't any Moby in 1960. So whatever you do, something is going to come along that improves accessibility, but that for some reason you don't quite know how to use, or you have to think about how to adapt to. It's all part of that change.

I'm terribly excited about going online. The reason I'm a retired professor is I can no longer teach to hear in a classroom. My hearing distance is 1.5 meters. I have no directional hearing at all, which makes me really unsafe around bicycles, by the way. Just, I guess a lot of "what are you deaf?" as they skim past me. Yes, I am actually.

But on Zoom, I can lipread you all, I can turn captions on. That is fantastic. But in addition, we can set up a call across time zones. That is a form of accessibility. We can talk to people in countries where travel is really difficult. That's a form of accessibility. So I am really keen on maintaining internet capability for our conventions.

I have mixed feelings about hybrid. Actually, that takes us back to volunteers. Hybrid is really expensive. You need a lot of personal power, you need a lot of volunteers, and it's expensive to put cameras in rooms, but online, parallel online sessions, dirt cheap to run. And suddenly a whole load of people who, for whatever reason, cannot get to the convention in person, have access. And the way it helped me in an extra way is I suddenly realized if I was really struggling in a panel, I could actually turn the online streaming onto my phone and hear it through my hearing aids.

Kristy Anne Cox: Brilliant.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Farah Mendlesohn: Yes. And that's one of those which we didn't plan for, and I know I'm not the only one doing it. There's all sorts of exciting things we can do, but we only have access to them if the people doing them say, "Hey, I've got this cool new thing I can do, how can we incorporate it?" And that allows somebody else in.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, I think the advent of the US being completely unsafe for nearly everyone is going to push a lot of that online content because no, you're not gonna be able to go out to some other place. And if you do go there, you may not ever go back. So stay home and go virtually.

Farah Mendlesohn: And I also think it's gonna help us support—I'm trying to think of the right word for this. The phrase I'm thinking of is "minority interest", that's not really what I mean. Those interests which don't attract large numbers of people. I've been to several online conferences that could not have run in person because they only attract 30 people. But that doesn't make them less important. And by taking them online, your costs plummet, and you can have this really engaged event. In fact, the small online conferences work better than big online conferences.

So for me, it's been liberating. It's fantastic. We're talking here because I'm not gonna see you next week. That's my regret, but I'm seeing you here.

Kristy Anne Cox: We will weep the entire time, but we will think of you.

Kate Johnston: My wrap up question is, and I'm asking you this because I have seen so many people say this, and it does not seem to be landing, so I'm giving you the opportunity here to do this. Tell me in great detail... why Just Yelling is not a solution for hearing impaired audience members.

Farah Mendlesohn: So there are several things people need to understand about hearing impairment. The first is that not all hearing impairment is even about volume. When I first started going deaf, I had no volume loss at all. If anything, I was actually oversensitive to sound, because I'm autistic. It's a common thing.

But even when it is, when you yell the sound distorts. Very few people are trained to project. So as it happens, I'm one of the few who am, I trained as an opera singer. I can throw my voice across two halls in a convention and I have done so. Okay? But the people who could hear me could not hear what I was saying, because as the voice opens up, you lose the edges of the consonants.

And there's quite a lot of studies about whether people hear P or B, T or D. The further you're away, the softer it becomes. So the sound becomes blurred, and that's to start with. The louder you are, the more blurred it is. But then there is the additional factor that for anybody wearing hearing aids, any electronic sound is a million times clearer than analog sound, and it's astonishing the difference.

So I am wearing hearing aids. Somebody decides to talk very loudly to me because they think that will work. I take a step back. I have two processing disorders, one of which is the autism, one of which is what's wrong with my hearing, 'cause it for me, it's nerve damage. I have no clue what they've just said to me. I know they've spoken really loud, but I still don't know.

The microphone tightens the sound. It makes it much crisper, much clearer. It also regularizes the harmonics and the pitches, and quite a lot of us have hearing loss in specific pitches. Now I'm unusual and I have a low frequency deafness, which boiled down to: the more I got promoted and the more I worked with men, the less I could hear. I can't hear a bass voice unless it's through a microphone, and even then I'm gonna struggle.

So, not only should you use the microphone—and this is where I really get really quite angry with people—do not say, "does anybody mind if I don't use the microphone?" Because there are people in that audience you are forcing to out themselves. There is a lot of stigma around deafness, particularly in the teaching professions. You cannot make somebody put their hand up and tell their employer that they are struggling.

So it isn't just that you must use the microphone, but please drop that phrase, just drop it.

While I'm on the subject, don't ask people if they mind carrying on another 15 minutes through lunch. Again, it's that phrase, you're forcing them to not express their needs. Just say, " we've got lunch coming. I will finish in 15 minutes. I'm done." But I've actually heard somebody say, "does anybody mind", three times running. At which point I finally said, "actually, yes, I do a lot", and got a round of applause. It's a nature of the question as well. So it's not just why you should use the mic, it's the passive aggressive coercive question which makes it really difficult for somebody to say, "I need that access support."

I will say here, I watched my mom go deaf and struggle, but I also come from the Jewish tradition, we don't really do shy and retiring. Expressing your needs is part of the culture, but lots of people don't come from those cultures. They come from cultures where you have to be ladylike, where you don't expect your needs to be met, where you feel you are lucky to be in this space because this is privileged space, and you are not privileged.

There are so many reasons why people don't feel they can express any need. Rant over.

Kristy Anne Cox: Thank you. That was really good.

My wrap up question for you. Do you have any thoughts in general about the topics we've discussed that you wanna say a little more about?

Farah Mendlesohn: The takeaway I'd like people to have from the con-running discussion is that person you are asking for support, also has support needs. Don't look at them and think "this is an able-bodied person who doesn't understand where I'm coming from, this is an able bodied person who has it easy." This is somebody who is also dealing with their own issues. They will do their best for you, and they will help you, but it's peer support. It's not service support, and there is a very real difference. You are working with each other on this one. We need to be collaborative.

Kate Johnston: Lovely.

Kristy Anne Cox: That's excellent. Kate, did you have any closing thoughts or...?

Kate Johnston: I didn't. That was fantastic though. I think that a lot of the things that got said are things that needed to be said, and need to be heard more widely. So I am so glad, and thank you Farah so much for coming.

Kristy Anne Cox: This was a lovely conversation.

Farah Mendlesohn: Thank you. It's been lovely talking to you both.

Kristy Anne Cox: Readers, I am going to boost Farah's work. The book that I'm holding up right now is called The Rhetorics of Fantasy. I am describing, it's gray and earth tones on the cover with water, and the back and the binder are green, blue. This is an academic text that I was introduced to in grad school, and it goes through the ways that fantasy works to do the work that fantasy does. Would you say that's accurate?

Farah Mendlesohn: I think that's fair enough. That's a good way of putting it.

Kristy Anne Cox: It's a very excellent read, so you can pick that up at your favorite bookseller of choice. And of course, Farah has many other things as well that you can look for. Please check out her website.

And if you have questions or want to join the conversation, you can use the hashtag #WritingWhileDisabled or hashtag #StrangeHorizons. And we have a form on the website now for your questions and feedback, but we'll also check you out on social media if you tag us.

Farah Mendlesohn: But before we go, can I mention my next book? Because—

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, please.

Farah Mendlesohn: —it has finally gone to readers! So the book that has just gone to readers will be coming up from Luna Press in 2026, and it'll be reasonably priced, which is why it's coming up from Luna Press. Bless them.

And I don't yet have a firm title, but the book is about Joanna Russ's book, The Female Man. It's only 45,000 words long, and if you like Rhetorics of Fantasy, it's that kind of book. It's a book about how I see The Female Man working as a book on a line by line basis.

And as The Female Man is one of my very favorite books, this has been a real labor of love. 2026, from Luna Press, probably called something very straightforward, like Reading The Female Man, because I don't like fancy titles.

Kristy Anne Cox: And if you're not familiar with The Female Man, audience, this is a foundational text of science fiction and fantasy literary criticism, feminism, it's an important and influential piece, so I'm excited to see your new take on it.

Thank you. Thank you Farah and Kate. I'm gonna wrap us up.

Farah Mendlesohn: So lovely.

In the first audio episode of Writing While Disabled, Kristy Anne Cox is joined by author Kate Johnston to talk about her experiences and challenges as a disabled writer.

If you prefer, you can watch the full interview with close-caption subtitles below:

Show notes:

• This episode was produced by Kristy Anne Cox, and edited & transcribed by Kat Kourbeti.
• The theme song, "Funky - Upbeat Loop" by ispeakwaves, is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
• Want to send us a question? You can do so here!
• Buy 'Boundary Shock Quarterly 18: Veterans' featuring Kate JohnsTon's story Losing the Tether here.
• Find Kristy on her website here.

Don't forget: this year, Strange Horizons is celebrating our 25th birthday!

• Want to leave us a happy 25th birthday message? Click here to record an audio message, and here for video.
• Join our Patreon for early episode access, or donate through PayPal or other means here.

Transcript

Kristy Anne Cox: Welcome, welcome audience to Writing While Disabled. This is our lovely guest for the day, Kate Johnston. And we are going to be doing this in the podcast format moving forward. So if you have read our previous eight episodes, those are kind of like season one.

And they are transcripts or email interviews, and that format was really challenging for me accessibility wise. So now we're going to try podcast. Hopefully you're lip reading. Hopefully you're seeing closed captions. And if you have questions, you may send them in through the Strange Horizons website and we would love to answer them in the future.

So, Kate, welcome! I'm very excited to have you. Kate is a writer. Kate is a public health and safety expert. And has a diverse background in expertise in various fields, and she has just published her first pro sale, in Boundary Shock Quarterly, issue number 18, Veterans. As you can see, she has an essay and a guest author slot.

So this is, like, very impressive to me personally. I'm so excited.

Kate, is this your story, the cover art? Is that from your story?

Kate Johnston: Well, no, but it could be.

Kristy Anne Cox: It works as it, doesn't it?

Kate Johnston: It does.

Kristy Anne Cox: And then Kate's story in that piece, so that all of you reading, listening, and watching this later can go immediately go buy it on Amazon, is... so there's the essay called the Worldcon Raytheon Donation Blues, and a short story called Losing the Tether, which we will be discussing today.

So I bought this on Amazon, but support your local bookseller if possible. And this is Kate Johnston, everybody.

I want to call it the subtitle, Subtitled Con Bar now, because the conceit is that disabled people like me and like us in general, right, we are never at the cool kids party, after that panel that you all wanted to be at, right? After the panel at that convention. Everybody's gathered in the con bar, and these are the guests on the panel and their author friends and they're having a really cool kids insider conversation.

And if you're hard of hearing, or you have trouble with sensory processing issues. Those conversations are not accessible to you. I'm inviting you, audience, science fiction fans, writers, and community. Join us at the cool kids table in the con bar. We're in a smoky corner. Kate and I have ordered a beverage, each of us. It's a potable beverage. I will be having the finest Denver quality artisanal tap water.

Kate, what are you drinking?

Kate Johnston: I am drinking... I don't even know which kind this is. This is Deschutes Brewery, Haze IPA.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh excellent.

Kate Johnston: I have a very long and storied history with Deschutes Brewery.

Kristy Anne Cox: Does IPA have a bouquet? You want to tell us about the bouquet or is that a one?

Kate Johnston: The bouquet is mostly of rotten death, I'm pretty sure, as far as IPAs go.

IPAs right now are the Okie Chardonnays of 25 years ago. You can't get away from them, they're everywhere, everyone's drinking them, and a lot of them are not very good. Deschutes is wonderful.

Kristy Anne Cox: This one's good?

Kate Johnston: Yeah, oh yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay, so this is season two, the podcast. We are going to talk about your "Cripple Credentials" first. So, if everyone hates this segment title, I'll change it. But I thought it would be fun to call it Cripple Credentials, because basically what I do is I ask my guest how they are connected to the disabled communities, neurodiverse communities, or to communities that are seen as disabled, like, deaf people who don't necessarily identify as disabled, if that makes sense.

So. What are your disabilities and or neurodiversities for our audience members?

Kate Johnston: Ah. Well, I have ADHD. I found out listening to NPR the other day that I probably have some version of synesthesia. And I'm short. And I'll stop there. Because I think that's enough.

But I also, I also have an incipient, I don't know what yet, because I just got health insurance, in California. So, I have some sort of connective issue disorder that we'll figure out later.

Kristy Anne Cox: We could just say mobility issues or pain issues. Yes. You're familiar with those.

Kate Johnston: So I am the "walking with a stick" people about 30 percent of the time now.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah, so you use a mobility assistance, device, stick.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, usually known as my partner.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes I am a hundred percent in favor of both of those technologies. The stick and the bride.

Kate Johnston: Yes, just don't apply the stick to the partner, unless they like that, in which case, go right ahead.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay, perfect.

What is ADHD like, for our listeners who don't have it?

Kate Johnston: Oh god, it is, it combined with, what's the thing where I don't believe I can do anything?

Impostor syndrome, yeah, makes it impossible to write. A lot of the time. So, for me, it's the, like, super perfection syndrome. So, I have to do it absolutely right better than anyone else has ever been, which makes me procrastinate until the due date is over and then I don't have to worry about it anymore.

It's awesome. So, publishers love it. I want to promise you that. They really do... not.

Kristy Anne Cox: Big fans.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. Yeah. So, writing to spec, they're like, hey, we need a story in two months. And I'm like, ahaha. Great.

Kristy Anne Cox: Deadlines. Are they triggering? Are they difficult because of the ADHD for you?

Kate Johnston: They're impossible.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: I basically write things and then sell them. I do not write to spec at this time because I just mostly can't.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah, me too. Like, I want to have a complete piece to sell rather than send one out and then my rejection sensitive ADHD thing. I think it's called dysmorphia or dysphoria. Dysphoria. Dysphoria, yeah. So that's like a big thing with ADHD. Do you experience that too?

Kate Johnston: Oh yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: I've gotten better about the rejection sensitivity since I started slushing.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, okay.

Kate Johnston: And I realized how much stuff really does not work for this publication at this time, and it's really not personal. We just can't use that story, and that has actually helped me with rejections and feeling how I feel about them because I'm just like now I get it. You know, we have 12 issues, we have something on the order of three or four thousand stories every six months and you have to wade through that and now add all of the AI generated stuff.

It's just like, I-

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: It's a lot.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Do you ever find yourself unable to submit something because of that disability related anxiety?

Kate Johnston: Yes. Yes. All the time. I was invited to my first anthology and I was, you know, had a pretty good chance of getting in. And I just could not produce a story to those specs within the time limit given.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: I'm still working on that story because I need to look up the river gods of southern Nigeria. That sort of thing. Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: That makes sense. One thing for our readers who maybe don't have ADHD or who do have ADHD, but you don't have it to the level of impairment that we're talking about.

It becomes disabling like capital D disabling when you are unable to complete a task that you need to do because of the impairment that your disability creates for you. So I brought a visual aid to help our audience. So I want you to talk to me about what would be the ADHD version of this. I got this on Amazon.

This is like a scale. So you know how normally the pain scale will show like those little constipated faces and various stages of "I'm okay, I'm really constipated, I'm dead." So we've got, "it might be an itch." "I just need a bandaid." "It's annoying." "This is concerning, but I can still work." "Bees." "I can't stop crying", "I can't move, it hurts so bad", "mauled by a bear or ninjas", and "unconscious."

So, the original pain scale, 10, is like where you're in so much pain, you're unresponsive at the ER. You're on death's door, right? 5 is where something becomes disabling. Because 4, "this is concerning but I can still work" and I know a lot of authors with ADHD who have up to four, and you're very valid.

I'm talking about the kind where you can't get a story into that anthology in time.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: So, if I were your editor, what could I do to help you get that story in? Because I want your story in my anthology. What could I do to help someone like you?

Kate Johnston: There's a practice that we have, I don't even know where we have, somewhere in public health. And actually, not public health, somewhere in communications. That's called 'Lowering The Wall.'

Kristy Anne Cox: Lowering the wall.

Kate Johnston: Lowering the wall. So rather than saying, hey, you only have a week, and making the wall higher and harder to deal with, you go, okay, I can stand to have this come in 48 hours late. And maybe not get as much of the editing done as you wanted, but I still want it.

Reiterating that yes, this is still a desired thing, but giving a little bit of grace. And as an editor, you build that in. Yeah. I have a, an anthology in the works. I am soliciting stories. I know exactly how I work. The submission date is February of 2025.

And I have all of that year to put that out for print on demand. Because I'm teaching myself this for the very first time. I have tons and tons of really good friends who are helping me out who are professionals but I know that, I'm learning this for the first time so it's going to take me two to four times as long as anybody else.

So I'm just building that time in. So I know that as an editor, submission date is this date. February 1, 2025. I will still be receiving stories in August of 2025, and that is just the way it is. You get stuck in this thing, like, if somebody sends you an absolutely sock off ripping story, And it gets to you on February 2nd.

And somebody who sends me a story tomorrow that just is not as good, I'm probably going to take the one that came in on February 2nd, and I'm going to try really hard not to feel bad about that. But it is what it is. So there's all sorts of competing needs of myself, of the publication, of the people who are editing, the people who are doing the typesetting, who need to know how it is, who need to have the final edit and proofread done.

So that they can do their jobs. All of those things are competing and every single one of them is something that can stop you in your tracks forever. And you just have to keep going and it is awful.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah, well, I'm thinking, because the next question I was going to ask you, you're already talking about this, because I was going to ask you, how do your impairments impact your work and how do your disabilities or neurodiversities impact your work?

It sounds like you've already got some methodology that works for you, which is finish a piece in advance. You need to build extra time into the process to accommodate your learning curve. Those are really good.

Kate Johnston: One of the things that I'm working on actually is looking at, what I want to do is look at the last 10 years of anthology, the big anthologies in science fiction.

There's only probably five or six.

Five or six series, right? Cause there's like just tons of books in each of those series, right?

The anthology from this guy who's really well known. That sort of thing. I just want to look at the subjects of the anthologies themselves.

Kate Johnston: So, over the last decade, how many have we had on mermaids, minotaurs, dinosaurs, blah blah blah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Not enough.

Kate Johnston: Well, but I want to have a story, in the can, for every one of these. So that the next time it comes around, I'm ready to go with it.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah, no, that's good.

Kate Johnston: So that's one of the things.

And I, I have a friend who cannot write anything if it's not to spec. They have nothing in the can, ever. They're on what, novel number five?

Kristy Anne Cox: Is that an executive dysfunction thing? Because I, sometimes I need a rule set to shoot for before I can actually move forward.

Kate Johnston: I have no idea. It is some sort of wacky magic to me. I don't understand it at all. So for me, I see that it exists.

Kristy Anne Cox: Like, so another thing with ADHD, and I don't know if your ADHD is like this, but with mine, I have the energy to do the thing. I want to do the thing. I'm ready to do the thing, but I cannot transition into doing the thing.

I can't start the thing. So it helps me to, on a different day, prepare to do the thing beforehand. So, what you're talking about, is that how they, how one would write, be able to write to spec? Because, like, that's like the formal constraints of a poem to me. Now I'm excited. Yes.

Kate Johnston: There are some things that can help.

Yes. Being happy that you have rules is great. The worst thing as far as I'm concerned that you can do to a creative writer is just go, well, just write anything. Oh, great. Now I got nothing, so yeah, that's awesome.

There's having constraints there's building your own, in case you need to just decide that it has to be in on this date and blah blah blah, and you have to do it here. There's having someone who's willing to do it for you, who is unconnected to the work. So, if I said to my partner, I'm like, give me a deadline. And they're like, well, for what? I'm like, I don't care. And they'll be like, December 12th. Thank you. And I'm, off we go.

Another one that people use, and I swear that I heard Nicole Cornerstays say this somewhere, is, you have to be working on more than one project at once. In order for me to write the thing I need to write for spec, I need to be writing this other thing for fun.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. No, I know a lot of people who do that. Not everybody is like this, right? But a lot of times, with ADHD in particular, your brain has a bunch of weasels running around in there. And you have to distract the weasels. You have to give them something to do. Right, so I might put a audio book on in another language that I don't speak yet, in the background, just so that part of my brain is busy.

Is that something you ever do, like use?

Kate Johnston: Yeah, I have specific music I listen to when I write. Fatboy Slim is fantastic for writing. I listen to the sounds of different oceans of the world, depending, because I've been to three of them, so I know how different they sound.

Kristy Anne Cox: Can you tell the difference between the Atlantic and the Pacific just by sound?

Kate Johnston: No.

Kristy Anne Cox: Are you a mermaid?

Kate Johnston: I can hear the Mediterranean though, so I'm clearly a Greek mermaid.

Kristy Anne Cox: Right now, you can hear the Mediterranean?

Kate Johnston: Well, if I want to, yes, I can hear it in my head. The Mediterranean has a specific noise that as the waves are receding, the pebbles are very smooth and round.

So as the waves receding, you can hear the pebbles rattle back towards you. Oh yeah. It's the wackiest thing, but yeah, you can hear it.

Kristy Anne Cox: That's awesome. So, yeah, nature sounds.

So the accommodation technique that we're talking about here, readers, viewers, listeners, when you hear writing advice, I want you to be thinking, how could I reframe this as an accommodation for my differences, disabilities, impairments.

And so for ADHD in particular, you have part of your brain that might be bouncing from window to window yelling squirrel. Is there anything else you do to deal with squirrel brain?

Kate Johnston: We didn't get into this a little bit in the previous question, but I wanted to get there a little bit.

Oh, yeah. That, yes, it's an accommodation. I think over the next 40 years, what we're going to find out is that everybody's a little bit different. Oh, yeah. And so the people who are normal are actually the people who are a very small proportion of the population. We just didn't know.

I didn't know that obsessively turning any sound, especially rhythmic sound, into not only just a rhythm but a song, and not being able to stop that process, that's the sort of synesthesia that I realized I had the other day.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, okay. Is that why I write drafts in iambic pentameter?

Kate Johnston: Yes!

Kristy Anne Cox: See, I thought synesthesia was when you can taste sound.

Kate Johnston: There, there are over a hundred different kinds.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, well.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, it's just experiencing senses in a different way than people are classically understood to do.

And I think that classic understanding is going to undergo some great changes. And what I want to say about those changes is that right now, this is considered a disability. If you go back in history, and I'm certain that if we go forward in history, is that these are not disabilities, these are considered other abilities.

Cassandra, the seer of Grecian fame, was probably super something! She was on the spectrum somewhere, of course.

Kristy Anne Cox: Neurodiverse something.

Kate Johnston: Most of those people were anyway. Come on! Really? Moses? Burning bushes? Like either that was some really good ganja or he had something else going on.

Kristy Anne Cox: It could be a compulsive behavior.

Maybe he's like, a bipolar arsonist. We're cool.

Kate Johnston: So like what is a disability and what isn't is given to you by your surroundings. And then your doctor will go, well, you don't fit with your surrounding. Like, in the US, I'm 4'10 now, I've lost an inch. That is a disability. In and of itself right there. Just, there you go. Medically. And it is illegal to build a house that has counters that accommodate my height. I have never in my life been able to slice something by getting up over the knife like you're supposed to, because I literally can't.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: So if I made that, my house would not be up to code, it would not sell for as much, and thank God I live in the Bay Area where I don't have 86 million dollars to buy a house or that could be problematic.

Kristy Anne Cox: How about at sci fi conventions?

Kate Johnston: Oh God.

Kristy Anne Cox: How does that kind of sizism play out for you in science fiction spaces?

Kate Johnston: It doesn't play out for me in a lot of the science fiction spaces because a lot of those are hotels which are made for, to accommodate a big range of styles. My biggest problem usually at a science fiction convention, there are two of them. One, barstools are high. I hate this trend so much.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah, me too.

Kate Johnston: It's awful. And the other one is frickin elevators. Oh my god. And this is not just the science fiction community. This is the community of the US, which is aging. When you go to a hotel and there's only one or two banks of elevators, there's maybe eight elevators total, there's 30, 000 people in that hotel, between two and eight are going to your convention.

Guess what happens every time a panel lets out.

Kristy Anne Cox: There's an elevator traffic jam.

Kate Johnston: Absolute gridlock.

Kristy Anne Cox: And it's hugely traumatic. This has happened before.

Kate Johnston: And the elevators are not big enough to accommodate mobility devices. So you have like one or two people in scooters, and one or two people who are with them, filling one entire elevator. And once you get three or four groups like that, we've tied this up. And it's almost impossible to get up to your room and back down in your 15 minutes passing time.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Or the next panel that you're on.

Kate Johnston: Yes. Yeah. And you have to go from one side to the other. So I think that's a big, huge deal that we are gonna have a hard time dealing with, given the way that the physical plants come in, the pre-built space. So, yeah, that's a big one. Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: I think convention planners really need to understand that however many disabled people you think are coming, there's way more because a lot of people don't identify as disabled, but they still need accommodations. They are partially mobility impaired. They're older. Maybe they're just on the 100th floor and they can't walk down 100 steps, right?

There has to be room built in. For people who need extra time to get between panels. Also, I don't want to be shoved into an elevator ever again with, like, too many people in mobility devices, because I've been there when injuries occurred.

It's like, we're trying to get these people to the next panel, how can I help? I know, I'll shove in three more people in wheelchairs.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, this is not Japan and the subway. This is not how we need to do this.

Kristy Anne Cox: You know what, London's subway was like that too.

Kate Johnston: They have packers in London?

Kristy Anne Cox: Like, they have what?

Kate Johnston: Subway packers?

Kristy Anne Cox: Subway packers.

Kate Johnston: Oh, I meant that. In Japan they actually have people who will push you into the subway to make sure that it's packed tight.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, so when I was in London, they had the underground thing, and you had to step over this space to get into it, and it was so hard to shove yourself in and there was nobody to shove you in.

But I'm like, I'm not getting in there. There's no way I can make it over the gap without those doors closing on me with my walker. Right?

Okay, so the next topic is Methodology Info Dump Drinking Game.

So please gather your potable beverage.

I'm drinking the finest Denver tap water. What are the secrets of writing?

I have ten questions for you and they're going to be rapid fire. What are the secrets of writing with your specific impairments?

Kate Johnston: The secrets of writing with my specific impairments are things I am still in process of discovering. Right now, having my own room to write in. I understand that this has been said by everybody, starting with Virginia Woolf, but it's true.

Having your own room where your stuff happens and you can close the door, generally, on the cat who screams. But yeah, no, having your own room. What's your next question?

Kristy Anne Cox: I was going to say, or ask you, where do you write?

Kate Johnston: I have an office at my house. I have an office, and my partner has an office, and that is part of our privilege that we get to have those rooms, and we're gonna get another room, and we're gonna put all of the instruments in it, including the entire drum kit we have just decided we're buying, so, yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, excellent.

Kate Johnston: I know, right?

Kristy Anne Cox: I'm coming over.

Kate Johnston: Yes, you are.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay, so. I want you to describe your workspace for me, like, I'm using a footrest, for example, I have an ergonomic chair that I can rise up and down, I'm using an ergonomic keyboard, I have my monitor pulled up right against my face, because that's the only way I can see.

What is your workspace set up like?

Kate Johnston: Messy, because I am one of the people, I am one of the ADHD people who has to have everything in sight. And so everything always looks incredibly cluttered, but I also want to go, "Hey, I need this thing. Oh, here it is."

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes. Yes. Me too.

Kate Johnston: So, that's also something that my partner does for me. But I have this ridiculously huge, like five and a half foot long computer gaming desk.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, awesome.

Kate Johnston: Because the surface of it is a mouse pad.

Kristy Anne Cox: You're writing on that PC?

Kate Johnston: Yes. I'm writing on that PC. I've got a 24 inch square monitor. There will be other monitors coming eventually. And I have a decent sound system, and I have not gotten it put together yet, but to my right will end up being my entire stereo system and the DVD player attached to my computer. So there's like all of big electronic stack. And then I also will end up probably podcasting in here. So there will be other stuff that shows up. But other than that, I have tons of bookshelves in here. I have a wardrobe and a door to the outside.

Kristy Anne Cox: Do you have a window?

Kate Johnston: I do.

Kristy Anne Cox: And how distracting is it? Do people walk by? Do you keep the blinds shut?

Kate Johnston: The window is to the backyard, so very rarely is there anybody out there. I have a door to the backyard right next to it, and so, if I'm feeling like I need to be writing outside, I will open the solid door and shut the screen door and so I can feel like I have breeze blowing through, whatever.

I will tend to try to make my environment mirror the story that I'm writing. So like, my partner has this really cool motorcycle helmet with the goggle space that I, like, I totally wear that thing. It's like when I was little and I was reading Anne McCaffrey and I would like, make stuff that was like the food they had because that was,

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. That's true! Okay, I'll drink to that. Hold on.

Kate Johnston: Skal!

Kristy Anne Cox: Did you say skal? Is that Viking for 'cheers'?

Kate Johnston: Yes, it is.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay, good. The other question I'm going to ask you. So I am five foot four, which puts me at the high end of the petite sizes and ergonomic thing. So I'm like in the short people club, but I feel like it's only at the very top. 5'4" I think is the top end.

But chairs are not made for me, right? So this chair, I've already got sunk down to the lowest possibility. I use two different footrests. So readers, viewers, I am holding up a black foam cushion.

Kate Johnston: That's a nice one.

Kristy Anne Cox: This is the short footrest that I use. And it can open up like this. And I can make, so it's adjustable, different layers.

And I don't know where I got this, probably on Amazon. And then I have the tall one. So depending on which way my legs are cramping, I have two different footrests. So I have this unicorn footrest, which is taller. Do you use a footrest?

Kate Johnston: I do. I have, what do I have under here? Oh, I have one of those little step stools that you can get off Amazon. And I actually usually have the aerobic steps...

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, I have one of those that I tend to use because it's much wider and it's actually shorter than that, but right now, underneath my desk, I don't have room for it. I am in the process of reconfiguring. Actually, I'm still moving into my house. It's only been... 9 or 10 months.

Kristy Anne Cox: I'm just excited that you've got an amazing place to nest, but okay. Longhand, do you ever write longhand?

Kate Johnston: No.

Kristy Anne Cox: On your phone, do you ever write on your phone?

Kate Johnston: No.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. Do you ever write on any device besides your PC?

Kate Johnston: Yeah, I have like eight laptops that I also write on.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. Is there any ergonomic keyboard or anything like that you're using?

Kate Johnston: No, not really.

Kristy Anne Cox: Not really?

Kate Johnston: I use a particularly tiny mouse that is easy for me to deal with because I have small hands.

Kristy Anne Cox: That's very cute. So I have a small mouse somewhere too. This one is way too big for my hands. And if you have carpal tunnel, you end up with issues.

Would you please break down your overall writing process for us? Like, how did you write this story that our readers can find in Boundary Shock Quarterly issue number 18, Veterans. How did you, what's your process?

Kate Johnston: This is an example of, yeah, my writing non process. I needed to write a story about veterans because this is me writing on spec.

Kristy Anne Cox: Can you define 'on spec' for those readers who don't know?

Kate Johnston: When you have a deadline that editors want to have things in by, is basically how I define it.

Kristy Anne Cox: And they've asked you for a specific type of story?

Kate Johnston: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay.

Kate Johnston: Well, they've asked for a specific subject.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Science fiction, it needs to be veterans.

Kate Johnston: Right. Right. It needs to be veterans in science fiction. And I had just done something, I don't remember what it was, but it was about, that thing that never happens to anybody, software needing to be updated.

So, I had those two things, and I had a further sort of trigger in that, I wanted to talk about how power dynamics exert themselves and how they might exert themselves slightly differently if you have a different set of people. And so this is one of the early stories where there's they, them for the most part.

There are a couple people who actually are gendered but not as many. There are things that are still going to be a thing.

Kristy Anne Cox: In science fiction and in futuristic worlds, there are problems that will still be a problem then. Is that what you're saying? Yeah.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: So I'm just going to briefly diverge here and go to your book.

Okay, so Losing the Tether by Kate Johnston. The hook for me in this story, which I was so fascinated by is this idea that in the future, as we get more and more technology to create implants for people, either for disability reasons or maybe for super soldier reasons or whatever reasons we're doing them, what happens when that is no longer being manufactured or updated or taken care of.

And so you have these veterans who have gotten implants as part of their military career. Is that right?

Kate Johnston: Yep.

Kristy Anne Cox: And no one is updating their software drivers anymore. Can you tell our readers a little bit more about that?

Kate Johnston: So the way I got into this is that, like, my biological father was an army nurse. And I've spent about half my life in medical adjacent fields. And I get to watch this idiot rich boy putting material in people's heads. Simply because he's an idiot rich boy. Yes, I'm speaking about Elon Musk, and no one's really thinking about that, and there is already medical technology that's in people's bodies right now that's obsolete.

There was a whole thing about ten years ago about hooking people who were blind, but they were hooking their optic nerves to their tongue. And so they could see. There's also one that's a tooth that you replace. These are in people's bodies and they are now obsolete technology and I don't know who's still updating those or anything like, can that person still see? Does it still work? Are they just waiting for the next update to break down? Imagine if that's a faculty that you rely on and you're you know, beholden to the marketplace. I think that there's a lot of deaf people who will understand this deeply, because, and up until this last year, they were stuck buying incredibly expensive hearing aids, because it was locked up in the marketplace. The current administration said that is not okay, and they made a bill and now hearing aids that used to cost four or five thousand dollars cost eight hundred and it's eight hundred bucks, but it's still a fraction of what it was. So that was one of the things that I was thinking about, like what does happen when that happens? What becomes of you?

I have a couple friends who are in power chairs. When they have them, they're fairly independent. Then they try to fly a commercial airline and are handed back, not a power chair, but a massive twisted broken tech.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. This happened with two of my walkers. I've had two of my walkers broken in plane trips.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, and suddenly, instead of a capable human, they're reduced to crawling on the floor if they're lucky. The airlines don't care, they don't replace or pay it, and they basically treat their vandalism like it's a disabled person's problem, because now it is.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: So, much like computers, assistive tech is great when it works. When it doesn't, it's a gigantic liability.

Kristy Anne Cox: 100%. Okay, can I read everybody the first sentence of your story?

" Join the Space Force. Fulfill human destiny. Retire broke and broken in a haze of rapidly obsoleting augments they never planned to remove from your aging carcass. They didn't tell you this in the fancy recruiting brochures."

I just love this as a hook. Like, there's also a lot of other things going on in the story that I won't spoil for our readers. Like, there's a whole plot and they have things and goals and stuff like that. But I won't spoil it. You gotta go buy that book.

Okay, now, next question on my accessibility drinking game, do you outline?

Kate Johnston: Ha! I attempt, wait, no, I outline beautifully. I have been to grad school. I can outline like you wouldn't believe. Can I write to the outline? Boy, that's a different question and I would like to not answer that professionally. Thank you.

Kristy Anne Cox: It's a process, right? For me, sometimes a project I have to outline it. Other times I don't outline. It really depends on the story. I do like outlines though for an ADHD accommodation specifically, because one thing with a lot of people who have ADHD is you know how to make a peanut butter sandwich, but when you go to make it, you forget all the steps.

And so having a checklist, these are the steps, can help you do even simple tasks. And an outline serves that purpose for me sometimes.

Kate Johnston: It can. It can. It's just that I have these unruly characters who immediately, it's like telling somebody what a law is, and immediately the first thing they do is start looking for ways around it.

That's my characters right there. It's like, yeah, we're gonna, go from A to B, and my characters are like, yeah, through ZZ.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay, so you are discovery writing those characters and their actions like a dungeon master then, right? Do you outline just the setting and the major plot events and then put the characters in and let them do what they will?

Kate Johnston: Yeah, I outline where I want to start and where I want to end.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay.

Kate Johnston: Because I don't have an MFA. I don't understand how the structure works. Like, I don't get really what I'm doing. And since I'm working on a novel now, I actually have to think about that. Like, where is our rising action?

And what is that? And how much do I hate Joseph Campbell?

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, do you have to think about that? Do you think readers who don't know who Joseph Campbell is could still write a damn good novel?

Kate Johnston: I'm pretty sure they have.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: Although I can't think of anyone in my head who doesn't know who Joseph Campbell is, actually.

Kristy Anne Cox: I just know a lot of people who don't have any formal, like, university training in writing. You don't have to have gone to an MFA program to be a writer.

Kate Johnston: No, but it helps in selling your writing. It doesn't help necessarily in the writing of your writing all that much, although I am an anti devotee of the Iowa system, so I have my own feelings about that.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, I feel like the main goal, purpose of my MFA was to get to work with the people that I got to work with in the program, and also I can teach. It's like a teaching credential for me. I don't feel like any of the writing techniques that I learned were things that I didn't already know or weren't available in writing books.

Kate Johnston: But what was really neat was this built in workshop environment, and I got to work with the well established authors who are the professors in that program, right? So it can be very valuable, but you don't need it, right? Do you feel the same way?

I haven't been through an MFA program. I'm sure there are probably things I would love to learn, but it's not available to me.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: For various reasons.

Kristy Anne Cox: That's a lot of what we talk about in the show, is that some of these resources that are very helpful to getting a lot of writers started, they are not available to people who are multiply marginalized.

Kate Johnston: And the things that I've gotten published actually were drafted and got maybe two editing passes at most. I just published another story with that same magazine that, it was written, I made a couple of sentence corrections, like, typo corrections, and published. Like, bam. It was just over.

And it's better performed than read, if I'm honest, and I read it at ICFA.

Kristy Anne Cox: That's, for readers, that's the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts, and it is an amazing conference.

Kate Johnston: It is, and our theme this year was whimsy, and this is basically, robot Johnny Carson doing a bit. And I got to read it, and it was wonderful, and I had really well known authors going, I didn't know you were funny! I'm like, oh, I'm glad you know now.

Kristy Anne Cox: I knew!

Okay, the next question I was gonna ask is how do you edit? So you said you did two editing passes on those?

Kate Johnston: Okay. Editing my own work is basically like peeling my own skin off. And I hate it, and it's stupid because I can't get out of my own writing.

When I edit other people, which is another hat that I wear, as I'm an editor and a sensitivity editor, I prefer to ask questions. Because I'm not here to tell you how to write your story. I'm not here to tell you why, or any of the other journalistic questions about that, other than "can I help you with this?"

And so it's like, well, did you want this to happen? Could this have happened and still been in the story? Don't you also want to kill this character as badly as I do? So, so there's that. That's what I'm looking for as an editor. So if you as an editor ask those kinds of questions, please contact me!

Kristy Anne Cox: So, you said you did two editing passes. Can you tell me what was in the first editing pass? Was that structural?

Kate Johnston: The first one is always just going to be typos. And the second one is going to be sentences. Does my intro lead to my conclusion? And are the things that I want lampshaded in the intro, that leads us to the conclusion? Do these paragraphs follow one another in order to make up a complete structure?

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh yeah.

Kate Johnston: Is it a vertebra?

Kristy Anne Cox: I would call those structural edits, because like you're checking the character arcs, you're checking your main plot and your side plots, making sure that all the pieces are there and it comes to a satisfying resolution.

Okay, so then what is step two? What was your second editing round?

Kate Johnston: What I'm doing for myself is super basic. I haven't gotten to the point where I've sat down and, like, gone through something really seriously, although, and I can think of at least three pieces that I really need to do that to. But of course, rather than doing that, I'm working on three new things!

So this is one of those things where I can do this for myself. It's probably a really bad idea. This is the ' when the person is being their own lawyer is when they are being very foolish'. I need to hand that first editing pass off to somebody else, and hear their questions and hear what they're thinking of this is going, where I am taking myself off track because I'm trying to be too clever or too un clever or whatever.

I think my goal is to hand that off to an editor. What I am doing right now is in terms of the writing, which I'm having difficulty doing, I have engaged a coach, is now going to make sure that I write at least an hour a week, and is just basically doing a lot of the sort of hand holding and supporting, and yes, I will give you permission to write this thing, which oh my god, everybody needs. Like I mostly need permission.

Kristy Anne Cox: Like a personal trainer.

Kate Johnston: Kind of, yeah. Everybody should do this. And I like I understand that if you're at the beginning of your career and you don't think of it as a career, and you're like 'I am barely making rent, there's no way I can do that', I get it. I was there for everything until about like a year and a half ago.

So I understand what that's like, but what I did in order to prepare for that, was to make my friends in the industry find out who these people are. Because this coach came to me as a friend of a friend from somebody I met at ICFA.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Well, and for a lot of writers who have not yet published, the role you're talking about is fulfilled by their writing group.

Yeah, so it's like peer editing, that you'll all send something in, you'll all read something.

Do you ever use a writing group?

Kate Johnston: I have had writing groups. This tends to dovetail with the mismatch between my writing and my writing group. Writing groups are difficult for ethnic minorities, because rather than having your story critiqued on its own basis and for where it's going and what you're trying to do with it, it tends to get critiqued as, " well, I don't understand who this person is, or what they're doing, or why they're doing it, so keep explaining it to me over and over again", and I don't get critique that's useful.

I get critique saying, "yes, can you make this whiter? Can this person be more like the reader?" And I'm like, I'm not actually writing for you. You are not the reader I'm looking for. So, no. I cannot write that more for you because it's not going to do the things I want it to do. And they tend to not understand that because they think of themselves as the average reader.

Kristy Anne Cox: Right, which is why getting own voices authors from your own community in a writing group, if you can swing it, is ideal. Particularly communities, marginalized communities, including disability communities, right? Like there's this whole fine balance between, we don't believe you're disabled if you don't perform your disability, but don't let me see you performing it actually how hard it is, or I don't want to work with you because you're difficult to work with, right?

Do you ever find yourself riding that edge?

Kate Johnston: Yeah, I have issues with own voices because it depends on who is owning your own voice. Because, well, I'm adopted by white people. So, what's my own voice? I don't fit in with the super stuffy, 'we have been to university' white people. Because I am a super stuffy 'have been to university people.'

But I also, I'm not out here writing, diction and the hip hop of science fiction. So that's difficult. And one of the really difficult things I have with this is that, yes, I absolutely can manufacture my own writing group. I'm in the process of doing that right now, but it means that I have to put it together. I have to organize it. I have to do all the work.

The thing that we are never allowed to do is to just to go passively consume the thing that is written for us, because it doesn't exist. We are constantly making all of the things, and it is exhausting.

Kristy Anne Cox: What things are we making? The support structures that allow us to function as writers?

Kate Johnston: Yeah. I'm going to have to put together my own writing group and organize it. I am in the process of putting together a podcast. Because there's tons of science fiction podcasts out there, and 99 percent of them are white. 99 percent of them are white men and the 1 percent is white women.

Kristy Anne Cox: Right.

Kate Johnston: And that's kind of it. And nobody is out there doing, okay, here's the other reading of how this goes. I'm just not finding that. So I'm in the process of spinning that up right now. And I think I have something like 30 episodes that I know that I can do. I'm trying to come up with the recurring structure of the podcast itself.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, readers, viewers, and listeners, if you know of something to recommend to Kate or myself, we would love to hear from you when this article gets published. So please feel free to let us know what ones you think we should check out.

Can I ask you my next drinking game? Wait, drink! I'll drink to that. It's a drinking game. I'm so good at drinking games. Oh, water. Why is it so good?

Okay. We talked about editing. How many drafts, you said, you did two for this particular story, right?

Kate Johnston: About that, yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. Do you have a favorite writing quote? And it's okay if you don't, but do you? Because if you don't, I've prepared for this.

Kate Johnston: I don't. I think my attitude is mostly represented by the tiny bottle of Writer's Tears whiskey that I have somewhere in a box in here.

Kristy Anne Cox: Is it real whiskey?

Kate Johnston: Yes! It's actually not terrible whiskey either. I've had worse.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay, well, I want you to help me make up a mysterious musical sting right now, because we're going to transition to the next segment, which is Mysterious Writing Quote. Are you ready?

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Are you ready? So here's the musical sting.

Kate Johnston: [hums]

Kristy Anne Cox: Mysterious Writing Quote!

I am going to tell you a writing quote, and I want you to guess what famous writer said it.

Kate Johnston: Oh God.

Kristy Anne Cox: And then tell me what you think of that quote.

Kate Johnston: Okay. Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay, so first one, "if I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad." Wild guesses are acceptable.

Kate Johnston: Yeah I'm thinking of Wendy O. Williams.

Kristy Anne Cox: Very close. Lord Byron.

Kate Johnston: Ah, well, okay. He certainly did empty his mind.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, what do you think about writing to empty your mind so you don't go mad?

Kate Johnston: I can't write that fast. That's the issue I have with that. I just, I cannot write that fast.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay, you ready for another quote? Okay, "the road to hell is paved with adverbs."

Kate Johnston: E. B. White?

Kristy Anne Cox: Stephen King.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, well, for him the road to hell is paved with the N word. That's his issue. Oh yeah, that man uses it way too often.

Kristy Anne Cox: I would agree with you on that. What about adverbs, though? Do you have strong feelings one way or the other on adverbs?

Kate Johnston: I think that lolly should get them here. Yeah, it's from Schoolhouse Rock. "Lolly, get your adverbs here."

Kristy Anne Cox: I understand that cultural reference. My human friend, who is also a human.

Kate Johnston: I actually like them. One of the things about adverbs is that in French you use adverbs a lot and you start sentences with adverbs. So it's, terribly or horribly, unfortunately, which is in French is "malheureusement", which is like the best word. Like German has a best word, it is "Ausgeseichnet".

Kristy Anne Cox: Spanish, "de repente".

Kate Johnston: Oh, there you go.

Kristy Anne Cox: I feel like adverbs and adjectives have a different permissible amount that's culturally the right one for your writing community, 'cause I know Spanish literature seems to use them differently than the guidelines I've heard.

Like you speak German and French. Right? So in those ones as well, are there more adverbs? Do the Germans care about adverbs?

Kate Johnston: Not as much, because it's the way that German is done, I think, at least that's how I feel about it, is that you have to know so much about your sentence by the time you get to expressing it, that you don't necessarily need adverbs at that point.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, I'm going to drink to that. Alright. I'll drink to that.

Kate Johnston: Prost!

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes! L'chaim? Is that one? Salud!

Kate Johnston: Salud!

Kristy Anne Cox: What is the one from Skyrim? I don't even remember.

Kate Johnston: Oh, I don't know.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay. One more writing quote. Okay. Tell me who this is. "Write every day of your life. Read intensely, then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers."

Kate Johnston: E. Annie Proulx.

Kristy Anne Cox: Ray Bradbury. Or Burr? Is it Barry or Burry? I don't know.

Kate Johnston: It's Barry. He's an American, so it's probably Brad, Barry.

Kristy Anne Cox: So, I have an issue with this quote because I do love this idea of read intensely, write, develop a daily, not daily, but a consistent practice, right? But as a disabled person who is constantly interrupted by medical emergencies and drama, I literally cannot write every day. I read as much as I can. I write as much as I can. And then his assumption that will automatically result in a very pleasant career, I feel like he's never had a story rejected because his female characters weren't female enough, even though he's a woman writing the story. Or because his disabled character is not disabled enough.

Like, I don't know if I agree with the "most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers." Do you have thoughts on that?

Kate Johnston: It's very glib.

Kristy Anne Cox: Very glib.

Kate Johnston: Yes. And it's in that vein of, well, " some journalists ask me a question or I just told them something to make them shut up and ask me the next question." And it's not particularly useful for writers. I think there's a whole lot of stuff that's missing from that.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah.

Kate Johnston: Read whom intensely? Do you want to read Ursula Le Guin intensely or would you like to read James Joyce intensely? Because I know where I come down on that one..

Kristy Anne Cox: Is it James Joyce's Ulysses, your favorite novel, your very favorite novel? I got through at least a page of it, which is farther than I got in some other pieces that are supposed to be the canon.

Kate Johnston: Oh, I read that whole freaking doorstop. I read it. I had to because it was college.

Kristy Anne Cox: Did you like it?

Kate Johnston: I liked it better than a frontal lobotomy.

Kristy Anne Cox: That is a very low bar, Kate.

Kate Johnston: I, yep.

Kristy Anne Cox: I didn't get past page one.

Readers and viewers and listeners, one very common piece of writing advice that you will hear a lot from various people who really do know their stuff, right, is that you need to be reading constantly and you need to be writing constantly.

And it's not so much every day. I'm talking about just a sustained practice. Right. Would you say that part is true that your practice should include both reading and writing in some sort of sustainable for you method?

Kate Johnston: Yes, I think, actually, you can't write if you don't read. You can't write well if you don't read. You can put marks on paper. And so yes, that is absolutely a thing. But I think it's really important as to who you read. It's one of the things that I'm going to do in the podcast. It's why I'm not saying it's going to be the Hugos or the Nebulas, because I'm not doing that.

I'm going through like, what's in my library? What have I read? And how did it affect me? And there's a whole bunch of stuff in there that I can absolutely bet you 99 percent of my readers have never read and hopefully haven't even heard of and they'll go, Oh, maybe I need to read that. Or maybe I really don't, but at least it will show up on their radar.

Kristy Anne Cox: What is a topic that you are really passionate about in SFF?

Like, it can be a genre, it can be a type of monster. Do you like military SFF?

Kate Johnston: I love military SFF. This is also from my slushing because I see a lot of stuff go by me. We need to be really careful with our hard sci fi to make it believable overall. I've had a couple of stories lately that just, if I have to start reading by suspending my disbelief with a crane, I, you don't have anywhere to go with me.

So, start by, by violating reality a little bit and then work at it from there. There's a lot of questions about how people of differing sizes and ages and abilities can be made to work together in military science fiction in specific, and I don't know that they can. And I think that's also really real world, because if you look at what the military is, in order to get in, you have to be average or better physical specimen.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. They have physical requirements, right? What about wearing glasses?

Kate Johnston: Oh yeah, you can, but it depends on what you need to do there. Like if you have ADHD, if you're diagnosed with it, you will not be flying a space shuttle. I had a roommate who was trying to get into the astronaut program and he had to not be diagnosed and just fight through it, because there was no way. My son wanted to be an astronaut. He was like 22 at this point and I was like, okay, I probably need to put a stop to this. Because it just was not going to happen.

And finally, I was like, okay, rather than me saying this is probably not gonna work for you, I said, how are you at swimming? And he was like, what? I'm like, how well do you swim? And he's like, I don't know how to swim. And I'm like, okay, how good are you going to be at being 12 feet underwater in a pool the size of a city block and having to do stuff in there?

And he was like, I would lose my mind. I'm like, well, that's how they train. So here you go. So it's not gonna be your thing. The pipeline into Earth Space Force is probably not going to accommodate the disabled in the future any more than it does right now. If you want to read how difficult that is, read an entire series of books by Lois McMaster Bujold, which are fantastic.

But that's someone who was very close to not being disabled, but being disabled, trying to deal with a military culture. And it's super hard. And even beyond, like, what the military requires, I think price constraints via physics are going to be fierce.

So, yeah, like, if you read Star Tide Rising, dolphins might be great pilots. They might be. But keeping a watertight section of a ship filled with shifting ballast of considerable mass, and it also is connected to parts that don't have that, so those joins are really likely to just rip apart if this ship is under any torque. It's going to come at a premium price in ship design, materials, and complexity.

And the reverse is also true if you have like, a water filled ship with one O2 environment. It's most likely going to fall apart right at that join. And if you're ever going to have life support, or containment fail, you've just lost that entire thing, or you have a ridiculous emergency that you can't do anything about anything going on outside until you've fixed whatever's happening inside.

Kristy Anne Cox: We had readers and viewers, I was going to say, we've talked in the past about dolphins as pilots. And so this idea that you have a multi species spaceship, and one of the species requires a fully marine aquatic environment, but also breathing accessibility. And the other group is, let's say, humans. Then all these factors, like ballast and movement, especially in near future science fiction, it needs to be accounted for.

Like, then you have far future science fiction, like, Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang. Have you read that one?

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: So, I love this book. It is problematic in lots of ways, but when I read that as a kid, I was thinking, okay, so disabled people in the future can be pilots. Now, the cost is horrible, and if you haven't read it, it does include the abuse and mistreatment of disabled people. So, content warning there. But I loved that the disabled people were being centered as desirable pilots. Like, do you see that in any of the military sci fi that you've read and love? Like, Dune has it, basically they're becoming more and more disabled for the environment that you used to live in, but less disabled for the environment that you now live in, which is what, an underwater tank?

Kate Johnston: Yeah, a tank filled with gas, spice gas.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah, so once you've taken the spice or whatever in Dune, can you go back to your normal life and, like, shop and stuff?

Kate Johnston: For the navigators, no, but for everybody else, yes. But it has really obvious effects on the body. So your eyes get blue and that whole thing, but the Navigators, I think were genetically modified so that they can do what they need to do telepathically, which is find the shipping lanes for Highlanders to go through.

And so they've had extensive surgery. There's all sorts of stuff like that going on in there too. And I actually, I'm in the middle of writing, it turns out I'm in the middle of writing everything, but I'm in the middle of writing some science fiction about aliens, in a ship.

So space dinosaurs, because space dinosaurs. But one of the things that happens in there is your training montage. And so this person has decided that they are going to go and get weapon augments to some of their limbs. And during one of the training montages somebody's like, well, if you're going to scratch your butt, do it now before we load you tomorrow, with ammo.

And because if you scratch your nose, you can blow your own head off.

Kristy Anne Cox: Because your hand is literally a gun. How do you scratch your face when your hand is a gun? That's like one of the great questions of human nature, right?

Kate Johnston: Don't you think?

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Okay. Well, what about The Expanse? Because we have a disabled character in The Expanse who, her spine is severed or injured, right? And then she gets a mech suit to help her walk as an accommodative device.

Kate Johnston: Ah, okay.

Kristy Anne Cox: Are you familiar with the part that I'm talking about?

Kate Johnston: I think you're talking about Drummer, Camina Drummer.

Kristy Anne Cox: I don't remember any of the character's names. I just know that she's like the most metal. She's amazing. They're having some kind of a conversation for some kind of a plot reason. And she gets trapped between two vehicles and her spine gets injured. And so then you see her with this brace and these metal legs and they didn't cure her, but they gave her an accessibility device that she could use, which I love.

Kate Johnston: And that series also has gravity torture in it, right? So people who live on Mars are disabled on Earth. Because the gravity is so harmful to them that it can be used as a method of torture, right?

And I think most people miss the very first episode where The Canterbury is an ice hauler, and so this huge blodge of ice is coming into the cargo bay, and they lose control. It rockets in and hits this guy and it cuts his arm off. And there's this quick conversation that just goes right by most people where they're like, " are you going to go and get the latest computer controlled arm?" And he's like, " No. The union medical is good enough for me. You think I'm going to get one of the-" Yeah, it's a really cool conversation, but it goes by in just a flash of an eye.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah, I was expecting to see him later with like a toaster for an arm. But, unfortunately, that never happened.

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Okay, so this is the last formal question I have for you since we're running out of time.

Kate Johnston: Yes.

Kristy Anne Cox: Kate, are you part of a secret feminist writers cabal that is conspiring to control awards and publication power and will only allow certain people in? Is there a secret feminist cabal? Because I haven't seen you at meetings lately.

Kate Johnston: I would have to say no. I am nodding my head.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yes, readers, viewers, listeners. Whatever you are. Kate is jiggling her head.

Kate Johnston: Oh, yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Awesome. Okay, so I want to open this up to questions from the audience. So I have an emotional support audience of three volunteers who are in my comments anonymously here, being supportive, emotionally, of this podcast.

So I have one question. Beginning seems to be hard with ADHD. How do you trick your brain and just begin?

Kate Johnston: I stare at a blank sheet of a word document in rising panic. Generally I do. I may have certain methods of mood elevation.

Kristy Anne Cox: So we've talked about medication management, we've talked about using medicinal substances that are culturally specific.

Kate Johnston: And you know, generally what makes me sit down and write is that I have a giant hair up my butt about something and I just want to write about it, and we're gonna illustrate what this is in my characters and blah blah blah blah blah. And that's pretty much what it is. I need to have something to say.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. Well, Mysterious Audience Member, I address that issue by planning in advance. So I will write a checklist for myself. These are the steps that I'm going to be doing in my next writing session. So it might be Scene A, here's what I think it's going to be, beginning and ending, and my goal is to be sure I hook this new character sometime in that scene.

And then when I sit down to write, I'm not staring at a blank page, I'm staring at a gamified list of formal constraints. When I'm writing a sonnet, I am thrilled with the formal constraints. They are generative for me. When I'm staring at a blank page, I go blank myself. It's like it's a contagious blankness.

I don't know. Do you feel that way Kate?

Kate Johnston: No! I sometimes like the blank page for that reason is that, it does feel clean to me. And when I start with a whole bunch of constraints of that nature, I am usually paralyzed by poetry. I've written my first couple of poems this last year that actually landed well with people, but I'm utterly incapable of dealing with trying to put my words down in a specific form.

And yet I love music. I love lyrics. I just don't write them. But I have a feeling that it's coming. Like, I will get there, eventually.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, another issue, not issue, but another way to apply this would be in fiction writing, right? Your formal constraints might be your genre. If I'm writing a military science fiction short story, are not my formal constraints that it needs to include the military?

Kate Johnston: Yeah.

Kristy Anne Cox: Or maybe I'm using a page limit?

Kate Johnston: Well, one of the things that hit me about a couple years ago is that science fiction is not a genre. It's a setting. And everything else that happens within it is the genre. You can have mystery science fiction. You can have men's adventure science fiction. Most of television science fiction is horror science fiction. You can have comedy science fiction. All of these things, but it's just a setting. Sure, give me a mystery, but put it on a space station or I don't care. I will watch Sesame Street in space.

Kristy Anne Cox: I would watch it.

Kate Johnston: This is brought to you by the letter O and the number 2.

Kristy Anne Cox: In space. Everything is better within space.

Kate Johnston: But I wanted to point out to that if buying that story, in the Veterans edition does not knock your socks off, I have another option for you.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, what is it? Tell me.

Kate Johnston: I do diversity in all ways, kids. I love the fact that you were like, "Oh, you, you sold the story and you sold an essay. " Not only diddI do that, my first year of publication, I also sold that story as a reprint. That's how hard I'm working.

It is in the anthology, Playing with a Full Deck, Stories of Hope in Hard Times, which is an Aces High Jokers Wild collection by O. E. Tierman. Aces High Jokers Wild is their series of books. And then this one is about persevering in the face of obstacles. And it actually has a different title, it's called Midwives. For obvious reasons, once you read the book.

Kristy Anne Cox: That is amazing. And everyone who has not yet read Kate's debut story into the science fiction scene, that story, once again, is-

Kate Johnston: In Boundary Shock it is Losing the Tether.

Kristy Anne Cox: Losing the Tether.

Kate Johnston: Yep. In Aces High, Jokers Wild, it is Midwives.

Kristy Anne Cox: What parting advice do you have for any aspiring writers in our audience who are disabled in similar ways to you, or differently abled, or neurodiverse? What advice do you have for them? Do you have any words of wisdom?

Kate Johnston: I am somebody who's pretty motivated by the company that I keep. So rather than approaching science fiction as a business start, or as a fandom to start, I started out with, who do I read, and who do I want to know? And so I started going to cons and meeting people, and just doing it as a personal interaction. So I have something like, 1200 friends on Facebook, probably half of them have some connection to writing.

And so when I come to, oh, hey, I have a podcast that I need to do and I would like to do at least one episode on the chronologically gifted women of science fiction. And so I can just go to Facebook and go, "Hey, ladies. Would you like to be on the podcast? Would you like to be all together as one? Get a hold of me," and in the next month or so those will start rolling in of "hey I'd like to be on this thing" or "I'd like to do this."

I have an episode that I would like to do on The Joanna Russ story, We Who Are About To, and a chapter of Greg Stephen Baxter's evolution, which are very close to each other thematically.

And the person who was on the concom for Eastercon, is doing Joanna Russ's papers right now, and I happen to know this person, so I just said, Hey, when I do this episode, are you willing to come in and talk about Joanna Russ and what you found physically handling the papers that she physically handled. And she's willing to do that.

And I just want to tell people, in case you didn't know this, when science fiction writers go to the great beyond, most often their writings and papers and all of their stuff is cataloged and kept at a university. There are people who do this called archivists. The very best one's name is Jeremy Brett because he's awesome.

Kristy Anne Cox: Don't say that in front of Phoenix.

Kate Johnston: And Phoenix is welcome to come after me for that one... But one of the things that happens is that, that you watching this, if you can get to wherever their collection is held, which is usually at a university, you can just go do that! You can rent time and go in and touch the things they touched and be in the proximity and get the stuff!

So, there's a writer named Suzette Hayden Elgin who just warms the cockles of my little communication heart. And she's great. She wrote a trilogy called Native Tongue, which is fantastic! Go read it! And then she also, I did not know this until the other day, has a previous trilogy. Her papers are kept in Eugene, Oregon at the University of Oregon. And next year, because Worldcon is in Seattle, and I'm probably just driving north along the Bay, north along the shore, we're looking at possibly stopping for a day or so in Eugene, so that I may go fondle the dead tree writings of this person and it would make me very happy.

Kristy Anne Cox: Well, and this is like an approach that I think a lot of people benefit from. You're talking about finding and developing a water cooler community, right? Like where you go to ask people for help and complain about the latest writing scandal and etc. For a lot of us, that's Facebook. Facebook is a LinkedIn for writers. So, hey nerds, you're going to need a Facebook page. If you want to find friends on Facebook, I should say. You don't have to have it to write, but having a community of people you can talk to really helps.

Which is another benefit of a writing group, right? They can be your cohort that kind of come up with you ideally in the publishing world. They're your peers. But there are a lot of experienced writers out there offering their pearls of wisdom at conventions, online. Never before in, in the history of humanity has information about how to write been so freely available.

So I'm going to let you wrap this up. What do you want to end with? What topic do you wish I had asked you?

Kate Johnston: I think we went through all the stuff that we had in our outline.

Kristy Anne Cox: We have.

Kate Johnston: Yeah, actually, I'm going to keep going with that. There were a couple of quotes that I really liked.

As trite as it is, motivation is about finding your audience, and then expanding it. I do it by participating. I did not know when I landed in Florida last month that I would be doing my coffee with creatives, it's a little panel with just the creative people. I was doing with the guest of honor, Katie Murphy, who is hysterically funny.

If you have never read Jane Eyre, don't. Go read Katie Murphy. It'll do you good. And she was just ridiculously funny, and I loved her. And she liked what I had read, and then she was like, there's gotta be more. And so I pulled up another work in progress that I have, the one about dinosaur breeding.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, I love that one.

Kate Johnston: Yeah. I've had other people read it, but I wasn't there. And so to read it out loud to people and listen to them laugh in real time was just like, oh my god, I have to finish this story.

Kristy Anne Cox: Yeah. It's a live audience. Particularly for armchair comedians like ourselves, right? Like, we like an audience. One thing I love about that is you can see the live reactions on their face so you know when you're getting boring. It's like when you tell a story around a campfire. It's about the audience, you are there to entertain them.

Kate Johnston: Yep. There were not a lot of people in that audience. There weren't. But I will tell you, next year, there's gonna be at least three more.

A storied and well known and well read author, who happens to be the husband of one of the other guest of honors, was in that reading and he stood up and turned to me and he goes, I didn't know you were funny. And I was like, alright Jeffrey, now you know.

Kristy Anne Cox: So, yeah, readers, please look at the previous episodes. I've asked a lot of our guests questions about how you break in, what your methodology is. And one way that you can get more connections is to make friends in your professional community and maybe just follow them on social media and listen to what they're saying. You don't have to pester them with questions. Don't say, "teach me to write, Stephen King" on his Facebook page, because he's not going to have time. He's busy, right? But you could follow a whole bunch of authors and join the conversation online in writing communities, is what I'm saying. Readers, or you can go to cons or you can watch this video 500 times, and you'll feel like we're your best friends.

Kate Johnston: But just also know that "a con is a con" does not exist. They're all very different. And when I talk about going to a convention and having time to talk to other writers and time to talk to readers, I'm not talking about Comic Con and the conversations you have in line for an hour and a half to get a three second photograph of Nathan Fillion. That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about places like Eastercon, Balticon, Wiscon, which is not happening this year, and it's just making my heart a little sad. I go to Bay Con as well, so if you're in the Bay Area of California, come down and see me there.

Kristy Anne Cox: And everybody who is reading this, please go check out Kate's story in Boundary Shock Quarterly.

Kate Johnston: I am not paying Kristy to be my publicist, but it is now in the works.

Kristy Anne Cox: Oh, good. I would like the money. So let's talk about that later. Audience members, if you have questions, if you have concerns, I want to hear about it on social media.

So you will be able to find this on strangehorizons. com and you can also find the previous eight episodes. And if you have a question that you would like Kate or another guest to answer, feel free to put it on there. I will have guests come back. If you have unresolved questions, I will track them down and ask them some questions. Except for those that have taken out a restraining order against me.

So, I'm going to say thank you, Kate. Thank you, Emotional Support Audience. And this has been Writing While Disabled, the Subtitled Con Bar. So, yay! I applaud us, and I'll take a drink to that, because this was supposed to be a drinking game.

Kate Johnston: So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye!

(KAC): Hello, and welcome again, readers, to Writing While Disabled today! I'm here with the fabulous Claire Light, on Zoom. Claire also writes as Jadie Jang. Hi Claire, how's it going?

(CL): It's going great. Thanks for asking. Excellent.

(KAC): Readers, Claire lives in the San Francisco Bay area, and uses she/her pronouns. She's a writer, a cultural worker, and an activist. She co-founded Hyphen magazine, an annual Emerging Artist Festival called APAture, and the Disability Justice League, Bay Area. She also works with the Kearney Street Workshop.

Monkey Around is her debut novel! Monkey Around is written under the pen name Jadie Jang. It’s a contemporary fantasy that came out in 2021, with Solaris Books. Her short fiction collection, Slightly Behind and to the Left, came out in 2009 from Aqueduct Press, written as Claire Light.

So, Claire! Welcome to Writing While Disabled. Thank you so much for being here with us!

(CL): Thanks so much for having me!

(KAC): Would you mind telling us a little more about yourself and your work?

(CL): I think we kind of covered it there. Is there anything in particular you'd like to know about?

(KAC): What exactly does “cultural worker” mean?

(CL): A cultural worker is a term we use hereabout, in the Bay Area. People who work in arts and culture, people who use arts and culture as their tool to promote representation, to promote social justice, to promote particular causes. Art, artists and writers, teachers, arts administrators, arts funders, people who also work in culture, in media and in humanities. Promoting the creation of culture. Not merely studying the culture but promoting the creation of culture.

(KAC): Also preserving it, or holding space for it?

(CL): Right. The emergent artists festival that I helped create, it's actually an Asian American and Pacific Islander American Emergent Artist Festival, APAture. I co-founded Hyphen magazine, which is an Asian American music culture magazine.

(KAC): Thank you. May I ask, what disability communities do you identify with?

(CL): I have chronic illnesses, plural.

I'm a spoonie. I'm someone whose illnesses cause fatigue, limitation on the amount of energy you have. I have to pace myself. I have to ration my energy. I'm house-bound a lot, and I spend a lot of time not really doing very much, because I've run out of spoons, or units of energy. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is the most debilitating illness I have, but I also have several less debilitating ones.

(KAC): And those disabilities make travel difficult, conventions difficult.

(CL): Yeah.

(KAC): How do you break that down for people who don't have it?

(CL): It’s very difficult. On a really fundamental level, more or less healthy people are used to reaching for energy and always finding it. Even when you’re tired, you don't feel like doing anything, you’ve had a long day, and you come home, your partner says, you haven't taken out the garbage. You don't feel like it. But it has to be done, because the pickup is tomorrow. Maybe your ass is dragging the whole way, but you to pick yourself up, get the garbage taken out. Yeah. It's impossible to truly understand what it's like to reach for that energy, and have it not be there. Not to be sick, not to feel unwell, not to feel tired even, necessarily, but just to reach for the energy to do an ordinary thing, and have it not be there, and not be able to get up out of the seat. It’s really fundamental, basic building blocks level. You reach for the basic human wherewithal to do normal everyday tasks, and it's not there.

(KAC): Yeah.

(CL): So, that's what the illness is like. It’s a lot more complex than that. There's a lot more to it. You go way out of your way to avoid reaching that point, which is what the rationing of energy is about, and what the pacing yourself and spending a lot of time resting is about, to avoid reaching a point where there's something that you have to do immediately, you reach for the energy to do it, and it’s not there.

(KAC): You don't want to hit the brick wall.

(CL): Yeah. You have to prioritize.

(KAC): Yeah. Ok, let’s get to the book.

(CL): Yeah, absolutely.

(KAC): Readers, I am holding up a copy of Monkey Around. This is a colorful cover. It's got pastel swirls. You can see a person running across the word ‘around. ’A fox up in the top left. A big cat, down here on the left. Very colorful and bright. I really like this cover.

(CL): I love the cover.

(KAC): Yeah. Is that the San Francisco Bridge?

(CL): That's the Golden Gate Bridge. The person who's running has a staff and a monkey tail.

(KAC): It’s just a lovely cover. Would you tell us about this book?

(CL):  The book is an urban fantasy, about a female Monkey King living in San Francisco. She’s like myself, Chinese and white, and she has all the powers of the Chinese Monkey King. For those who don't know, the Monkey King is a character from a classic Chinese novel, Journey To the West. The Monkey King is probably the most well-known and popular mythological cultural figure in the Sino-sphere. A classic trickster, neither good nor bad, chaotic and destructive.

(KAC): Why did you go with Monkey King instead of queen?

(CL): I didn't want there to be any ambiguity. I wanted people to be very clear that this is a female Monkey King, the Monkey King character. It is not some, some queen of the monkeys from something else.

(KAC): This is the archetypal character.

(CL): Yeah. Yeah.

(KAC): How did you decide how much of the original character to bring into the story?

(CL): I decided I wasn't gonna do Journey to the West in San Francisco. I was going to take a female Monkey king with all the monkey king's powers, put her in the middle of my life, my community, and see what she did with it. For fun, give her a supernatural murder mystery to figure out, and leave it that.

(KAC): And it's not just a murder mystery. It's also a romance.

(CL): Yes. There's a little bit of a love triangle in there. I love urban fantasy, but so much of it is just so problematic.

One of the things I love about urban fantasy is that so much of it is woman-centered now, professional women in contemporary urban life, and how they approach power dynamics. Urban fantasy does a fantastic job of reiterating that in these supernatural ways. But what's problematic about it—is that the romances, I love love triangles, but there's always this love triangle between the woman and an alpha male on the one hand, and a lone wolf on the other. She has to choose between these two like, very dominant men. She's physically weaker than the two males. I didn't want that. I wanted to take that structure, and work with it differently. So, I gave her more power than anybody. I mean, it's not hard to do. The Monkey King is more powerful than everybody else. But she is defeatable by her psychology because she's got so many issues.

I wanted to go into that whole bizarre problematic issue with alpha males in urban fantasy, and say, you know, that's not always the power dynamic in women's lives. What do you do, when you are a really smart, really strong-minded woman in the world? And you come up upon men who, on the one hand, don't want to dominate you, but on the other hand, they're kind of intimidated by your power. That's another power dynamic that nobody ever talks about.

(KAC): Yeah. One struggle with a powerful character can be, how do I give this character obstacles that are gonna feel meaningful? Then, even if you're superman, you have a limited amount of time in which to save people falling off buildings, right? You have to decide where you're gonna put your time. Is that kind of the constraining factor for this character?

(CL): No, it's not about time. She can stop people from hurting her, she can protect other people. But that's it. That's all she can do if she wants to live a life.

One of the other things I hate about urban fantasy is that the female central character is almost always police or some kind of investigator-enforcer type person. I wanted her to be an activist. She’s a leader in her community. Not because she's like a dominating enforcer-type of person, but because she has natural leadership qualities. People look to her for help. She gathers people, she gets people to work together. She's not wrangling power dynamics as somebody who's weaker, she's wrangling power dynamics as someone who could easily overpower everybody. But that won't get her what she wants.

(KAC): And that won't play well because of who she is.

(CL): Yeah.

(KAC): So, you're doing a lot with shape shifters in this book. A lot of our readers are going to be familiar with werewolf stories from a more western framework, or they might be thinking [of] Mystique from the X-Men, right? What type of shape shifters are you describing in this book?

(CL): Well, they're similar to Mystique. In Asian cultures, there tend to be multiple creatures who shift into multiple shapes. They're extremely powerful tricksters. Tricksters are agents of change. They create change by throwing everything into chaos. Then it lands again, reorders itself somehow. You have to be flexible to cause change, you have to be. So, there's flexibility inherent in the shapeshifter. They're natural metaphors for code switching, which immigrant communities have to do.

People in immigrant communities, in urban centers, have to code switch. Not just between the mainstream culture and the culture of their communities. Asian communities, especially traditionally, have been situated between white and Black communities deliberately, to be a buffer zone, to buffer the white people from the scarier dark people. So, you have a lot of immigrant communities, and marginalized communities abutting them. Then a lot of times, you'll have marginalized communities like queer communities, who are relegated to black area of town, the Latinx area of town. Because the wealthier white people don't want weirdos having their bars and their clubs in the nicer parts of town. So, you'll have little islands of different types of marginalization. Disabled resources will end up in the” wrong side of the tracks,” because people don't want to see people wheeling in and out of a disabled resource area in their wheelchairs and [in] their, nice part of town. So, you'll have these islands of marginalized communities in larger ethnic enclaves and BIPOC areas. You've got a lot of code switching happening in a lot of different directions.

There's just a lot of crossover. You'll have a lot of very particular dialects, interesting dialectical lingua francas that will arise just in those particular areas. You've got a lot of code switching, and code switching itself is an agent of change.

A lot of stuff going on in these cities never gets depicted. Immigrant narratives tend to focus just on the one community, one story, the parent-child culture clash story. Getting out of that and writing an urban fantasy is a way of pulling away from that trope.

(KAC):  Well, I love how you do that in Monkey Around.

I wanted to ask you about writing as an Asian American author, about stereotypes that you are trying to push back against in your work. What things would you like to see more of and less of?

(CL): I don't really think too much about stereotypes. I mean, that one stereotype that Chinatowns, ethnic enclaves, are a piece of that other country brought into [this] country, you know, I hate that, but you know, you don't have to think about fighting against stereotypes if you're thinking about representing your people as you know them. You don't have to worry about the stereotypes, you're just putting the truth out there and it's ... it is what it is.

In thinking about it right now. I guess there's a stereotype of Asian women being  submissive, and quiet, and da-da-da-da. Which is, of course, not my experience at all. Asian-American communities in San Francisco are basically run by women. The organizations are mostly run by women. There's just a shit ton of fierce, incredibly talented, incredibly smart and outspoken women in these communities. All I had to do was make up some characters who were kind of like the women I know.

And then, the stereotype of Asian men as also being kind of submissive, kind of sly, and untrustworthy, and all that stuff, you know, again, all I had to do was just represent them as I know them. Although Todd is kind of sly and untrustworthy, but that's because he is a trickster. And of course, I myself have collaborated a lot with my counterparts in the Latinx community in San Francisco. So, I deliberately included several representatives of that community in this book. I brought in the gang element because impoverished immigrant communities have to deal with the gang element. They have to deal with organized crime. But also, because it is a representation of the  kind of demimondes that the supernatural exists in. If you talk about, like, the supernatural being underground, you have to talk about the criminal underground as well. You don't have to go out there and do the opposite of stereotypes. You just show what you see.

(KAC): I love what you're saying here because it connects to what you were saying earlier too about community building and relationships. A lot of times, people will approach writing a character who's different from them, like, I'm gonna sit in a room alone and I'm gonna imagine what that would be like. I'm gonna do all my research, and I'm gonna be very careful not to make these specific mistakes. You're talking about a completely different approach. I'm part of a community, and the characters are gonna feel true because they're based on all these real people that I know. I like the way that pushes against this writer stereotype anyway, that the writer is this solitary hermit living in a cabin on a lake. I love the idea of a writer as a social being. Is writing a connective act for you?

(CL): Oh yeah, absolutely. It's 100% part of my practice. My practice involves writing, it involves teaching, writing, presenting the arts, you know, advocating for other artists, advocating for a variety of people in a variety of ways. It's not like, different careers. It's like the whole practice, it all works together, and if I remove any one piece of it makes the other pieces harder. Not being able to work—I did have to finally quit working, and go completely freelance, because of my illness. But, that has actually taken me away from a lot of the source of a lot of what I write. What I'm writing now is kind of drifting away from that kind of activist space, but it’s all part of the practice. It all works together. Yeah.

(KAC): Do you find that writing about a character who is connected to others is therapeutic because it reminds you of what that felt like? Is this kind of like, wish-fulfillment for us? We wish we could be out of the house, but COVID. We want to do more, but medical conditions keep us isolated.

(CL): Yeah. Yeah. No, it's 100% wish-fulfillment. I mean, I, I think that is why I ended up doing this.

I have a lot of reasons. I wanted to represent my community, and all that stuff, but I wanted to write urban fantasy because I started reading Urban Fantasy in 2013. A friend introduced me to it, but I started, I really got into it because it's this incredible wish-fulfillment at a time when I'm becoming physically incapable of, you know, anything at all.

And there are these people, going out there getting bitten by werewolves, and getting sucked on by vampires, and becoming superheroes, you know. All of their hurts healed, suddenly they're stronger than everybody. They're part of a pack, or a seed, or a coven or whatever. It's a total wish-fulfillment for somebody with a chronic illness or disability that keeps them away from the world.

Part of the wish-fulfillment is, I'm an immortal supernatural being, who’s incredibly powerful, and who could heal myself instantly. And what I choose to do with my immortality and my supernatural incredibleness is to go back to doing what I was doing because I loved it, you know.

(KAC): Claire, you and I were on a panel about Disability Justice a while back. I feel like a lot of people don't understand the difference. Like, why do we need disability justice when we already have disability rights activism?

(CL): Ok. Disability justice is a framework for understanding disability activism, for understanding Disability in the first place, but also understanding how Disability fits into the mainstream of society.

The ten principles of disability justice make it clear that it's very intersectional. It centers the most affected, which means the most marginalized. The folks who are in leadership and disability justice circuits tend to be both BIPOC and queer. So the disability justice spaces are very BIPOC friendly, very queer friendly.

(KAC): Yeah, they're intersectional and they are intentionally diverse.

(CL): Intersectional, anti-capitalist. It's a radical framework. Let's just be straightforward about that.

It's anti-capitalist because, and I want to emphasize this with people who aren't familiar with it, the protestant capitalist notion of human value is what rules our lives right now. And that notion is one of utilitarianism, your value is in your utility. It's in your productivity, it's in your labor. There's no inherent human value in humans.

That's what allows capital punishment. If a person's value is in what they produce, and if what a person produced is, you know, murder and mayhem, then they're of no value. Their life is of no value. There's no inherent value to them. Yeah.

So, disability justice is pushing back against that notion that we can evaluate lives at all, much less that we can evaluate lives within a capitalist framework of a body's labor and productivity being the essence of its value or a body's monetary value being the essence of its value.

(KAC): What about a writer's value being how much writing they got done? So many of us hang our identities on writing. I'm a writer. Tortured, because we haven't written anything lately or we didn't finish it or we haven't written enough or we don't write every day or whatever the thing is that we're obsessed about, right?

(CL):  Here's the thing, and this is what I tell everyone—this is problematic in various ways. But I believe this: a writer is somebody who writes. A writer is somebody who writes, that's it. A writer is not somebody who has written. The importance of the name writer is in the present, in the practice, not the product. Now, this is problematic for disabled people because you can't always write. But I want people to recognize that thinking about writing, thinking about your projects, thinking about writing itself, reading about writing, processing your process—a lot of those things are part of writing. When you can't write, you are still writing if you're processing your work in your mind somehow. But it is true, if you're not doing any of those things, you're not working on things at any level, you're not writing.

It's really more a question of what, what do you need to value yourself? If writers need something finished and ready to publish, or something published, to value themselves as writers, there's a reason for that, you know, and it's not just about capitalism, it's not just about product. It is also about the fact that writing is communication. To write is to communicate things to each other, communicate stories, communicate ideas to each other. And if you haven't finished the piece of writing, if the writing is unfinished because it hasn't been communicated to somebody, if writing is not out there for people, then the communication has to be finished.

So, while there's that problematic, product-value issue in there, which absolutely plays in, you know, draws from and plays into the whole issue, there's no way around it. There's absolutely no way around it. If the only person you're communicating is with yourself, that's worthwhile. But writing really takes flight when you're communicating with people, when part of a broader conversation.

(KAC): I need to know the secrets, Claire. Can you tell us all the secrets of how to write good?

(CL): How do we write good?

(KAC): How do we write good? What is your writing process like?

(CL): For one thing, my process changed radically when I got sick. I had to change it completely. So, it used to be, I didn't plan what I was gonna write. I'd get an idea. I'd sit down and just start digging until I found something, and it opened for me. That’s very, very labor and focus intensive. I developed a very good, solid attention span, the ability to sit down and focus intensely on one thing for a long periods of time. And then I got chronic fatigue syndrome, you know, the illness that prevents you from doing. You know, the cruelest possible illness for a writer, and I couldn't do it anymore.

I just hit a wall and I couldn’t write for three or four years. And then I thought, maybe I should try this whole outlining thing. I decided, alright, I'm gonna outline a novel, then I will write the novel. I will write the outline scene by scene, so that if I get a flare up in the middle of something, I can walk away from it for weeks or months and still come back and pick up where I left off, because I've got the schematic.

I'm also gonna write it scene by scene, and not include any scenes that are boring. This is difficult. I mean, obviously, nobody tries to write boring things. One of the things that is difficult is the connective tissue between the scenes that you really wanna write but you have to get your character from, from A to D. So, B and C may not be that interesting to write, but to get to D, you kind of have to write that stuff, the connected tissue stuff. So, you have to slog through scenes and stuff like that, especially if you're pantsing. If you don't have a plan, you don't know where it's going. You have to write through B and C to understand what D even is.

Well, guess what? When you plan everything out in advance, you don't have to write B and C. You don't have to slog through B and C, because you already know where D is. You know where Z is, and you know where P is. So, you can backfill a little bit, to let everybody know what happened between A and D. If you know where you're going, you don't need B and C. So, I said, I'm not going to slog through any scenes that I don't want to write. I'm only gonna write scenes that are fun for me to write. Because I don't think I can make myself write slogging scenes with this illness.

Monkey Around is very cinematic, because I learned outlining from a writing for stage and screen class I took in college. Which I enjoyed very much! So, when I went back to outline, I was thinking of it in terms of scenes, rather than story beats. Because that's how I was trained. I didn't put in very much of the novelistic connective tissue, which you can't see in your mind's eye.

(KAC): What do you mean thinking in terms of scenes?

(CL): See, literally things that you can see, visual scenes, like something that you can see happening in the movie in your head. One of the big dangers of fight scenes or any kind of physically active action scenes is continuity. There's a lot of problems with continuity. If you can't see it, you have somebody pick something up with their right hand. The next thing you know, it’s in their left hand, or they've dropped it, or it's disappeared or whatever. They fall onto their side, or they fall onto their back, and the next thing you know, they're face-down on the ground, and it's like, wait, how did this happen?

(KAC): But you're approaching it visually.

(CL): I approached Monkey Around visually. I launched into writing an outline in the way I have learned writing for a film; and you have to approach writing a film with a screenplay entirely visually.

(KAC): Do you think your experience as a gallerist impacts the way that you're framing these things visually in your mind?

(CL): No, I don't think so. Those are different parts of my mind.

The thing is, that while I can see in things in my head, there are, from what I can tell, from Twitter, from discussions I've had, there are three possibilities.

One, there are people who see stories when they're reading or when they're writing, really vividly, great detail. There are people who see them kind of vaguely, they're occasional vivid things, kind of like Plato’s cave, and that's me. And then there's people who can't see things in the mind at all.

I have to really work hard to see things in that much detail. I figured that because I used to draw and paint when I was younger, but I knew almost, immediately, that I did not want to be a visual artist. Even though I have a knack for rendering things. I struggled with it a lot, and I didn't want to become a visual artist, because I have an eye, but I don't have a visual imagination. So, I can see things. I see them. I could see compositions. My imagination is narrative, and it's aided by the ability to see things. But I have to work really hard to see things. I imagine a scene before I see it.  Then, I make the effort to see the scene after I've imagined it so that I can make the scene better. But I don't see the scene as I’m imagining it, I don't see it very clearly.

(KAC): Got you. I'm thinking I need to focus more on learning how to break things down scene by scene like that. Also, because I really struggle with my chapters getting too long.

(CL): My chapters still get too long. I write way too long.

(KAC): Yeah.

(CL): Well, I’ll have a chapter where the scene is like, five thousand words long. It just goes on and on.

(KAC): I have a very similar issue. So, what's your secret to editing? What's the methodology?

(CL): I am really good at what I call compression editing, which is just taking paragraphs, passages that are porous, and I press all of the air out of them like a sponge. I mean, you literally have to find the pores in it. You have to go through it, word by word, line by line and I do a compression edit and every project, every project, every short story, every novel, everything you do a compression edit.

(KAC): What do, how do you know what a pore looks like? And what's part of the air?

(CL): Right. I'm lucky because a number of work experiences in life enabled me to do this. Straight out of college, I was an editorial assistant at the small press. Another one was working as an editor for Hyphen magazine, and also writing for other magazines where you have a word limit.

So, you write something, you put everything down that you want to put down, and you've got a 3000-word article for an article space [of] 1000 words.

(KAC): Yeah.

(CL): So, you have to tell the same story, telling 3000 words in 1000. You have to go through it, and you just ruthlessly cut things out. You're still trying to convey the same complete story, less information, but the same story.

(KAC): Yeah.

(CL): So, there are some paragraphs which are extraneous; mostly it's going through and noticing. Over-writers like me and probably like you, repeat themselves in various ways.

(KAC): Yeah, sometimes in the same sentence. Just to make sure that you're understood: so, you cut out all the ways that you repeat yourself. I didn't need two sentences to say this, it says the same thing. A lot of people don't know how to do this. You just have to push yourself to learn how to do it. You just go through it, and you cut everything down, make it shorter. Most of what we say can be said much shorter.

(KAC): Yeah,

(CL): Thoreau said, “not that the story needs be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.”

It takes a lot of work because we think as we talk, we think as we write, and it doesn't always come out in the most compressed manner. You'll spew an idea, and then another idea, and then another idea, and then you realize all the ideas can be compacted into one anyway. So yeah, compression edit. You go through it, word by word or line by line. I'm gonna take out 5000 words, or I'm gonna go through this and I'm gonna take out 10,000 words. You know, it's like …

(KAC):  Readers, Claire is making a squishing motion like she's compressing a sponge. And the sound effect is the sound of a sponge getting squished. It's very evocative.

(CL): You know, I've been recently teaching this in my classes. I’ll give people a writing exercise and give them 15 minutes to write, put their pen down in the paper or their fingers down on the keyboard and don't lift them up, then I’ll call time. Just to make sure they have a lot of material.

Then, I'll have them count their words, and rewrite it so that they halve the word count. And then, have them read it, then rewrite it again to halve the word count. Have them read it, halve the word count again. Then, I'll tell them to double the word count. Three times.

So, down to like two or three sentences, doubling the word count back. Once they've gone through that three times: ok, this is down to the absolute essence of what you were writing. Then, it's like, oh shit, what's important? I cut all of this stuff out because it was extraneous; what, of all of the stuff I cut out, is important to put back in? Once you get into the swing of it, you know, it isn't that hard, but it's hard to learn, because everything that comes out of your brain is gold.

(KAC): It definitely feels that way in a first draft, or at least, in a good first draft for me. Like everything I just said is brilliant and I can't bear to cut a single syllable. But what I've had to do is, instead of saying, I'm gonna cut this to ribbons, what do I need to cut? I’m saying, what are the bare bones? If I could only keep 10 sentences, what would they be? OK? Now, if I can only keep this many words, what would they be? And when I've got that, then I can build back up, out to the word count, choosing the pieces I'm gonna put back in. I’m like, trying to trick myself into not noticing that I'm cutting beautiful words, you know.

(CL): Oh, yeah. I took kill all your darlings to heart a long time ago. The moment I notice that I love a passage I’ve written, I immediately cut it.

(KAC): Oh, really?

(CL): Oh, yeah.

(KAC): How do you survive?

(CL): I rewrite it. So, if I see this beautiful passage, and I think, oh, that's so gorgeous—immediately rewrite it. So that all the poetry is gone. Get rid of it. Yeah. Yeah. If, plot-wise, it's essential, then I rewrite it. If it’s plot-wise, not essential, I just cut it.

(KAC): Well, it's effective, because this book is amazing.

(CL): Thank you.

(KAC): So, then, at the end, when you've written it, you can go back, and you can put in a little bit of that.

(CL): Put it back in. Yeah, you can always put it back in. That's why I save everything I cut.

(KAC): Yeah.

(CL): And you know what? I've never gone back and kept it in.

(KAC): I often do this thing where I cut because I'm just, I'm too OCD today. I'm gonna describe this leaf for 25 pages and I can't do that. So, I'll write the scene and I'll put in parentheses (beat of beautiful description) and move on. Then, I don't let myself come back and do it until I've got the structure complete, because the problem is that my overwriting throws off the pacing.

(CL): Yeah.

(KAC): If I can land the pacing and the structure first, then I know, OK, there are ten places in this chapter where I'm allowed to put in some beautiful language.

(CL): Actually, that’s completely the opposite for me. I worry about the beats after I've written. I have to get everything onto the page first. I only put something beautiful and poetic down when it occurs to me in the moment.

Also, sometimes, I’ll be like, wow, this is really, really plain language. Let’s spruce it up a bit, I'll sit there and think, what kind of metaphor can I put here? Sometimes I'll do that. But generally, the overwriting happens in the moment when I'm generating, and then, and then afterwards I'll be like, OK, where are the story beats? What can I cut out to get at the story beat? Where is it, you know?

(KAC): Yeah, yeah.

(CL): Where is it buried under all this fat; you know? Yeah.

(KAC): Are you doing any of this longhand? What tool are you using?

(CL): I don't write longhand anymore because I started getting trigger fingers. I now have carpal tunnel, but I started getting trigger fingers in my forties.

(KAC): What are trigger fingers, exactly?

(CL): Trigger fingers. It’s a little bit similar to carpal tunnel. There's a, there's a ligament or tendon in your fingers. It goes through a little tunnel here.

(KAC): Claire is pointing to the base of her fingers, readers.

(CL):  Yeah. Right down here, the pads at the base of your finger. The ligament can thicken. So, when you bend your finger down like this, it pulls through the tunnel and then when you try to straighten your finger, it gets stuck behind the thickened part, stuck behind the tunnel.

(KAC): It limits your mobility?

(CL): Yeah. Yeah. Your finger will get stuck, and then to get it back out, you have to, like, jerk it up, and it hurts. They're better now. But I had trigger fingers in these four, for about two, three years.

(KAC): What tool are you using now?

(CL): Just my computer. I still carry a notebook around with me, but I never use it.

(KAC):  Is it an ergonomic keyboard? A laptop? (Claire holds up keyboard) Oh, that is an ergonomic keyboard.

(CL): Ergonomic keyboard, which I put in my lap. I have a laptop up on a stand, and I have a monitor over here, also up on a stand. Two monitors up on stands. In the bay area, there are tech startups always going out of business. You could always get an Aeron chair for $200. So, I have an Aeron chair.

(KAC): Oh, very fancy. So, you write at your desk in your office in your house?

(CL):  Yes.

(KAC): What about on your phone? Do you ever write on your phone?

(CL): I will take notes on my phone when I think of an idea when I'm out and about. That's what I used to write in my notebook, but I don't do that anymore. I will talk to my phone.

(KAC): Voice dictation?

(CL): Voice to text, into my notes app. I've tried doing voice notes, and I don't like the transcription. The transcription is just full of ums and ahs, and it’s a literal transcription. So, it's not very useful. You need so much time cleaning it up. So, I just do voice to text, mostly if I go and work in cafes sometimes.

(KAC): Google Notes? Is that the app that you're using?

(CL): No, it's the Apple app. I have an iPhone. It's the Notes app.

(KAC): Do you have any other adaptive devices that you use when you're writing or accommodations that you use?

(CL):  No, I've tried because I'm kind of working on a new thing. It’s a secondary world fantasy, and it requires a lot, a lot of world building. So, I'm constantly getting the world building ideas. I started this whole thing out on voice memosum on my Apple iPhone and transcribing it and transferring it into text was such incredible hassle, I just never did it again. Yeah. So, I only type, that's all I do. And to be perfectly honest if I'm too tired to type, I'm too tired to think.

If I have the brain energy to think, then I have the brain energy to sit, sit up and type.

(KAC): So, you don't ever write from bed?

(CL): No.

(KAC): No. So, what about writers who have similar disabilities to yours? Do you have any specific trick for writers with those disabilities to get their writing done?

(CL): I strongly recommend the outline. I strongly recommend you take a class or get a book on how to outline, how to plan your writing, because the biggest challenge for me was keeping everything in my head. With pantsing, you have to keep everything in your head because it's not all planned out. So, you have half-formed ideas, and you have to keep them in your head from one day to the next. They're half formed, they're not writeable yet. You have to keep the whole thing in your head because you don't have a schematic for the whole thing.

I'm using Plotter for my new secondary world fantasy. It's an app that does actually interact with Scrivener. I use Scrivener as well. Plotter gives you an actual physical outline where you can do things chapter by chapter or scene by scene, depending on how you want to do it. It also gives you a number of schematics from different schools of thought on how to plot out the novel.

(KAC): The basic plot skeletons, from all these theories of writing.

(CL): Yeah. Yeah, which is really great. They're all there. So, they will plot it all out for you, they'll tell you what goes into each chapter, then you just use that as a crutch to plot out your entire thing. They also have really great notes. There's a timeline, there's an outline, there's notes, there's characters, there's places, and there's text. I'm using the characters and I'm using the notes really extensively right now for world building.

I recommend people with my illness to spend a little bit of your precious spoons learning Scrivener, and then learning Plotter. If you are the type of person who thinks linearly, Plotter is good. If you're the type of person who does mind maps, you could try Scapple.

(KAC): What about when you have an interruption? Do you have a ritual to get back into the flow?

(CL): I don't. I mean, I have my daily ritual, to like, sit down and ... (Claire holds up coffee travel mug).

(KAC): “There's coffee in that nebula?”

(CL): Are you a Star Trek fan?

(KAC): Yes!

(CL): OK. This is from Star Trek: Voyager. It's a quote from Janeway. When they were running out of fuel, they found a nebula that had that dilithium in it. And she said, “there's coffee in that Nebula.” OK. So, I've got my big thing, I make my pour-over coffee, and I get my little—

(KAC): Is that a shot glass?

(CL): A little shot glass. I get a little shot glass full of dark chocolate covered almonds, and I stay here with my coffee and my dark chocolate covered almonds, and I start working. I don't need anything more than that, if I have the spoons. Some days it takes me longer. Some days it takes me shorter. Usually I'll sit, and I'll read my emails, and I'll check Facebook and Twitter I'll read, Reddit for a while. And then I'll start working. When I'm ready to work, I sit down and just start working.

(KAC): Readers, the magical coffee mug has Janeway’s red Captain's outfit from Voyager and it says, “there's coffee in that nebula.” Now I've got to go find that episode and re-watch it.

(CL): Yes. It's in the first season. I got this from an Etsy store called Adopt a Tribble. You can adopt Tribbles from this Etsy store, and you can also get magical coffee mugs. This one is amazing because, um, I don't know what it is about this thing, but it keeps your coffee hot for hours.

(KAC): Everybody needs an excellent beverage container.

(CL): I've also got a Starfleet Academy water bottle.

(KAC): What practical writing advice have you found the most useful?

(CL): Oh my God. I have so much practical writing advice. There's so much. What did you have trouble [with]?

(KAC): Write every day. A real writer writes every day. But for me, the key has been flexibility. I don't know, from day to day, what my symptoms are gonna be. What my impairments are gonna be. How many spoons I'm gonna have, how much pain I'm gonna be in. I don't know how articulate I'm gonna be that day. If I have slurred speech and aphasia, that is just not a great day to write lyrical prose. But it might be a great day to nail down the beats of a scene or to outline the structure, right? So, the advice that's worth the most for me is to be really flexible about using different methodologies on different days to fit the accommodation needs that I have on that day.

(CL): Well, when people say writing every day, I think some people take it too literally. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about writing every day. People use the term dailyness to mean consistency. Write Consistently. Time-wise, write consistently. You build a practice. Because remember what I said earlier, a writer is someone who writes. It's about being in the present. Writing has to be a present practice for you. That's all it means.

I don't tell my students anymore that you have to write every day. I tell my students writing has to be a present practice for you. If you have a consistent present practice of writing, everything that you do in life tends to work into the writing, and the writing tends to work into everything that you do in life. The goal is to have your life be a practice and your writing be part of that practice.

(KAC): Yeah. Yeah.

(CL): Yeah.

(KAC): And you don't mean just sitting down to draft a story, you mean, like, all of your writing, right?

(CL): Everything. Story ideas, looking around, refreshing your mind's eye or your mind's mind. refreshing your mind by going outside. Self-care so that you don't get carpal tunnel. Removing yourself from your usual writing spot or writing somewhere different to get a new perspective. Input, getting enough input from the world, so that you have material to work with, all of these things. If you have enough time, and enough energy to write, [but] you're finding yourself stymied, you're not getting enough input. That’s a particular problem for people like us, who are housebound a lot of the time. And for the world right now, because of the pandemic and people being housebound and isolated from each other. You have to have, uh, a vivid, interesting life, you have to live all the parts of your life, you can't output without input. Garbage in, garbage out, you know.

(KAC): Yeah, yeah.

(CL): So, yeah, your, your writing life has to be a life. You have to have a full life practice to be able to. write. Yeah.

(KAC): This is the antithesis of “I must go into an isolated cabin by a lake and write alone for a year as a hermit while my mother makes me lunch and does my laundry.”

(CL): That's what I was about to say! Thoreau’s mother made him lunch, and brought him laundry. He was not isolated. Lunch and yeah, he was on a friend's property!

And anyway, while there is a place for retreats, that place, for everybody, may be different. For me, I can't listen to music when I'm writing, because I need to hear the rhythmic language. I can go out to a cafe and have a lot of ambient noise around me that I need to block out. That helps me a lot. When I'm in the generating phase, it helps me a lot to be out somewhere where I have to block stuff out, for some reason. Sometimes it helps me be more creative, but I also end up overwriting a lot because I can't really hear myself talk.

When I'm doing a compression edit, I have to be in a quiet room. I have to hear the language. I have to hear the rhythm of the language when I'm doing certain types of revision, not story revision, but like, language revision.

I have to be in a quiet room by myself. And there are times when I'm doing story revisions, I have to be not in a quiet room, so that I can hear things, focus on the whole.

(KAC): Yeah.

(CL): Yeah. So, I think a lot of the stereotypes about writers are people just misunderstanding.

(KAC): Or insisting that this is a universal thing whereas you're describing different parts in the writing process, and you need different things, you need different environments.?

(CL): Yeah.

(KAC): Some people who write beautiful prose listen to music the whole time they're doing it. What I'm always telling people is like, um, I love every part of the writing process. I love it. Absolutely love it. There are times when parts of it are a slog, but it's not because I hate that part of it. I love that part of it. But there are times when that part is a slog. I think you have to push through anyway, but I love every part of the writing and if I didn't, I wouldn't do it. I cannot spend this much time doing something I hate.

(CL): Yeah. I thought for a long time that nobody could do something that they hated. I have a friend who hates the process of writing. She's a writer, she's a professional writer. She hates the process of writing and I've talked to her about it. I'm like, but you can't possibly, like, you hate it sometimes. But, and she's like, you know, I always hate it. I hate it. I hate every part of it. I hate it. I hate it. I'm like, why do you do it then?

(KAC): Yeah.

(CL): And she said, because I love having written, I love having the product.

(KAC): Yeah.

(CL): Everybody is different. For me, being present in the process is a really important part of my daily life. And, and it's possible because I love the process. I really do. I love it. The more that I do it, the better I get at it, the more I love it. Being in that moment, being in the zone, feels like being connected to some sort of essence of life, some sort of … like being plugged directly into energy, into electricity, you know?

(KAC): Yeah.

(CL): It makes me feel alive and I love it. Some people hate it. Some people fucking hate it. I don't get that. But yeah, everything is different for everybody. It's different for absolutely everybody. There are no generalizations, but we talk about process because sometimes we'll hear a bit of process advice that works for us.

(KAC): Yeah.

(CL): And you know, most of the time, most of the process advice I hear doesn't work for me, like morning pages, I fucking hate morning pages. Oh, I hate morning pages. I took a class where she tried to make us do for three weeks. And I said I'm never doing this again. Never.

(KAC):  Wait. Mourning pages?

(CL): This is Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, which a lot of people swear by. Morning pages is a part of the process where you keep a journal next to your bag. First thing in the morning, you write a certain number of pages, and basically, what you're doing is writing all the garbage out of your head. Stuff that you write in your morning pages, you're not supposed to keep, you're not supposed to read it over, supposed to use it. You're writing all the garbage out of your head so that you can go out into your day, into your creative process. I hated it. I hated doing that. I did not feel clear afterwards. Writing for me is manifesting. When I write something down, I'm taking something that's nebulous in my mind and I'm turning it real.

(KAC): Yeah.

(CL): I don't need to spend five pages writing it all out. But some people do, and there's nothing wrong with that.

(KAC): Wait, do they write the pages before they brush their teeth though? So, do they have morning breath the whole time that they're writing?

(CL): I think they're, well, (Laughs) I think they have morning breath while they’re writing their pages,

(KAC): Do they pee first?

(CL) (Laughing): I don't know.

(KAC): I need the details here. Like, are you still sweaty from sleeping or do you maybe rinse off a little? Is everything you write in the morning pages about sweaty cranky, smelly characters? Who've really got to pee?

(CL): You’re not doing your creative stuff. You're writing garbage, like whatever is going on in your brain. Like you wake up and you're like, oh shit, I've gotta, I've gotta take out the garbage. I forgot to take out the garbage. Oh my God. I forgot to clean a cat litter, oh my God. Today is gonna be the worst day.

(KAC): Oh, Gotcha.

(CL): You're getting all the garbage out of your head. That doesn't work for me.

(KAC): There's another similar methodology or framework, where you're imagining a pump and you have to pump it a few times to get the brown water out of it, before the water runs clear.

(CL): Yeah.

(KAC): I have one more specific writing question. What about our readers who are feeling discouraged right now? They feel like maybe they've lost their gift. Things have changed, their disability has changed, and they're trying to find their way back into writing again, or maybe just to feel good about writing again. Do you have any encouragement for them?

(CL): It's a different thing for everybody. What the discouragement is, is a different thing. One way to handle it is just do the opposite of what we do. Even if it doesn't get you running again, it'll get you out of your head space for a second, change things up. Number one, change things up.

Number two, reconnect with people, reconnect with your community. Reconnect with the source, what makes you feel. Reconnect with the things that make you feel you’re part of the world, in whatever way you can. Reconnect with the people and the communities that make you feel the most you. And don't just do it once. Start making the practice of it.

(KAC): Yeah. That doesn't sound like advice for someone who has lost their gift. That sounds like advice for someone who has needs that have been neglected for too long or not met for too long.

(CL): Well, that's how you lose your gift.

(KAC): If you can take care of yourself, then you'll find your way back into doing the things you love again.

(CL): Yeah. I don't believe in writer’s block. I don't think writer's block is a thing. I think writers are people who get depressed, who, who have problems, who have issues. You have to figure out what is the source of your depression, what is the source of your issue? And deal with that. I don't think it's particular to writing. I think it's particular to humanity, and if you're not writing, it's because, most likely, there's some depression, there's something along those lines going on. You gotta figure it out. Yeah.

(KAC): Yeah. That's all really good. Is there anything else that you would like to share with anyone reading this interview?

(CL):  So, the Monkey Around series is probably not gonna be continued to be published, so I'm probably not gonna continue to write it, but I did have grand plans for a supernatural disability and a human disability to appear in the series. The new secondary world fantasy has a disabled protagonist.

(KAC): So, we can look forward to that in the future!

(CL): Hopefully!

(KAC): Well, readers, please check out Claire's work! You can find Monkey Around wherever fine books are sold. And remember, that's written under Claire's pen name, which is Jadie Jang. Her short story collection, Slightly Behind and to the Left, that's written as Claire Light. If you want to find out more about Claire and her work, you can go to Claire's website.

Disabled and Neurodiverse readers, we would love to hear your thoughts. What writing advice do you have for other Disabled writers like you? Please join the conversation on social media with #WritingWhileDisabled and #StrangeHorizons.

Claire! Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I really appreciate it.

(CL): Thank you for having me.

KAC:  Hello and welcome to Writing While Disabled, readers! I'm here with the multitalented Sumiko Saulson for an interview via Zoom, which means you are reading a lightly edited transcript this time. So, Sumiko, welcome to Writing While Disabled! 

SS:  Oh, thanks for having me here! 

KAC:  Thank you for coming. Readers, Sumiko lives in Oakland, California, and uses either they/them or ze/hir pronouns. They are a fictionist, a poet, and a comic artist. They write Afro-surrealist and multicultural horror. Their most recent book is The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry. You can look for their work on their website sumikosaulson.com, including the novel Happiness and Other Diseases, various short story collections, and audiobook versions of Sumiko’s work. We'll put links for you at the end of the interview.

Sumiko, would you mind telling our readers more about yourself and your work? 

SS: Yeah, sure. I'm Sumiko Saulson. My last name, Saulson, is an Ellis Island Jewish name. My great-grandfather Charles Saulson was asked to change his last name because a better-known relative with the same name had come into the country before him. He said: “If my first name isn't good enough for you, then I guess my last name isn't either.”

My first name is Japanese, but I'm not: my mother is African American, and she had a best friend named Sumiko. Her other best friend was named Diane or something like that—so I am glad that I got this name and not the other one! They used to hang out on Hollywood Boulevard with a tambourine, and they would panhandle for money to get into clubs—people called them ‘the Mod Squad.’ 

KAC:  What is the ‘Mod Squad’? 

SS:  The Mod Squad was a television program back in the late Sixties, when I was born. It was about a young, hip, multicultural police squad—they have copaganda for every generation. That's why they called them that: one of them was Asian, one of them was white, and the one that was Black was my mom. 

KAC:  So, ‘mod’ means ‘modern’ in that context? 

SS:  Yeah, ‘mod’ is short for ‘modern.’ In England, Mods were young, hip people who rode around on Vespas and stuff. I was born in 1968, so I wasn't actively involved in any of those things. I know my mom went to a Deep Purple concert, though, so I got to hear Deep Purple when I was in the womb. I guess that counts as participating in the Sixties! But my earliest memories are…

KAC:  ...the Seventies, right?

SS:  I mean, my earliest memory is of trying to walk up some stairs as a toddler, which may have been in the Sixties, but I don't think that's relevant!

The earliest political memory I have is the end of the Vietnam War. I remember people in my neighborhood, some young men in bell bottoms, high-fiving each other and talking about the end of the war. I think that happened when I was six, in 1974.

KAC:  I was born in 1978. One of my earliest political memories is the Mount St. Helens eruption. We used to live right by it, in Idaho, and we could see the ash raining from the sky.

SS:  I remember that, yeah.

KAC:  Let’s go back to your work. What exactly do you mean by the term ‘Afro-surrealism’?

SS:  Well, if Afrofuturism is futuristic stuff, Afro-surrealism has to do with things like the landscape of the mind, similar to magical realism. The most famous author associated with it—who I am a massive fan of—is Toni Morrison. When you read Toni Morrison, she uses a lot of magical realism while verging upon the horrific. In Sula, it's never said that Sula is a witch—but when she returns to town, the birds begin to die and crash into windows…

KAC:  Since Surrealism is a more psychological genre, not everything is meant to be interpreted literally. Is that the same in Afro-surrealism? 

SS:  Yes, but in Afro-surrealism you also have folklore elements woven into the stories. Many writers from the African diaspora come to magical realism by merging folklore with realism.

KAC:  Would you place that in SFF? Or halfway between literary fiction and SFF?

SS:  Well, there's this idea that things are either speculative fiction or literary fiction. But stories can exist simultaneously in both spaces.

Look at Toni Morrison's Beloved, for example: it's a ghost story, specifically in the Southern Gothic tradition. One trope of Gothic horror is that of architecture as character, and the house in Beloved is a character—established right at the beginning. 

Southern Gothic horror traditionally dealt with the oppression of people in the Americas. People who were indigenous to the Americas or who were brought here in slavery were frightening to their oppressors. There were stories about being cursed or haunted by African Americans and Native Americans. And in this story… well, you can't really spoil Beloved, but… 

KAC:  Yeah, we're gonna spoil Beloved.

SS:  Spoiler alert! Beloved is based on a real story. An African American woman murdered her daughter, but she was charged with destruction of property and not with murder, because back then African Americans were valued as ‘three-fifths’ of a human. In Toni Morrison’s story, the woman killed her daughter to prevent her from being returned to slavery, and now she is haunted by the daughter's ghost. It is Southern Gothic horror, but that does not mean that it's not literary fiction. It exists simultaneously in both spaces. People want to distance themselves from speculative fiction, though. 

KAC:  Yeah. And even if they write it, they're like: “It wasn't SFF! It was literary!” And I'm like: “Well, can't it be both?”

SS:  Yeah, people don't want to be associated with it. Wuthering Heights is a ghost story, but we still treat it as literary fiction because literary fiction is considered to be a serious genre. It's ridiculous because many things that are seen as literary fiction were considered popular fiction when they first came out. 

KAC:  Yeah. In grad school, I wanted to work on Poe for my MFA. Poe is one of the old white guys within the Western canon, but he's at the very edge because he wrote horror and speculative fiction. To the rest of the world, Poe is one of our literary geniuses. He is one of the most widely translated authors of all time; more people have written papers on Poe than on almost any other literary figure. But I would get a lot of pushback: “Why don't you pick one of the more reputable, more serious authors?” Do you think it's an American thing? 

SS:  I can’t answer that, but I am glad that you brought out Poe. He was one of my first favorite writers. When I was in seventh grade, I used to hang around in the library, reading tons of Poe. He is also the father of speculative poetry.

KAC:  Yeah. Did you read “Al Aaraaf,” in that library? 

SS:  No!

KAC:  It's a poem about two fallen angels who are cast out of heaven because they fell in love. They fall down to earth, and it's not clear if they become demons or not, but it's very much like a paranormal romance story. 

SS:  That's beautiful. 

KAC:  It is. And then he wrote so many pieces that are straight up like nightmares he had. And I love them. The way they speak to truth is unique to the supernatural lens. 

SS:  Yeah, and as a person with a mental illness, writing something as a horror story or as horror poetry is an easier way to connect with readers. There are many things that I have experienced because of my mental illnesses that are tough to talk to people about—such as tactile hallucinations, which are scary. 

KAC:  I get some of those, too—when you feel like someone's tapping on your shoulder. 

SS:  Someone’s touching you, but they're not there.

KAC:  Breathing on the back of your neck.

SS:  Yeah, exactly. When that Kevin Bacon movie came out—Hollow Man—I had some creepy tactile hallucinations! I thought that there was an Invisible Man with me.

KAC:  That would freak me out too!

SS:  Yeah, it was terrifying. Sometimes, writing fiction is the only way to get your experiences across to other people—and these experiences are caused by your own mind.

KAC:  I mean, that's something Poe wrote about, too. He believed madness was genius and genius was madness, right? He was an incredibly gifted poet. But we're supposed to feel ashamed if we write the kind of poetry he wrote.

SS:  You mean, the kind that rhymes? 

KAC:  Well, not even that, because he wrote formal poems too! But I mean, if you wrote a poem about a ghost, for example…

SS:  Oh, a poem about a ghost!

KAC:  If he were shopping that poem around today, he would get rejection letters telling him: “You might want to limit that to genre magazines.” 

SS:  It's almost like there's this world of poetry and this world of speculative fiction, and speculative poetry is just a little Venn diagram slice in the middle of it. And you know, I don't think anyone's gonna be making as much money as Stephen King writing horror poetry, but when you think about it, Edgar Allan Poe did not make that much money in his life. He worked as a journalist. 

KAC:  Yeah.

SS:  Most poets—poets in general—self-published, or they published on small presses. Poe published his poetry in newspapers. Poetry has never been connected with getting rich and famous. It’s always been associated with being broke. Maybe someone reads you after you're dead. So why wouldn't you write horror poetry when you think about that?

KAC:  This works well as a segue into talking about Disability. For our readers, could you tell us what Disabled and neurodiverse communities you identify with? 

SS:  So, I have bipolar disorder with psychotic features. Psychosis refers to things like hallucinations: audio hallucinations, visual hallucinations, and tactile hallucinations. At one difficult period in my life, my hands started writing notes to me, and I did not feel like I was the one writing them. I felt like another person was writing notes to me with my hand. 

KAC:  That must have been terrifying. 

SS:  Yeah, it was scary. Back then, my father had died of cancer, and my mother was not going into remission after nine and a half years. Then, I had a long-term relationship come to an end. There were just a lot of stressors, and that started happening.

I also have post-traumatic stress disorder—which is connected to traumatic things that happened to me in childhood—and a history of chronic pain related to endometriosis, which is when your ovaries decide to be evil. During your periods, instead of all of the uterine lining going out of your body as it should, some of it goes back up into your fallopian tubes, comes out of them, and sticks to different organs inside of your body, creating these little clumps of tissue called endometrium. These clumps that have stuck to your materials start bleeding inside of you, which is painful, like ulcers. It hurts a lot. 

KAC:  It’s unbearable. 

SS:  Yeah, it is. I was diagnosed with stage four endometriosis at 19 years old, which is early. 

KAC:  Yeah.

SS:  When I was 21, I had laparoscopic surgery. I had an ovarian cyst three times as large as my ovary removed. And I had to have another one the size of a softball removed right after I turned 40. 

KAC:  It's essential for readers to understand that endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome, adenomyosis—these issues that deal with the uterus or ovaries haven't historically been taken seriously by the medical establishment. For example, I have endometriosis, adenomyosis, and polycystic ovarian syndrome, and it took me twenty years before someone would even do laparoscopic to confirm it. People won't take it seriously. 

SS:  You know, I was born in 1968, and I had my first period in 1980, when I was 12. At that time, they had just started to acknowledge that menstrual cramps were real and not psychosomatic. What happened was that Advil was approved for over-the-counter use for menstrual periods. It had been used by medical doctors to treat people with heart conditions because it dealt with the muscle tissues, and the heart is a big muscle.

So cisgender men dominated the medical field for years and years, and just gaslit people who had menstrual cramps, telling them that it was all in their heads. Endometriosis also got acknowledged because of in vitro fertilization, which became a thing around that time. 

KAC:  Yeah.

SS:  People with endometriosis usually can’t get pregnant because of the issues with their fallopian tubes, but they respond well generally to in vitro fertilization. That was the economic incentive for admitting that endometriosis was a real thing. It sucks that endometriosis had to become something that made a lot of money before being acknowledged as a real thing—yet they still do not acknowledge it as a disability. In my case, I ended up out on disability for mental illness.

KAC:  Yeah, me too. And you know, I think it's important to talk about this in the context of this series because we're talking about writing while Disabled. We're talking about who is Disabled, and the umbrella is big. Most of us are likely—if we're not already disabled—to become disabled at some point in our lives as we age. But there are still Disabled people who can't find a community because no one will acknowledge their disability.

I got fired from my job because I couldn't be at work for two or three days a month consistently. I had all the paperwork from my doctor, I had all the history of surgeries on my uterus and ovaries, but they fired me anyway. These situations are not in the past. It's still going on now. 

SS:  Exactly. It's still taboo to talk about periods. I mean, they have cute commercials on TV with Charmin bears talking about poop on your butt. But you can't talk about a period! For some reason, you have to use a euphemism. 

KAC:  And you can have all those ads for erectile dysfunction, but you can’t talk about menstruation. Slightly more than half the planet has had a period at some point in life. But for some reason, we can't talk about period pain, endometriosis, or PCOS. You know in the past a lot of these issues used to be categorized as hysteria, right? Women’s hysteria.

SS:  Yeah, that’s true.

KAC:  It’s the same attitude, and you’re not just getting that from cis, male doctors: I would run into it with female doctors whose periods weren't that bad. So why was I complaining? I must be exaggerating.

The point I'm getting at here, readers, is that your identity as a Disabled person doesn't necessarily look the same as someone else's. Some people get assigned to that disability at birth: it was evident from birth that they were disabled in a particular way. Some people are injured later in life, other become ill. But many people can never get a diagnosis because society gaslights them into thinking they're not Disabled. 

SS:  Yeah. When I was 19, I had this doctor who said I was being uncooperative because she wanted to give me a vaginal exam, and I was in extreme pain and could not tolerate it. She was like: “Well, we’re gonna have to give you a sonogram because you're being uncooperative.” And that's how I got diagnosed—because they looked and saw the ovarian cyst.

KAC:  In my case, it was both endometriosis and PCOS. But again, I didn't get that diagnosis until they had to do surgery on my uterus for adenomyosis. They were in there taking care of uterus stuff, and suddenly, they were like: “Oh! Your ovaries have been decorating!”

SS:  Yeah, I didn't get diagnosed until they went to operate on the cyst. They put me under, looked in my belly with a lap, found something they didn't like, and then gave me surgery. I woke up with a bikini line incision with staples in it. It was rough. I was in the hospital for three days, I think. When they made me walk down the hall, it hurt so bad. And you know, I wasn’t young, because when I woke up, I saw Tiananmen Square on the news. 

KAC:  You know, I remember once reading the submission requirements for a magazine. One of the things they wrote on there is that they didn't want any more pregnancy horror, or miscarriage stories, or uterine-bleeding type stories. I remember being furious. Maybe those editors were overwhelmed with that, but that is such a part of my Disabled life experience. To be told that my story isn't worthy of even sending in. It hit hard for me. Do you ever think about these things? 

SS:  Well, it’s hard not to write about that stuff when it is your lived experience. You're processing it, so you're writing about it. If that magazine got so many of those stories, it goes to show that as an experience, it's very common. 

KAC:  Yeah. And if you're reading this and have any of these conditions we're talking about, you’re welcome in my Disabled communities. 

SS:  Yeah, you're not alone. 

KAC:  So, both Sumiko and I have some more stigmatized disabilities that usually qualify as ‘invisible.’ Since my brain injury, I do have sporadic episodes of cognitive impairment—for me, it's kind of like being drunk or being high. Sometimes I get facial blindness, where I can't recognize my family members or myself in the mirror, and sometimes I forget my name. I get disoriented, and there's always this devastating moment when someone realizes what’s happening to me and I see their face falling: “Oh, I thought you were smart, I thought you were witty and clever, but now I don't think of you as my peer anymore.” Which is super frustrating because it's sporadic. You wouldn't feel that way about someone just because they got drunk and said some things in a slurred voice once, right? But there's a stigma around certain mental illnesses and cognitive impairment, even within Disabled communities. 

SS:  That's for sure. When people saw me talk to myself, it did change how they thought about me. 

KAC:  They don't treat you the same, afterward. 

SS:  That's true. And you know, because I'm African American, there are additional problems. There's a lot of stigma about mental health treatment in the Black community, so many people are not getting help. But there’s also a bunch of stigma from the macro culture which assumes that if you see a Black person talking to themselves, they're high on crack. Yeah, I'm on drugs—the drugs that they're prescribing me for my medical condition.

I mean, look at Sandra Bland. If you’re a mentally ill person who’s Black, your chances of being viewed as potentially dangerous… 

KAC:  …are higher. And that's for every interaction with first responders. That's for every interaction with doctors who have power over you. You know, like how quickly you're seen in the emergency room. 

SS:  Yeah, exactly. I've had friends worried about doing a wellness call because someone might get shot by the police. That’s a problem for Black folks. 

KAC:  Yeah. It's a big issue.

So, I think that many Disabled, science fiction, and fantasy communities want to include more Disabled people, but then they look around and realize that everybody who came to be in their Disabled safe space is white. They assume that they’re the only ones who want to come when the truth is that brown and Black people are more likely to become disabled in our society because of systemic racism.

SS:  Right. 

KAC:  So don’t blame the people that are missing. Think about what you are doing to make that space safer for them. Do you have advice for people on that?

SS:  I'm just gonna say this: if they don't know any gay people that are Disabled, and they don't know any Black people that are Disabled… then they don't know enough Black people or gay people, because just as many of us are Disabled as any other group. The real problem is that they only know two Black people. 

I'm not trying to be harsh here, but if you only know a small number of people from a particular community, that's the real issue. 

KAC:  People need to outreach. 

SS:  Yeah. When you do something to make people know that they're welcome in a space, then you will see more of those people in that space. 

KAC:  Your organization must communicate to the participants at your convention that they will be safe.

SS:  That's true. When people who are genderqueer come in, and they see pronoun badges there, then they know that they’re welcome. If there’s a bathroom with a gender-neutral sign, and you're a non-binary person, that will make you feel safer. And as far as being a member of the African American community goes, there's a vast legacy of people to acknowledge. Big names like Octavia Butler, you know?

KAC:  What about a code of conduct?

SS:  Yeah, if they have a DEI Committee, that will help. At DisCon, in Washington, D.C., they had monitors that people could report to if they had any issues.

When there’s a convention in a diverse area, but the convention's not diverse at all—that really makes me raise my eyebrow. Like, don’t you talk to people in your community? If you don't have enough people from a marginalized community, why don't you go to schools and invite educators and students? 

KAC:  You can go to the local universities, local bookstores… 

SS:  What about librarians? 

KAC:  Libraries, community colleges, high schools… there's a lot of untapped resources. People assume there's no one there who likes science fiction and fantasy because they're not showing up at the con. Well, maybe they didn't hear about the con! 

SS:  Yeah. With the pandemic, many things have gone online. There are lots of hybrid conventions now, so there’s no reason you can't have people from different parts of the country. But if you're trying to get more diverse members of communities from other locations, then you should let them know that they can apply to appear from online, as well. 

KAC:  So, we're talking about recruiting multiply marginalized Disabled people into SFF communities. For example this year, at WorldCon in Chicago, the elevator situation was problematic.

SS:  Yeah. 

KAC:  When looking at a hotel space, organizers need to think about those who are going to struggle the most getting from floor to floor. What’s the traffic going to be like? Where are the scheduling panels? A more considerable percentage of the fanbase is Disabled than I think people realize. 

SS:  Once, at a convention, they had me on a panel about disabilities. One of the guests was someone who was hard of hearing, and there were no microphones! Luckily, she did have an interpreter that showed up later. There have been complaints about accessibility with online and hybrid conventions as well—that’s another thing that people need to be aware of. 

KAC:  I think they're accessible to a different group of Disabled people who don't get invited to in-person cons. A lot of neurodiverse fans and authors got to go to WisCon for the first time through the virtual con interface. But at the same time, there were many old-time con-goers for whom the technology was too inaccessible. So, it's like balancing both of their needs. 

SS:  It also makes it more accessible for people who can't gather in person because they're immunocompromised. And Covid is still actually a thing. 

KAC:  Yeah, very much so. Anyway, I’m excited about these virtual and hybrid cons. I hope they get better! 

SS:  For example, at one convention, they gave us transparent masks, so people could read your lips. That's a fair approach to ensure that people can be masked and still have their lips read. 

KAC:  Yeah, when people are planning conventions or workshops, they have to plan for twice or three times as many Disabled people as they think are gonna come. A lot of the people that need those accommodations don't identify as Disabled, but maybe they still have a mobility device, and can't go up and down the stairs. They may not check a form that says ‘I need mobility assistance,’ but there will be a big queue at the elevator. 

SS:  People assume that anyone who has mobility issues is gonna be in a wheelchair, but you know, some people have canes and walkers—my mom was in a walker for several years. 

KAC:  And there's a limited number of wheelchairs, canes, and walkers that can fit into an elevator. 

SS:  That’s true.

KAC:  So, these are all issues that we have a lot of room for improvement in.

You know, I did want to ask you about how other people treat your specific disabilities in SFF and in writing communities. What questions do you get? Is there anything that you find yourself wishing that people knew about bipolar disorder? Or your other disabilities?

SS:  First of all, people need to be careful with infantilizing people and crossing boundaries they shouldn't. One time, I showed up someplace, and I was looking a little out of it. Suddenly, someone started touching and trying to fix my hair! You don't get to touch Black people's hair just because you feel like they're having a bipolar day!

KAC:  Yeah.

SS:  I think people with mental illnesses are infantilized, and Black people are infantilized, and the two things come together. It's like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. 

KAC:  But you could not sell that in a store. 

SS:  Yeah, no one’s gonna buy that.

KAC:  And then you have non-binary bodies, AFAB bodies, where if people perceive your gender presentation in a certain way, they're going to treat you very differently, right? 

SS:  I think people need to understand—and I tell this a lot to my partner, who is a white non-binary person—that presenting in a masculine way for a Black person means that you could get shot like Tony McDade. They'll treat you differently, but you’ll still have to deal with systemic racism.

KAC:  Yeah.

SS:  People will treat you like you're dangerous. It's a lose-lose situation. 

KAC:  Yeah, it truly is.

Do you have a question you're tired of being asked about your disabilities? Like any pet-peeve questions that people ask you? 

SS:  One thing that gets on my nerves is that people believe that if you get on medication, you're cured. That's bullshit. It does not work that way. But people are like: “Did you take your meds?” And you took your meds, but you’re also dealing with a zillion stressors making you sick.

KAC:  Yeah. And they can't understand that if you're on your meds, and bad things happen, your meds are not gonna work as effectively. People can relapse while they're on the meds that they've been taking for years. They have to change their meds, get them adjusted, and deal with things that would make even someone without a mental illness have a nervous breakdown.

SS:  It's not like meds make it so that things like death don't affect you anymore. 

KAC:  Yeah, you can still have grief and all these other problems in life that cause people to have emotional responses. 

SS:  Exactly.

KAC:  The other side of that coin is people who are like: “Well, don't take your meds!” They say: “If you want to write, you can’t take your meds because your mental illness is your superpower,” or, “I read in an article that the part of the brain that causes depression is the part that we write with. So that's why I went off my medications!” And I'm like: “Honey, no.” 

SS:  Let me put it this way. If people go off their meds, and that's their life choice, I don't need them preaching that at me. But I'm not down for that cause. When I wasn't on my meds, it was hard to meet deadlines. Sitting around talking to yourself, missing a bunch of deadlines, to me, is not an ideal life.

KAC:  Yeah. I have OCD, and one of the things I'm worried about is that I'm secretly a serial killer, but I'm so good at being a serial killer that even I don't know about it. It’s patently ridiculous, but I will still lose hours in my preventative rituals. Without my meds, I could write something unforgettable. Or I could just spend two weeks trying to make sure that I never murdered anybody.

SS:  Yeah, exactly. I'm not diagnosed with OCD, but I have had paranoias where I was sitting there writing a book, thinking that I could kill people by writing. When you get paranoid, you start randomly associating things in ways that make sense to your mind.

KAC:  Yeah.

SS:  And I hate to say this, but when I was in the middle of psychosis, and I had voices in my head, I sat there and predicted a whole bunch of things that ended up happening. I started thinking that I was telepathic, or that I was reading minds. 

KAC:  Yeah. 

SS:  When you're really psychotic, and you're dispersed, you’re still receiving information, so the thing that you think you understood telepathically is just something that entered your consciousness on some other level.

KAC:  And that can be dangerous. So, if you're reading this, I want you to know that it takes time to find the right medication mix. 

SS:  If your medication isn't working, you should discuss it with your psychiatrist. See if your psychiatrist can find something that will work better for you. 

KAC:  What I want to say to our readers, is that you can indeed have challenges and gifts you wouldn't have had otherwise with your disability. But Writing While Disabled is about learning to include those things in your life without being embarrassed to talk about them.

So, we've talked a little bit about how multiple marginalizations and disabilities interact with each other in complicated ways. Could you talk about how that works for you in writing spaces? Do you have trouble sometimes parsing what's going on in terms of which thing is the problem, or do you know what it is, and it's just complicated? 

SS:  No, it's usually pretty obvious what's going on. For example, if somebody says that being non-binary is a sign that I'm mentally ill, while that is both sanist and transphobic, the central problem is the transphobia. And if a trans person is also saying something ableist, they're obviously not cool about being an ally to people with mental health issues.

KAC:  Does it change the way you respond? 

SS:  Well, advocacy for myself and others is very ingrained in me. My mother was Black and had a disability; her father was diagnosed with schizophrenia after returning from the Korean War, and she worked with him and other Disabled people in her family. So, I will advocate for myself as a Disabled person. However, as a Disabled person, I feel it's sometimes easier for people to gaslight me because I have a mental health condition. 

KAC:  Yeah.

SS:  You know, when people are treating you in a way that is really ableist and sanist, but they're gaslighting you about it, it's hard to know whether or not you're being paranoid. It's difficult, because my disabilities have to do with my emotional functioning. 

KAC:  Yeah. I've noticed that the more marginalized someone is, the more they get pushback. Like, if you're navigating a convention and you're Disabled, but you don't have any other marginalization, you still have a lot of privileges. You will have a different experience than someone who is there with a bunch of different marginalizations. 

SS:  I know what you mean, and it does make sense. Let's take fatphobia, for example. I have to deal with people's fatphobia and how it's used toward me as a person who is non-binary. But also, if people perceive me as a woman, then I have to deal with sexism and with how that affects me. There's also a lot of racial associations having to do with size, many of them rooted in classism. You know, the idea that we're all on welfare, eating junk food. 

KAC:  Yeah.

SS:  One time, I was at work, and this guy started trying to have a conversation with me about how I shouldn't eat fried chicken because it has trans fats. And I'm like, “Why are you trying to start a conversation with me at my job about my diet—which is none of your business—and talking about fried chicken—which is stereotypically associated with African Americans?”

KAC:  Yeah. And that happens in SFF communities, too.

Well, what do you want to be asked about on panels? What panel do you wish they would ask you to be on? 

SS:  I've never heard of a good panel about the complexities of mental illness. If you are mentally ill, and you're someone like me who's been having tactile, visual, and audio hallucinations, and you decide to write horror, you’re gonna be writing some things that are really convincing because you experienced them. But at the same time, if you're actively hallucinating all the time, you're not gonna be able to function very well as a writer—in my personal experience. 

KAC:  Yeah.

SS:  I have to be mentally stable enough to write. Sometimes, I get to a good place where my meds are working well and I am functioning on all cylinders. I sit there and just pour out novels and stuff, and everything is working great. I might have ideas and thoughts in there that occurred during a time when I was sick, but I don't think that I could have written them then. So, I feel like you have to be stable to do things like organizing your writing and meeting deadlines.

KAC:  I have many different mental health diagnoses, so depending on which one is kind of in ascendance that day, I have to switch genres: today I can write poetry, but I can't follow a plot line. 

SS:  Yeah, I experience that as well. 

KAC:  Yeah, you write many different genres—nonfiction, fiction, poetry, comics. Are any of those genres particularly conducive to certain brain states for you? 

SS:  Writing comics is something that I do a lot when I'm grieving. I have done little comic books right after someone died. Because people die, and I get writer's block, and I can't concentrate, and I'll just be sitting there drawing. So I do a lot of drawing. Sometimes, I take stories that I've already written and I illustrate them. 

KAC:  Yeah, that can be a productive way to engage your creativity with a different part of your brain.

SS:  Yeah. For sure!

KAC:  And poetry is something that I do when I experience anxiety. So, leaning into the brain state you're in can be really helpful for many people. 

SS:  For sure. 

KAC:  Do you tend to go through phases with your genres, then? Or is it kind of different day by day? 

SS:  No, I don't go through phases. It is different day by day. I am always writing poetry, though, even when I'm in the middle of doing other stuff. I have created a file where I just put all the poems I write.

When it comes to short stories, usually, if I see a call for submissions that interests me, then I'll write a short story for that call. If it gets rejected, then I'll take it, and I'll rewrite it, and submit it a couple other times, until hopefully, it finds a home. You know, the thing about writing something tailored to a call for submissions is that it increases the chance of you getting an acceptance letter because you're actually giving them the story that they asked for. But the downside is that sometimes it's hard to find a home for it because you have written it for a specific project. Usually, you have to do rewrites. 

The thing that is most difficult for me to do, no matter what mood I’m in, is novels. Right now, I'm working on the fourth novel in a series where I've already got the first three books in the can. That's giving me plenty of time to get it done well. 

KAC:  Yeah.

SS:  I think poetry is close to my heart because it's something I've been doing for so long. I was writing and selling poems when I was in third grade, and I got my poetry published professionally when I was 19. It's like when you're into a certain genre of music or something like that—it becomes part of your identity. 

I've done a lot of spoken word poetry, so part of my writing process for poetry is to read it out loud and hear how it sounds. That's a comforting process for me. 

KAC:  I love that, too—that’s also part of my process.

You know, I wanted to ask you about some of the poems in this collection. So, The Rat King—this is a poetry collection, but a lot of these poems have strong narrative threads. Was there a point when some of them might have been short stories instead of poems? 

SS:  For the most part, no. The only one that was gonna be a short story at one point is the title story, “The Rat King.” If you read it, it's a ghost story about some homeless people who froze to death out in the cold—and they're stuck together like a rat king. ‘Rat kings’ are rats stuck together by their tails, which is a rare occurrence. In medieval times, people were afraid of them—they thought they were monsters. 

KAC:  But they’re just animals in distress. 

SS:  Yeah, animals in distress. I decided to use that as an analogy for how homeless people are treated and vilified. I have been homeless, like many other people with bipolar disorder. It's actually not at all uncommon, and so that's the story I wrote. 

KAC:  I thought it was a powerful exploration of those themes. And while I was reading it, I was thinking: “Wow, how did you decide?” Did you write it both as a poem and as a short story, to see which one worked better? Or did you just feel it had to be a poem, and then it worked?

SS:  Well, let me put it this way. When I was in third grade, I would sit around and tell scary stories to my brother, who’s one year younger than me, and other kids. The stories were about the ‘smelletons,’ which were skeletons, but they still had organs and stuff on them.

KAC:  Ooh! Creepy! 

SS:  So I had this whole series of stories that I made up as I told them. And it’s the same when I’m writing a poem now—like telling a campfire story. 

KAC:  Yeah, I love that. 

SS:  But when you do a short story, then things start to become more complicated, and sometimes, it can weigh you down. With “The Rat King,” I was just taking notes on things I wanted to write about, and I thought I would make them into a short story. But then, I decided to have a book with just poetry—so I wrote that as a poem. 

KAC:  The Rat King is a self-published collection, correct? 

SS:  Yeah, it's on my imprint, Dooky Zines. 

I'm a comic zine maker. Zines are a very punk rock thing that I have been doing since high school. They're similar to poetry chapbooks, where people hand-stitch them by hand. 

KAC:  Yeah. We had to do that in my undergrad poetry class.

SS:  My first two books of poetry were like that. I had a punk rock fanzine in high school called Sex Kitten, and I was so proud of myself. My dad was proud of me, too, because I went and got a fictitious business license for my zine! I was getting ads for it and stuff.

KAC:  I was doing something along those lines, too, at that age.

SS:  I used to go down to the copy shop and xerox my fanzine, writing the columns on a computer, printing it with a dot matrix printer, and then gluing it down, on the table, by hand. I had a matrix of dots that I put over the photos so that they would print like newsprint. I would copy a bunch of them and cross-staple them. This was the punk rock zine scene: you had these little crafty things made by hand. 

KAC:  But they're online now, so where can our readers go if they want to read one?

SS:  If they want to read a fanzine? Well, here in the Bay Area, there's the San Francisco Zine Fest and the East Bay Alternative Book & Zine Fest. So they're not just online. I make mini zines—about as big as maybe two postage stamps—and sell them at conventions for a quarter. Anyway, if you go to the East Bay Alternative Book & Zine Fest website, they have an online library of zines. 

KAC:  Yeah. Sounds like a road trip, everybody!

SS:  Yeah! Zines are a whole culture. It's not just in the Bay Area.

My comic zines are online on the Dooky Zines website, so if you go there, it'll show you how you can purchase one. 

KAC:  You've also traditionally published some of your collections. Can you tell us the difference between those processes and what it was like negotiating contracts as a Disabled person? 

SS:  Yeah, sure. I have an anthology that's traditionally published, Black Magic Women. It’s an anthology of stories by Black women, all related to magic. The year before, Linda D. Addison, Kinitra Brooks, and Susana Morris had just come out with Sycorax’s Daughters, so I pitched my book as a less academic version of that. 

You know, I do something called the Black Women in Horror list. I had put one out in 2013, then a new version in 2017. The idea was to put another one out in 2018 and to release a companion-like anthology, so I pitched that to Mocha Memoirs Press.

I had been in a contest called ‘The Next Great Horror Writer Contest’ through Horror Addicts, a small press publisher that puts out horror anthologies. The contest had fifteen horror writers competing for a contract at Crystal Lake Publishing—that was the grand prize. 

KAC:  Cool!

SS:  Yes, it was. But at one particular point in that contest, unfortunately—trigger warning—my ex-boyfriend died. That weekend, I turned in the wrong manuscript for a short story. I had been in fourth place, dropped down to ninth, and finished in sixth. However, I was producing work throughout the contest, including a new and improved version of that particular piece that I had turned in the wrong version of.

Anyway, I thought: “I didn't win, but I bet that I could pitch this book to Mocha Memoirs Press.” So I went and did that. I was like: “What if we did a book with Black women from my list of 100 Black Women in Horror?” That was my first editing work—and I was red-marking the crap out of stuff. I was serious about doing a good job. Not everyone was impressed by my editing, but that was the first anthology I edited, and it’s something that I will always be proud of. 

KAC:  Yeah.

SS:  Many writers highlighted in that book are doing very well now, and I feel partly responsible for that. They’re talented people, and I wanted to make sure that they were getting some exposure by including them.

So, Anne Rice was friendly with a lot of budding horror writers, and I was one of them. I told her about the book, and I took a picture of her while I was signing a copy and giving it to her. She promoted it on her page, and it ended up being number one in the horror anthologies category on Amazon. Everybody was so excited and happy, and every day, all of these authors from the book were posting about it on social media. It was a great experience for everyone involved. 

KAC:  And you got to make that happen. 

SS:  Yeah, with my wonderful publisher, Nicole Givens Kurtz. Later, I pitched Happiness and Other Diseases—it’s the first novel in a series. 

KAC:  Oh, it’s a novel!

SS:  It's a horror romance. The protagonist, Flynn, is a young man with bipolar disorder. He’s been having disturbing dreams that are starting to manifest in reality in various ways—he’s waking up with cuts and bruises from his nightmares. But no one believes him, because he's mentally ill.

KAC:  The first one is out?

SS:  Yeah, the first one’s out on Mocha Memoirs Press. 

KAC:  Well, readers, if you're looking to read that story, I'm going to put the link to the website at the end so you can go there and find it.

I wanted to ask you about how Disability intersects with science fiction. Do you think about Disabled themes when writing, or do they come up because you're writing from your own experiences? 

SS:  That's a very complex question. I had to stop and think for a while there, because I'm predominantly a horror writer, and you asked me about science fiction. However, I wrote a story that first appeared in Scierogenous II—an anthology of sci-fi erotica—which was inspired by my experiences with alters, or alternate personalities. I wrote “The Mysterious State of We-Ness” because of my personal dealings with my mental health situation. I'm very proud of that piece. It's also super queer.

The protagonist is Sheila, a secretary in a near-future San Francisco, where after the tech boom people are living very modular lives. She picks up a Weebot, which is an implant that rewires your brain to create an alternate personality. People started treating these things as pets, then as assistants, and finally as companions—you know, having sex with them.

Sheila decides to get a companion, she implants the chip, and it matures in her brain. She names the chip Angelo. Angelo can exist as a hologram that she sees, and he eventually gets a silicon suit that he can wear and run around in—but he predominantly exists in her body. So he's a trans man, sharing her same body. One of the fun things about science fiction erotica is that you can lean into a lot of character development because it is about relationships and how people interact.

With Happiness and Other Diseases, I was processing things about my mental health. Having a bipolar protagonist was intentional. The title is a reference to bipolar disorder, specifically to the attitude that a person who's bipolar is only experiencing emotions as a result of a chemical imbalance. People don't usually have to think about it if they don't have a mental health issue. 

KAC:  Yeah. You ask yourself things like: “Are these my emotions? Is this a chemical thing going on in my brain? Are my feelings real? Is it me, or is this my disease?” 

SS:  That's what the title Happiness and Other Diseases refers to: this angst over asking yourself if you're really happy or if it's a disease symptom. In the story, Flynn becomes involved with a demi-goddess—and as is often the case in these paranormal romance stories, there's a whole bunch of things that are super toxic about the relationship! He's happy because he's in the relationship, but the relationship is dangerous. In the beginning, he has a succubus trying to suck up all of his emotional energy and drain him dry, and the person he is dating is the half-sister of the other character trying to kill him. But then, he's got a whole bunch of self-esteem issues that are related to how the world treats him because he's got bipolar disorder, and this makes him co-dependent and open to being in this kind of dangerous relationship.

KAC:  Do you feel like the genre you're writing in lets you reach that human story in a deeper way? 

SS:  I definitely feel like that! I mean, one of the reasons that I love Wuthering Heights is because it is about human nature. And even though, over time, it has come down to us as a love story, it’s actually about all the things that are wrong with the human condition. 

Wuthering Heights is a love story about a man of color. His adoptive father did not think him good enough to be with his biological daughter, so now this guy enacts revenge on them all because he's angry. There's a lot of stuff going on, and I wanted to write something similar.

In Happiness and Other Diseases, I talk about mental illness and how your self-esteem is eroded when you're told that you're only valuable if you can work. That's part of the narrative that the protagonist is dealing with. It also deals with psych drugs, and how they can negatively impact your libido and ability to perform sexually.

KAC:  When you're writing a story, it sounds to me like you're thinking intertextually. Where does your writing process start?

SS:  You mean, how do I get inspired? 

KAC:  Let me rephrase. Could you walk me through what you do when you sit down to write? 

SS:  God, my writing process starts with a lot of daydreaming. It's not as structured as what you're suggesting. With my first novel, Solitude, I just started getting ideas. It was way back in 2011, and I was in vocational rehab, getting training to return to the workforce as a computer tech. I was in my car, listening to music, and I started to daydream about this story in my head. The music contributed to the writing process, and it was a Disturbed album—what is it called? Oh my God, Indestructible or something.

In the story that I ended up writing, everybody disappeared from San Francisco except for a few people; they were all trying to figure out what the hell happened and where everyone else was. I started coming up with the characters for the story, and I wrote down their descriptions in a notebook the way you would if you were playing Dungeons & Dragons. 

I just started writing these characters, their situation. I figured out what world they were in. And then they started to go on a quest to discover where everyone else was.  

KAC:  So, did you outline?

SS:  Not exactly? I had a notebook, and I had a page for each character. Then I turned it upside down and backwards, and I wrote plot points on the other side of it. So, first I decided who the characters were, and then I decided things about the environment. Finally, when I got a third of the way into the story, I decided who the villain was going to be—because I still didn't know!  

KAC:  That sounds to me like it's halfway between outlining and discovery writing. Does it sound right? 

SS:  If ‘discovery writing’ is ‘pantsing,’ yeah. 

KAC:  ‘Pantsing,’ yeah. I've heard it called ‘gardening,’ too. 

SS:  Yeah. The characters tend to drive the story, so the planned part is who the characters are. By the time I get to writing, it's like discovering something based on who those people are.  

KAC:  Yeah, you know what they want. 

SS:  Right. 

KAC:  At the start of the story, do you know what kind of ending you want? 

SS:  I usually don't figure out what kind of ending I want until much later. I use the three-act-play structure: I spend the first fourth of the book setting up the story, the middle half is where the plot happens, so by the time I’m three-fourths of the way in, I know for sure how I want it to end. But there have been times when I wrote myself into a corner—I looked at what I had written, and I knew that I had to do certain things… 

KAC:  …that you didn’t want to do.

SS:  Yeah, things that made me cry—but that was the only way I could write a good ending. That said, at a certain point writing gets to be just like an exciting adventure that I’m on, and if I'm having fun, then the story is better, too. 

KAC:  How about editing that story? How many rounds of editing did you have to put it through before it was the way you wanted it? 

SS:  The first story I wrote was the one that needed the most extensive editing. It was so hard. I enlisted the help of a friend who was an editor for a college newspaper. I was still learning about structure and pacing, so there were a whole bunch of rewrites that consisted of me writing additional material for the book because there was not enough action and too much infodumping. 

KAC:  What about your books now? What's your editing process like? 

SS:  By the time I wrote Happiness and Other Diseases, I had gotten used to working with beta readers. I had a team of twelve beta readers giving me feedback about it, so by the time it went to the editor it was clean. 

KAC:  But did you do your structural edits first? Is that like a separate round of editing? 

SS:  Structural edits?

KAC:  Like, where you're noticing if there's a plot problem, if there are missing scenes, if there's an incomplete character arc…

SS:  Let me put it this way. It took me three months to write my first book, and five months to edit it. Five painful months!

KAC:  Oh, no!

SS:  But by the time I wrote Happiness and Other Diseases, the editing process was no longer painful, and there were no structural problems at all.

There were continuity errors, though. For example, I ended up talking about the protagonist’s dad—but he did not grow up knowing his dad. I changed it to his grandfather so that the story could make sense again.

KAC:  So, as you progressed, as a writer and as an editor, you've gotten to the point where you don't make as many structural errors, and you don't need to do extensive structural work. 

SS:  Yeah, my first two novels were much more painful to write, to the point that in the middle of writing my second book, I just said, ‘fuck this,’ and I started writing a new, much more fun novel, which ended up being my third book: Warmth. By the time I finished writing that third book, I had gotten a better sense of how a plot should flow. I also made sure that the word count was the same as the word count for a traditionally published manuscript, even though at that time I was self-publishing.

So I worked extensively with beta readers, and it took a long time, but it was worth it. The process of doing all that made it so that going into book three, I knew a lot more about the process of writing. 

Honestly, I feel like writing is how you learn to be a better writer. It's one of those things that you learn from doing, and it's a shame when people tell beginning writers that they should give up because something they wrote wasn't that great: you get better by doing it. It’s how you improve.

KAC:  Do you write in an office? Do you have a specific room?

SS:  I sit right at this desk and write on this computer. 

KAC:  So, describe the room you're in for our readers. Is this your kitchen? 

SS:  No, my kitchen's back there. I live in a studio apartment. 

KAC:  So you’re writing in your living room.

SS:  Yeah. Living room-slash-bedroom. It's both those things in one.

KAC:   Are you using a laptop? 

SS:  I am using a laptop. 

KAC:  Do you ever write longhand? 

SS:  I do my outlines longhand, but the rest is all typing.

KAC:  Are there any specific apps or accommodations or tools that help you write—like dictation software or time management apps that you use regularly?

SS:  Well, there's some thesaurus.com…

KAC:  That's an accommodation for many people, I would say! 

What about when you have to take a break from writing for medical reasons? Let's say you go for a time without writing. Is it hard to get back into a project, and is there something you do to get back on the horse? 

SS:  So, when I was in outpatient therapy treatment, I had to be in the hospital. I made a comic book called Dreamworlds, but it took me a long time to get back to writing novels again. One great thing that I discovered, though, since I do my writing on the computer, is that writing doesn’t have to be a linear process. You can write a scene, then write another scene before it—as long as you do a good job of editing afterward. I usually try to get into a mindset that allows the story to flow. But because of the time away from the story, I had to get back into it. I also read my books earlier in the same series to make sure that everything was consistent.

That hasn't been a challenge with short stories because I've been able to write them consistently, even when I've been sick. In an average year, I will probably write about one short story per month in the 5000-word range. I look for submission calls and end up answering about twelve submission calls in a year.

Usually, I’ll put out a collection every two or three years, with stories whose rights have returned to me as well as stories that I never ended up publishing in the first place.

KAC:  Earlier, we talked about how your identity gets so tied up in your writing, and then you get into this crisis of: “Who am I if I'm not a writer anymore?” I’m thinking specifically of many people struggling with writer's block. They start to feel like they've lost their gift, like maybe they'll never write again.  Do you have any advice for those tortured souls? 

SS:  So, personally, I'm always able to write—but I do have to start. If I haven't been writing for a long time, I have to do the same thing I did when I first decided to be a writer: give myself permission to write badly.

In other words, the part of me saying that everything I do has to be great is the part of me that gives me writer's block. Getting out of writer's block means getting the perfectionist out of my head.

I give myself permission to write things that are not great, because otherwise I get stuck editing in my brain, and nothing comes out. I have to tell myself: “Editing is a thing. You can have a crappy first draft and edit it, you know?” So, I think that giving yourself permission to write a rough draft—just absolute garbage—is the best way to get out of it.

But when you're not writing, it's easy for impostor syndrome to kick in, too. Impostor syndrome tells you that everything you do is terrible. It makes you feel like you shouldn't be writing. My solution is to read bad books or books that made a lot of money but are not that great.

KAC:  They can be so inspirational!

SS:  Yeah! You can be like: “Okay, this book got published, and it isn’t that great or whatever, so maybe it's okay for me to write a book that’s not great!” 

KAC:  Yeah, maybe this one doesn't have to be the next Great American Novel. 

SS:  Yeah, the part of me that wanted to write the Great American Novel—I had to get over it entirely. 

I decided to be a horror writer because horror is a genre that people talk crap about anyway. And the idea that with everything you write, you're competing with Toni Morrison? That's not true! Toni Morrison wrote wonderful, amazing stories, but I don't have to be as good as her to be a writer.

KAC:  There’s only one Toni Morrison, but there's also only one you. 

SS:  Yeah, exactly! And I should tell my stories—the stories that I want to write.

I'm happy to be friends with Anne Rice—I love her writing. But when I read The Witching Hour for the first time, I thought: “This has got more ‘begat’s in it than the Bible! What's up?”

KAC:  I'm always like: “Yeah, you're human, too! Look at this!” 

SS:  Well, her writing advice was: “Don't take writing advice, do what you wanna do.” 

KAC:  Have you ever heard writing advice and thought: “That's the worst writing advice I've ever heard,” or “That writing advice is not going to work with my disabilities”?

SS:  Yeah. Like, the writing advice that you have to write every day…

KAC:  Oh, no!

SS:  …that does not work with my disability. But it did force me to recognize that every time I write an essay-length response to a post on social media, that's writing. Bipolar people do that a lot, unfortunately. So yes, I’m writing every day, but it’s not a book—and maybe I don’t really need to.

KAC:  Oh my gosh, I do that too! 

SS:  Maybe it’s your day for writing a book. 

KAC:  I wrote 1000 words, but they were all on Facebook! Because a man was wrong on the Internet!

SS:  Writing a certain amount per day is not the best thing for me, because if I get depressed, I'm not going to be writing. If I can get to where I'm feeling good, I can write 5000 words. Some days, though, I will write 150 words, then spend four hours staring out into space. I sit there, trying to formulate a thought as time goes by—then suddenly it’s time for lunch.

KAC:  Okay, so what about the advice that does work for you? What's the best writing advice you've found that works with your disabilities and your writing style? 

SS:  “Write the book you want to read.” Toni Morrison said that. I should look up the exact quote…

KAC:  Yeah, I’ve got it here, on my wall. The quote is: “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” 

What advice would you give to readers with similar life experiences to you who want to be writers? They want to do what you're doing. What would you tell them? 

SS:  Well, when I was starting out as a writer, I thought often about 15-year-old me, and wanting to make that person happy. But I also thought about other people who exist at the same intersections of multiple marginalizations. I felt like I should stand up for them—like I would stand up for myself when I was younger. 

KAC:  That's powerful. Are there any last thoughts you want to share with anyone else reading? 

SS:  Well, Rappin' 4-Tay—a rapper that I know—often says: “Get in where you fit in.” Sometimes, I worry that the things I think and write are too disturbing, which is part of why I write horror—because I feel like in that genre I'm not going to be judged.

“Get in where you fit in.” If you find that you write in a certain way, and it makes sense to you, write that. Finding a market for your writing and getting in where you fit in is a good way to navigate the world as a Disabled writer. I have PTSD, and disturbing images are something that I experience personally, but in the horror genre, they make a lot of sense. 

And another thing: we all hate rejection letters. We all do—but try to remember that just because someone didn't pick your story, that doesn't mean it isn't good. People are looking for specific things, and sometimes your story doesn't fit what they have in mind. And also, you can edit it again. I have edited things and found nice homes for them—so don't give up. And if one of my stories doesn't get published, then in two years, when I get the other stories back, I'll just put them all in a collection, and then it'll get published, too. 

KAC:  Well, that's excellent advice. Thank you for letting me ask you all these questions. I appreciate it—and I know our readers are gonna get a lot out of this interview. 

SS:  That's good. I'm glad to hear it. 

KAC:  Readers, you can find more of Sumiko’s work at sumikosaulson.com, at their comic zine imprint, dookyzines.com, and at your local seller of fine books!

Disabled readers, how do you get your writing done? We’d love to hear from you! You can chat with us on Twitter with #WritingWhileDisabled and #StrangeHorizons! The other Writing While Disabled interviews are on the Strange Horizons website—please check them out, too!

KAC:  Okay, readers! I am sitting down with the talented Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, who goes by Chovwe!

ODE:  Hi!

KAC:  We’re talking via Zoom right now, so you’re reading an edited Zoom transcript.

Chovwe lives in Lagos, Nigeria, and uses he/him pronouns. He’s an author and editor, and has won the Nebula Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Otherwise Award, the Nommo Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He’s been a finalist for many awards, including the Hugo, the Locus, the BSFA, and the Sturgeon Award. His short fiction includes “O2 Arena,” “Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon,” and “Destiny Delayed”—published in the May/June issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. 

You’re also the co-editor of the Dominion anthology, is that right? 

ODE:  Yeah, I am. I also edited the Africa Risen anthology and Bridging Worlds: an original, pan-African, pandemic non-fiction anthology.

KAC:  You have been on fire lately! You’ve got so much intriguing stuff coming out. Would you mind telling us about yourself and your work? 

ODE:  Well, I’m an award-winning writer, editor, and publisher. I live in Nigeria. Recently, I was up for the Hugo Award in the Fiction and Editing categories—I’ll be the first POC to have enjoyed that honor. I was also the first African writer to be nominated for the Hugo Award in the Novelette category.

Then, as an editor in the short form category, I was the first Black person, alongside Sheree Renée Thomas, to receive a nomination. I was also the first African-born, Black writer to be nominated for the Hugo Award and to win the Nebula Award. 

KAC:  It’s been a busy year for you! Congratulations, by the way! 

ODE:  Yeah, that’s me.

KAC:  Recognition of you and recognition of SFF writing communities in Africa are long overdue. 

ODE:  Yeah. 

KAC:  So, how do you fit into the Disabled community? 

ODE:  I only started to refer to myself as Disabled after publishing my novelette “O2 Arena,” so I’m approaching the Disabled community in baby steps. Though, I’ve been Disabled all my life. Regarding speculative fiction, my current story, which was nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula, and the BSFA, is the first where I’ve identified as Disabled.

KAC:  Yeah. I mean, that’s common for Disabled people like us, right? Some of us use the word Neurodiverse instead. You may not even understand you are Disabled until you get your diagnosis—and depending on which disability you have, you may or may not have access to a Disabled community. 

Chovwe, do you mind if I ask you what disabilities you have? I do that so our Disabled and Neurodiverse readers can relate their experiences to yours.

ODE:  Sure. Since birth, I have had chronic sinusitis—it’s a respiratory illness. I have perforated ear drums from the sinusitis infection, which means I’m hearing impaired. It’s all connected, like a network of disabilities springing from one. 

That’s respiratory and hearing. Then, because of my chronic sinusitis, I am more susceptible to respiratory illnesses, so I had pneumonia and tuberculosis somewhere along the line. It sort of leaves your lungs a little scarred, you know? I have weaker lungs, and an entire network of respiratory problems.

From my tuberculosis, I got damage to my spine, so I have chronic back pain, too. Chronic sinusitis, hearing loss, chronic back pain, and general breathing difficulties—that’s about it for now.

KAC:  I mean, that’s enough, right? Well, I welcome you into my Disabled communities.

ODE:  Thank you.

KAC:  Does being Disabled intersect with your identities in specific ways?

ODE:  Yeah. First, being Black—being African—makes Disability a little fainter, you know?

KAC:  Fainter?

ODE:  Yes. It lessens the color and the concentration of your disability. I’m not talking about the effects, but about the definition. The amount of attention that it gets. 

KAC:  You mean, everyone wants to ask you about being Black, but not everyone wants to ask you about being Disabled? 

ODE:  Yes. It pushes Disability into the background. It’s the effect of racial marginalization, I suppose. People don’t think it’s a serious topic, and it’s odd, because it affects your physical life and your physical health.

My disability is the marginalization that has impacted me on the most immediate level. I wake up in the morning struggling to breathe, and race issues seem far away at that point. Breathing is so integral to your survival; you need to do it every moment. It’s just that much more immediate, but it’s relegated behind those other issues.

KAC:  I hear you on that. Writing is different when we’re trying to survive one more breath. 

ODE:  Or when there’s a burning pain in your back, and it feels like it’s split. I think that’s more immediate than everything else, but it often gets pushed to the background.

KAC:  Yeah. People want to hear about your other identities. That resonates with me.

ODE:  Many people don’t see Disabled identities as significant yet, because they don’t affect them. 

KAC:  Or they don’t think they affect them because they aren’t thinking about themselves in terms of Disability.

ODE:  Yeah. I myself have been writing about race for much longer than about Disability.

Being African on the continent is a multi level marginalization. After centuries of slavery and colonialism and suffering from wars and economic woes, people are just trying to survive. There’s no security, no consistent power. There are a lot of serious deficiencies, so Disability is relegated to the background, because over here we’re still dealing with these ‘serious issues.’

You said you were going to ask me about conventions, but before last year, I’d never been to one physically. You know, conventions revolve around the West—US, UK, Canada—so I could only attend them virtually. 

Before the virtual component, people in this clime were excluded from conventions, so if you ask me how my Disability intersects with conventions, I can’t tell you, because my problems are so much bigger.

KAC:  That’s an access issue, too. 

ODE:  Yes.

KAC:  What is “geek culture” like where you are? If you’re not going to conventions, are you hanging out in other ways? 

ODE:  Well, yeah, there’s a large community. There’s the African Speculative Fiction Society that current members created a while back—many Africans within the diaspora and on the continent. Now and then, we meet in certain locations, like the Ake Festival. It’s a small thing, but we’re growing it. I mean, it’s not the WorldCon or SFWA in terms of resources and scope of operation, but it’s our thing.

KAC:  Yeah. Can I ask you how your disabilities affect your work and the way you get your writing done? 

ODE:  I’m that much slower, that much less productive. A lot of times you can’t function like you should. You would like to, but you can’t create. 

I’ll never be the guy that creates his schedule and sticks to it. I might write only one story in a month, but I’ll make sure that it has five times the strength and the effect.

For most of my life, I’ve survived putting out one short story a year, believe it or not. I have accepted that I won’t be churning out a doorstopper or tens of thousands of words. I’ve published one novella, one novelette, and a couple of short stories, but I make up for it by giving my work all the fire it needs to burn brightly.

KAC:  Yeah. Many Disabled authors struggle with feeling like they’re not writing enough. Do you have any words for them? For people who aren’t prolific and feel guilty about that? 

ODE:  Yeah, I’m going to say that nobody is the same. You can’t judge yourself with someone else’s yardstick. You ask: “Is it enough?”—but enough for whom? I’m not trying to write to be enough for anyone else. Whatever I do is enough for me.

Believe me, if I do 1,000 words a month or 2,000 words a year, I won’t feel bad about it. And if I do, I will talk myself out of it. 

KAC:  How do you talk yourself out of it? What’s the secret, Chovwe? 

ODE:  Being easy on yourself. I’ve been Disabled all my life, like I said, so I’ve had a lot of practice with falling behind, being slow, and catching up. Maybe it’s because of the peculiar nature of my disability. I wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t learn to be easy on myself, to stop self-flagellating, to not allow people’s judgment to get to me.

You must allow yourself to exist at your own pace, or you’ll burn out.

KAC:  Yeah. 

ODE:  I have a thread on Twitter where I talk about the effects of hearing loss. It sounds like a small thing, but it can impact your life. 

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Chronic sinusitis is a cold: you can say I’ve had a cold all my life. Again, it seems like such a small thing, but every time you cough—and I’m not talking about the pandemic—do you know what people around you do?

KAC:  They turn away. They are worried about germs.

ODE:  They pull away.

It’s tiny, it’s subconscious—people don’t notice. Usually, you have a cough less than once a month, or once in several months. That cough lasts a week or two weeks, you treat it, and it’s maybe three or four months before you get another one, for another week. It doesn’t happen frequently enough for you to notice, but someone that has it one week, one month, one year, ten years—never-ending, day in and day out—they’re super conscious. 

Now think about it. If you have a cough for a week and you’re coughing, let’s say, five times an hour, in twelve hours, you’re coughing sixty times. In one week, you’re coughing hundreds of times. How often do you think about it? How often do you see people flinch? 

KAC:  You can’t even count it.

ODE:  People of all kinds: friends, family, everyone who loves you—pulling away from you a million times. Think about the psychological effect it has on you: you see yourself as dirty, unclean, or unworthy. Unwanted.

KAC:  Contaminated. 

ODE:  Rejected. It’s such a small thing, but it affects you. It’s a small thing …

KAC:  … but it’s also such a big thing. 

ODE:  Yes, it destroys you. 

KAC:  People who don’t experience Disability as a primary factor in their life don’t understand. 

ODE:  There’s no minor Disability. There are a dozen things like this. They destroy you every moment and break you down over time, like wind beating at rocks for eons—and we’re a lot more fragile than rocks. That’s how chronic illnesses work.  

KAC:  What about your hearing? I rely on watching people’s mouths move to understand what they’re saying because I hear very well, but I have trouble processing the sounds in my brain. Wearing masks has been difficult for me because I can’t see people’s mouths, and it makes it harder to understand what they’re saying.

Do you rely on some lip reading?

ODE:  I just never adopted lip reading. I’m glad we’re doing the interview like this, because we have to process so much information. Typing this would be a challenge.

When you don’t hear something in a class setting, you can’t stop the teacher for a question, because everybody else will stop with you—and that’s very inconvenient. So you keep going. You try to fill in what you missed, piece things together, and figure out what they have said. Did they say “like,” or did they say “buy,” or did they say “time”? Or did they say …

KAC:  … and then you miss something else! 

ODE:  Because the class is going on. That’s how it leaves you behind. You’re stuck processing the past while the future is happening, so you end up with poor grades because there are pieces you lost.

You’re stuck trying to sort out and process what you missed, but while you’re processing, you’re out of the loop—you’re not with everybody else, and you miss even more. Even in a personal convo where you can ask the person, “What did you say?,” you risk exasperating them. 

KAC:  Yeah.

ODE:  They’ll be polite, mostly, anyway. Sometimes they’re going to get annoyed.

So you stop listening in class because you can’t follow, and because even if you tried to follow, you wouldn’t be able to take part anyway. You stay out of it.

KAC:  Yeah. We’re scared to ask for accommodations. We don’t ask because we don’t want to inconvenience other people.

ODE:  Yeah.

KAC:  What accommodations would you like to ask for?

ODE:  Well, you know how at night our voices are lower? There’s this whole social idea that nighttime is quiet, there’s not supposed to be noise. It’s a time for sleeping and winding down, so everybody speaks in hushed tones without realizing it. But if you have hearing loss, things get more difficult. Whatever problems you have are magnified ten times.

So I wish people would kill the idea of nighttime being hush-hush, a time when everybody has to whisper. Yeah, that’s something I’d like to ask.

KAC:  Yes, speak up!

You said you had gone to a virtual convention, correct?

ODE:  Yeah. 

KAC:  How was the hearing access? 

ODE:  It was okay because I was using earphones plugged into my ears.

KAC:  Readers, Chovwe is wearing headphones right now: they’re earbuds that you put into your ears. 

ODE:  Yes. 

KAC:  And those work pretty well because you can change the volume. 

ODE:  Yes. I’m always at the highest volume and I use them a lot, especially when interacting with people online because they make following conversations easier. But it’s another thing that isolates you from the world—a solution that exacerbates the problem. 

KAC:  Yeah. Can I ask you how your disabilities have been featured in your work?

ODE:  Okay. My writing is connected to Disability because Disability alienates you. It keeps you away from people: you feel contaminated and separate because you can’t follow, or you’re slow, so you stay away. Disability pushes you towards the ones that you can keep up with, the ones that accept you, that don’t pull away.

And who are those people? 

They are the characters in books. Book characters can always hear you, you know? I am the writer I am today because I read enough to learn to write, and this was connected to the isolation that my Disability created.

Of course, it resonates in my work. Even when I’m not writing about Disabled characters, all my stories are dark and dystopian. There’s always a fracture, a problem. Even when I’m not writing about broken people, I’m writing about a broken world.

I might not always be writing about Disability, but it’s still present. For example, in “O2 Arena,” there’s only one Disabled main character, but the story is set in a world with low oxygen. Nobody can breathe unaided: people need masks, they need to get oxygen cylinders, and they need filters.

Guess who else can’t breathe? I can’t breathe—and now the entire world can’t breathe.

So for me, it’s not just about writing Disabled characters. It’s about creating worlds where everybody has a level playing field.

One problem with Disability is that people are isolated. In the world of my the novella, though, there’s a nuclear fallout, and because of that, there’s a lot of radiation. The environment is contaminated, and people have to survive together. It’s a world where everybody has the same problem. 

KAC:  In that world, everyone needs accommodation. Everyone is Disabled.

ODE:  Yes. 

KAC:  I like that. The world disables them. That’s what our experiences are like. 

ODE:  Yeah. In “O2 Arena,” companies created a system that helps everybody breathe, because it’s everybody’s issue. It’s very different from what we have in the real world. 

KAC:  In the social theory of Disability, we are not broken—it’s the world that isn’t adapting to our bodies. A fork, that’s an adaptation: people who eat with a fork are using a tool to eat. People who can’t hold a fork need a different tool, right? 

ODE:  Right. 

KAC:  But our society will say the problem is you. Your story challenges that idea: it never blames the people who need an oxygen mask. I love how this framing forces your readers to be Disabled, to sit with that discomfort. And there’s no shame in needing a device to help you. Was that intentional? 

ODE:  I wouldn’t say it was intentional. Actually, I didn’t realize that until I had this conversation with you.

KAC:  That’s one reason I was so excited to get to talk to you. Disability is a note playing in the background of the story—and maybe your abled readers won’t see it. But I see it. 

I use a machine to breathe at night because I have central sleep apnea, which is related to brain and neurological damage. During power outages, I have to go to a hospital for electricity. There’s a precarity to that. It would be difficult if my area had a power outage—science fiction can show what it’s like.

ODE:  Yeah. You said that Disability doesn’t mean we’re broken, that it’s just a different way of doing things.

It’s because we’re the other. We’re not accommodated. But if everybody were blind, blindness wouldn’t be a disability. We’d make room for everybody to live.

KAC:  We would accommodate it. 

ODE:  The major problem is our lack of accommodation, not the actual Disability. I thought that was poignant.

KAC:  So, your writing process. Tell me the secrets! 

ODE:  As I told you, I’m not prolific. I’ll tell you this about my current work in progress: there’s an industry standard where stories must be 80–90,000 words at least to be viable.

KAC:  For a novel?

ODE:  Yeah, and I’m going to tell you now: IDGAF about that. Lots of requirements are for a 70, 80k body of work, but for mine, even if it’s 50,000 words—when it’s done, it’s done. I’m not waking up every morning to write because someone said so. I’m writing when I can write. 

People have invited me to writers’ groups where they have a regimen. I’m not doing that. I can’t write at someone else’s pace, because I’m unique. If I try to join those groups, I’m going to drag someone down. If I wake up one morning and do not feel like joining, they’re going to wait for me, and then it’s going to put a lag on them. I will not be “disciplined.” I’ll do it how I can, and I’ll be okay with that.

KAC:  So you’re saying that your secret is to know your own needs. Your method is unique to you.

ODE:  Yes, and it’s allowing myself to accommodate all my problems, weaknesses, and insecurities. I’m not alive to write, I’m alive to be alive. If I can write along with being alive, cool. If I can’t, cool. 

KAC:  Yeah. That’s profound. I’m not alive to write, I’m alive to be alive. 

ODE:  Yeah.

KAC:  I feel like Disabled authors get their identity entangled in being a writer. If you’re not writing, who are you? You feel depressed. You feel like you have nothing left.

What would you say to those writers?

ODE:  You’re enough for yourself. You should have your standards that define what’s right for you. It shouldn’t depend on any norms or rules.  Me, I want to be a writer, and that means writing. It does not entail a specific quality or quantity, size, or style.

In 2018, I only published one story. One. That was ”The Witching Hour.” It’s 2,700 words—less than 3,000—and you know what? That made me a writer.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t write, but that you should do what you can, that’s all. 2,700 words were a lot for me, and I didn’t feel bad.

That story won the Nommo Award, the most prestigious Pan-African speculative fiction award. I was the first Black African on the continent to win it.

KAC:  That was your first sale?

ODE:  Yes, in 2018. 

KAC:  Are you still writing on your phone? 

ODE:  Yes, I use my phone, and I’m not keeping to any time. Even if I do little, I try to make it count.

You know, Disabled people have their methods. For example, I breathe with my mouth because that’s the only way I’ll get enough oxygen—my nostrils will not give me enough. I chew differently. I talk differently. As a Disabled person, you adapt ways of doing things, and you can bring that into your profession. I have my way of writing, though I don’t always have the energy to write.

If we’re talking about promotion, though, that’s something I’m great at. 

KAC:  You are!

ODE:  I’ve tried to make up for lower output with increased visibility: putting myself out there, talking about the stuff I do, being in interviews. I am a member of many of the speculative fiction communities—BSFA, BFA, HWA, Codex, SFWA, you name it. I’ve put myself in these spaces so that my work can be seen, but I also get criticism for being too social. 

The continent is outside the Western market sphere. I’m limited in visibility both as an African and as a Disabled person, so the stories are where I make it count. And I want people to see them.

KAC:  Could some of that be intercultural? Like, are you getting more criticism from international people or from your peers in your country?

ODE:  Both, but more from the international crowd. I think it’s part of the larger Western culture. People don’t realize that they have a socio-economic advantage, that things are built to work for them. If you’re in America or Canada, you can’t teach people in Nigeria how to promote their work.

KAC:  That’s right. 

ODE:  I have to be obnoxious. Sometimes, I talk about my work a hundred times a day. 

KAC:  I don’t think it’s obnoxious. To me, that feels confident. I’m looking at you talking about your work, and I’m thinking, “I want to be that confident. I want to be that assertive.” Am I misreading it? 

ODE:  No, you’re being generous—because it’s not confidence, it’s desperation.

KAC:  Like, “Look at me, I’m here.” Is that what you mean?

ODE:  Actually it’s more like, “Look at me, I’m drowning.” 

Let me talk a bit about my history. I told you about hearing loss, being left behind in classrooms, and poor academics. I got into school late, and I came out late with one of the worst possible grades. It took me about a decade to get my first degree. I wasn’t able to get a job that could sustain me. 

So writing is how I survive. If I don’t sell stories, I don’t eat. My medical bills depend on what I get from literature and my work, so a lot is riding on it ... my life. 

KAC:  Yeah. The stakes are higher for you. 

ODE:  Writing professionally, yeah. It’s life—I need as much of it as possible. 

KAC:  You’re not being egotistical. You’re fighting to survive. 

ODE:  Yeah. Disabled people can’t do art at the intensity they need to, so make up for it. Our ways of working, of living, sometimes just don’t fit into people’s expectations. It’s almost like our life isn’t acceptable to them, our being alive. 

KAC:  Yeah. I’ve talked to Disabled people who write to stay alive because they need it as therapy. They want readers to connect with their Disabled characters, because this might make them less phobic towards people who are like them in real life.

You’re talking about writing to eat, though—that’s not a conversation we have very often here in America. 

ODE:  Yeah. 

KAC:  If editors or publishers are reading this, please pay your authors. There’s a tendency to say, “Well, you’re gonna get published, so we shouldn’t have to pay you because it’s such a privilege to see yourself in print.” They take advantage of people.

Have you run into that at all? 

ODE:  Yeah, from time to time.

KAC:  Do you subscribe to any of the magazines that you’ve submitted to? 

ODE:  Well, I read what I can read for free, most of the time. I’ve been reading for up to half a dozen magazines and podcasts, plus I’ve done some guest editing stints. Strange Horizons, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, Podcastle, and more.

KAC:  You do slush piles for them, right?

ODE:  I used to—so I got to read their issues for free. 

Money is a marginalizing issue. My marginalization is twofold: I’m African and Disabled, and when you mix in economics, it’s a whole different ball game. 

KAC:  How does that impact your work?

ODE:  Well, every experience is unique. I think that’s the beauty of writing. It contains our unique essence or flavors, and not a lot of Disabled writers come from my same spaces. Like I told you, I’m the first African editor and Black writer on the continent to be nominated for the Hugo. Few Disabled editors have even had this chance.

KAC:  Especially not Disabled authors and editors who are also Black. Thank you for speaking to that.

I’m gonna go back to the writing process. Do you outline first? Are you a discovery writer? Do you do both?

ODE:  I do both, though I tilt more towards outlining. My outline is more of a skeleton, so I have to bring in the organs. 

KAC:  What’s in that skeleton? What do you know before you start? 

ODE:  I know the beginning, the middle, and the end. I have a sense of the dialogue, the characters, and their personalities. For example, I know who the main character is before I start. They’re funny, but I don’t know what flavor of funny they are. Do they tell obnoxious jokes? Do they use puns?

People don’t realize that outlining requires a lot of energy, which I don’t have. I have a friend who criticizes my outlines: he believes it would be easier for me to tell my stories if I had more detailed structures, but I just cannot. I don’t have it in me.

KAC:  You’re conserving that energy for the draft. 

ODE:  I just cannot do detailed outlines. That’s writing half the book. 

KAC:  Yes, it’s like writing it twice.

When you say it’s just a skeleton, do you mean like one sentence for each chapter? How minimalistic is your outline? 

ODE:  Paragraphs.

KAC:  Like, one paragraph per chapter?

ODE:  I don’t do chapters. I can have a paragraph summarizing the complete story.

KAC:  So, scenes?

ODE:  Yes, scenes. I can say, “In this chapter, this person falls in love with this person.” I haven’t figured out where they go, or if they have sex, but I know they fall in love. They fight, but I don’t know what they fight over, yet.  

KAC:  And then how much do you end up having to edit? How many drafts do you write? 

ODE:  Maybe two, three.

KAC:  Two or three. And what happens in each of those drafts? Do you do a structural draft and then polish it? 

ODE:  I get the idea down first. Then I do restructuring: I shift scenes around, shelve some stuff. Then I do grammar, language, and everything else.

KAC:  What’s the most demanding part of writing? 

ODE:  The writing itself.

KAC:  The physical act. 

ODE:  Yeah, putting down the words.

KAC:  So the drafting is painful. 

ODE:  Yeah, coming to the page every day, because I’m somewhere where we’ve had power issues forever. We’ve never had consistent power since I was born, so charging my devices is difficult.

KAC:  You said you don’t write every day, but the writing advice you hear is: “Write every day.” That doesn’t work for you. 

ODE:  I’m just not going to.

KAC:  And you’re not apologetic about it at all—I love that! I feel like our readers need to hear what you’re saying, so thank you for sharing that.

You’re writing on your phone with one finger, in bed, under the covers?

ODE:  Two fingers going off at it. I’m fast at typing. 

KAC:  And you’re using one of those phone keyboards? 

ODE:  Yeah, I’m using the virtual keyboard.

KAC:  When you have an interruption, is it hard to return to writing? Do you have to do something to build your momentum back up?

ODE:  Yeah, I encourage myself with snacks: chocolate, drinks, and other treats.

KAC:  What’s your favorite writing snack? 

ODE:  Snickers and an energy drink.

KAC:  Because writers are athletes! And our brains need calories, right?

So, I wanted to ask you about accommodations and tools. Do you ever use a dictation software? Do you do voice dictation?

ODE:  No. I haven’t tried it, but I should look into it. 

KAC:  What about writing longhand? 

ODE:  I used to do that when I started, but it’s not convenient anymore, because it’s double the work. I still have to transcribe everything into text. It’s also unfortunate, though, because electronic devices need power—which isn’t always available. It’s like you just can’t win.

I like to work in short bursts: concentrated work in concentrated time. I’ve realized that even though I don’t write often, I can write a lot in a short while. 

I don’t have a lot of stamina. I don’t know when I’ll come back, so I make it count when I can. That’s part of my process. 

KAC:  Writing in bursts, that’s something I also do. Between pain, right? 

ODE:  Yes.

KAC:  Like, if there’s a moment, it’s the golden moment. 

ODE:  Yes. You make it count.

KAC:  I want to ask you about “own voices writing” and the pushback we get. Do you ever hear from your readers, editors, or other writers that you’re doing Disability wrong? And you’re like, “I’m writing my own experiences,” but they don’t believe it? 

ODE:  Well, I have gotten that my work can be intense. They’re more like, “It’s too much.” 

KAC:  And what do they mean? Are they saying it’s too loud, too painful?

ODE:  Yeah, it’s uncomfortable to consume. Sometimes it’s well-meaning, like, “Your work made me cry,” “So sad” … you know.

KAC:  So tragic. 

ODE:  Yeah, and I never quite mention that a lot of it is from my own lived experience. I borrow a lot from my reality. 

KAC:  You’re writing about your own life experiences. 

ODE:  Yeah, it’s funny when someone tells me how bad or torturous or broken a story modeled after my reality is. I’m like, “Wow! Was I doing that badly? I didn’t think it was that terrible!”

KAC:  Or they tell you your work is depressing, right? Do you get that, too?

ODE:  A lot. 

KAC:  I hear, “Nobody wants to be in the mind of this depressed person.” I’m like, “Well, they are depressed for a reason. They’re going through a lot.” I’m sorry my reality is too painful for you!

ODE:  You know, this relates to an essay of mine that’s going to be out soon, I think. It’s about dystopias. The title is: “Too Dystopian For Whom? A Continental Nigerian Writer’s Perspective.”

KAC:  Where can our readers find that? 

ODE:  It’s in the September issue of Uncanny Magazine.

KAC:  I’d like to hear about it. 

ODE:  It’s about how, during this COVID time, there has been a push for less dark or dystopian stories, because the readers are already living in a dystopian reality.

Bad things have always been happening, though. We’ve always lived in dystopias, people are just realizing it now.

One of the most significant experiences I had with “O2 Arena” was a cancer survivor telling me that the story spoke to them. They could connect with it—it was their reality.

I had a friend who passed away from cancer, and I looked after her before she passed. She knew I was a writer—I had won the Nommo Award while we were together—so she asked me to write about her. When another cancer survivor told me they could connect with that novella, I found it humbling.

KAC:  You want to make a difference with your writing, even if only to one reader somewhere.

ODE:  Yeah. The quantity doesn’t matter.

KAC:  What a beautiful way to remember your friend and to bring her experiences to others! So she can help other people too. 

ODE:  Yeah. The story I’m working on for my novel will not be 80,000 words. It will be what it will be. People might not like the flavor: it’s dark, and it doesn’t conform. It’s not saying what everybody might want to hear, but it’s saying what it needs to say.   

KAC:  It’s the story that you need to write.

ODE:  It will be out there. That is enough for me. 

KAC:  I love that.

May I ask you about a Disability trope I saw in “O2 Arena”?

ODE:  Okay.

KAC:  So there’s this moment in “O2 Arena,” near the beginning. You write about how this character is seen by other people as brave. That got me thinking about the tropes around Disability, like the idea that “We’re so inspirational, we’re so brave.” Were you trying to unpack the ‘brave’ trope? 

ODE:  Actually, I don’t know if it’s because I’m tired or busy, but I never try to be inspirational. I just want to represent marginalization in the way I experience it.

KAC:  Yeah. 

ODE:  One thing about being Disabled on the continent is that you don’t survive—and that’s reality. I’ve lost many people. I know many people that have passed.

KAC:  Very often in Disability-related conversations, I’m thinking, “Who is alive and able to be here, talking about Disability?” I think about all the voices we’ve lost. 

ODE:  My aim is to show this truth, however sad it may be, and sometimes, there’s a disconnect between telling an entertaining story and telling a true story. 

I understand the need to write hopeful, inspirational stories—but I don’t have the energy for that. I want to tell my story, however bad or sad or … 

KAC:  Whatever it is. 

ODE:  Yeah. 

KAC:  What about the happy ending? I feel like in fantasy and science fiction, they always want to cure us. Does that make you mad?

ODE:  I mean, many Western tropes don’t make me mad. They amuse me. But I’ve stopped conforming to those standards. I went into editing and publishing for that reason: I want to tell my own stories and help others do the same.

KAC:  What is it like being an editor? 

ODE:  It’s both exhilarating and backbreaking, especially with Black and African speculative fiction.

These stories are the Other. They’re unexpected. Getting stories by Africans—by marginalized groups—published requires more work than usual.

KAC:  Do you think it’s because Disabled or African writers aren’t even making it out of the slush pile? Or because editors see that their stories are good, but don’t understand them?

ODE:  It’s both. Many stories die on the slush because people don’t recognize the quality.

In magazines, diversity goes beyond the editors. The slush readers also hold a lot of power: many stories in the pile never get considered. A diverse establishment has to be diverse from the artists to the slush readers.

KAC:  Inclusive leadership all the way, right?

ODE:  Yeah.

KAC:  What about things getting lost in intercultural exchanges? Do you ever run up against that? 

ODE:  A lot. Most of the time, a character’s voice is rooted in the author’s own culture, mannerisms, and patterns. So in reviews and in rejections you keep hearing about poor dialogue, because the way people talk in different regions is unique, and sometimes, that uniqueness is not accommodated. What passes for humor in Nigeria will not pass for humor in the US.

KAC:  They wouldn’t laugh at the jokes?

ODE:  As you said, language and cultural barriers. It also happens with the language and the voice. For example, someone in the West might say: “as tall as a baobab tree.” Another writer might say “an Iroko tree.” Or a tree that the Western reader, editor, slush reader has never heard of. 

KAC:  Then you have to decide, “Do I describe it for my Western readers and the editor/publisher who may not get this? Or am I writing for people who already know what this tree looks like?” 

ODE:  Yes. 

KAC:  Okay, I’m going to ask you about putting together an anthology and getting it out into the world. Can you walk me through the process, step by step?

ODE:  Okay. Do you mean the anthology I co-edited or my own? 

KAC:  Well, you co-edited the Dominion anthology, right? How did that happen?

ODE:  Well, Zelda Knight reached out to me. She asked if I would like to edit or contribute to the anthology, and I chose to do both. That was my first foray into editing. 

KAC:  You didn’t have to write the pitch letter for the publisher? 

ODE:  There was no pitch. It was published by her press, Aurelia Leo. We crowdfunded it.

KAC:  Was that an enjoyable experience? 

ODE:  Yeah. We crowdfunded it on Kickstarter, up to 300% of the sum we needed. We were trying to raise about $3,000. We got about $10,000. 

KAC:  And you had to coordinate everything? Like paying the editors, paying the authors, and making the cover art?

ODE:  Yeah, we did everything by ourselves. It was a humongous, almost senseless amount of work. 

KAC:  How many people were helping you do that? Was it just the two of you? 

ODE:  It was just us. We had no staff and no helpers—nobody. It was in the middle of the pandemic, and my co-editor had a house fire just before, so her mom had third-degree burns.

I had severe anxiety during the pandemic because I was immunocompromised and had respiratory issues. COVID would have been extra dangerous for me—a death sentence, unvaccinated as I was. Vaccines got here late, and we’re in a bizarre struggle because of vaccine hoarding policies.

KAC:  I’m so glad that you’re still here. 

ODE:  Yeah. I was thinking: “Whenever I go out, I could get something that kills me.” I had to work in those conditions.

KAC:  Are you pleased with how it came out?

ODE:  Yeah, I am.  

KAC:  The cover art is beautiful. 

ODE:  It is. Thanks. 

KAC:  So, who are the authors that you published? Had they already published before? Was this their first sale? 

ODE:  For some, yeah. We had all kinds of people on it—experienced authors and first-time authors.

KAC:  What advice would you give editors who want to include Disabled people from international communities?

ODE:  I think editors should reach out to these people, if they aren’t submitting their work themselves. We shouldn’t only be soliciting big-name authors.

And if you’re going to get a Disabled writer, be ready to accommodate them. Allow them as much time as they need to write and edit the story. You must work with them at their pace. 

KAC:  When you asked for a story from someone, and they gave you one that you couldn’t use, did that make you anxious? Was it hard, having to say no? 

ODE:  Yes. 

KAC:  How did that go? 

ODE:  I mean, it was awkward, but I think I’ve built a good enough relationship with my folks, so they have some faith in my vision. 

KAC:  Are you good at saying no? 

ODE:  Nobody’s good at saying no, but you have to do it. And you have to be kind to these authors, to show that you are still with them.

KAC:  What else can we be doing to create space for multiply marginalized Disabled people like us in science fiction? 

ODE:  More Disabled people could be involved in the initiatives that give them space to speak. For example, you’re doing this interview series now. Nobody else but you could do it this well, because you understand all the issues involved. You know how to be accommodating. And I promoted and published my anthology in a way that compensated for access problems.

The world should make more room for Disabled people. For example, Zelda invited me to our project, and that set the stage for my editing journey.  

KAC:  I love seeing Disabled people carving out space for other Disabled people, because we understand how accommodations work, and we can cut each other some slack.

Readers, I’m doing some of these interviews as an email thread, and some of them as a shared Google doc. Some are live Zoom calls, like I’m doing here with Chovwe. That changes the interviews, but I want to accommodate the people I’m interviewing, and myself. I have trouble typing on a keyboard, so I have a friend who helps me transcribe these interviews later—an abled volunteer.

I bring this up because we always think, “Oh, a writer is a genius locked in a room, and they come up with a novel.” Instead, accommodations are a community effort.

Did you make changes or accommodations for your authors? 

ODE:  Yes. I tried to give them a lot of leeway during the editing process. I trust the writers: I allow them to take their stories in the direction they want, and to use their preferred methods in producing them. 

KAC: Last question, everyone! Chovwe, what advice do you have for other Disabled authors or editors who are reading this? Maybe to someone thinking, “I want to be just like Chovwe.” What advice do you have for them?

ODE:  My advice is, don’t be like me, be like you. 

KAC:  I like it. Thank you, Chovwe!

ODE:  You’re welcome.

KAC:  Well, readers, this was the fabulous Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki! 

Nebula, World Fantasy Award winner, multiple Hugo, Locus Award finalist, and CanCon 22 and ICFA 23 Guest of Honour. You can find more of Chovwe’s work at http://odekpeki.com/2022/09/11/2022-awards-eligibility-post-list/

Disabled writers and other creative types, how do you get your work done while Disabled? Feel free to join the conversation at #WritingWhileDisabled and #StrangeHorizons! We’d love to hear about your favorite creative process accommodations.

Kristy Anne Cox: Hi Chelsea! First, I’d like to thank you for giving this interview! 

Readers, I’m conducting this interview via email with the talented C. L. Polk. Chelsea uses they/them and she/her pronouns and lives on Treaty 7 land in Southern Alberta.

Chelsea is the author of the Hugo-nominated Kingston Cycle of novels, including the World Fantasy Award-winning Witchmark. Their novel The Midnight Bargain was a finalist for the Canada Reads, Nebula, Locus, Ignyte, and World Fantasy Awards. Their short fiction and essays appear in various magazines and anthologies. You can check out Chelsea’s work at their website https://clpolk.com/.

If you’ve been following the Writing While Disabled interview series, you’ll notice that I’m asking many of the same questions to all these fabulous Disabled authors.

I promise this is intentional! Each interview has turned out unique and full of valuable information because Disabled people, even us geeky Disabled science fiction writers, embody an array of distinct challenges, skill sets, and insights. I’m lucky to probe the minds of so many talented creatives.

Chelsea, do you mind if we start by introducing our readers to you and your work? Would you mind telling us a little about yourself and what you write?

C. L. Polk: Hi!

I am never sure what to say when asked this question. I guess I’m an SFF writer. I bounce between fantasy, science fiction, and romance while stealing from mysteries and thrillers.

In my free time, I like to do fashion. I knit, crochet, and sew, but have resisted the lure of weaving. I love cooking and playing video games—I′m playing on consoles after being a PC gamer for decades, and my navigation skills are pure comedy.

My favorite part of the day is when I get hyped up over something I learned by falling into a research rabbit hole. I’m also trying to build an exercise habit.

When I write, I’m trying to reflect on the problems with community, society, government—you know, the little things! But I’m also trying to write about people who pay attention to their dissatisfaction and let it guide them to a better life.

KAC: Thank you for that, Chelsea.

Readers, I realize I haven’t done a land acknowledgment yet for this series, which is remiss of me—my apologies. I’m interviewing Chelsea from the Denver, Colorado area, which occupies the ancestral homelands of the Arapaho and Cheyenne peoples.

CLP: Lots of people live in the Treaty 7 area. It’s the land that sustained the Kainai, Piikani, and Siksika people who made up the Siksikaitsitapi—they’re also called the Blackfoot Confederacy, as well as the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda, and the Metis Nation.

KAC: Thank you.

“What do you write?” can be a tricky question sometimes. After all, it’s hard to fit our stories into formal genre categories. Yes, SFF is about aliens and monsters, but it can also touch upon our lives and struggles. I love your framing here—that you write about “people who pay attention to their dissatisfaction and let it guide them to a better life.” It sounds hopeful in a time when our stories are so grim.

Does your fiction tend to move towards a happy ending?

CLP: I would say yes. When I write a story, it’s because I’m interested in a problem, so my natural urge is to turn it over, examine it, explore it, and eventually solve it.

I know it’s irritating, but when I see problems in everyday life, I automatically assess them and try to fix them. I’m that person who will get distracted because a painting isn’t level, and I want to fix it so badly, but I can’t because it’s not my painting … and it will just eat at me.

If someone has a problem, I ask them what they need to get better, and I try not to withdraw from the situation even if the solution stinks: happy endings aren’t always possible, after all.

KAC: I’m excited that we’re talking about that, because there’s this whole trend where people feel the need to write Disabled characters as problems to be fixed.

Sometimes abled or differently abled authors write a ‘happy ending’ for a Disabled character that doesn’t connect with readers of that disability community at all. Does that resonate with you?

CLP: Oh heck yes. Assuming that the disability is the problem rather than the environment often limits the solutions we can find.

When I’m out and about, I interrogate public space design—why are there stairs in this mall? Why is the ramp one meter wide? Why isn’t it all ramp? Things like that. There’s a narrow range, and if you don’t fit it, the world doesn’t belong to you.

We often see a person’s disability as a problem to solve or hide, because it’s assumed that the Disabled person wants to be ‘normal.’ However, the environment should be easy to use for everyone, and that means offering different solutions to different people.

KAC: I think about accessibility of spaces all the time. Can I use this space when I need my cane? Can I use it on a day when I need my walker? Could I use this if it were a wheelchair day? It impacts everything I do. 

Another framing to pair with accessibility is accommodations. What accommodations would make this space, activity, or group accessible to more folx?

With my Neurodiversity and mental illnesses, I’m wondering, will this person or group put up with my speech and behavioral differences? Will I make them uncomfortable just by being myself?

How do you fit into the Disabled community? With which Disabled communities do you identify?

CLP: My disabilities are invisible. I’m hard of hearing, and I need accommodations for that—like subtitles on videos and TV, and slideshow presentations with clear text so I can follow along.

I also need to see people as they’re talking to me. When masking in public became a thing, I discovered I had figured out lipreading. It’s hereditary: the level of my hearing loss increases with each audiology checkup, and I am terrible at learning how to sign. I have hearing aids I dislike and AirPods Pro earbuds, but wearing hearing enhancement is exhausting, so I only use them if I think the effort is worth it.

I haven’t had all the testing I need to put a label on my Neurodivergence. My symptoms fall into the ADHD-inattentive type, and the testing agrees, but I have had people cocking their heads and asking me if I’m autistic for many years. Maybe? I don’t know? 

Depression and anxiety are a part of my life. I have survived more than my fair share of trauma. I have osteoarthritis, and I’m nearsighted (people don’t think this matters. That’s because glasses are nerd-chic now.)

Still, I think I’m an outsider to all communities. Or at least, I feel isolated because I often contend with their restrictive standards: I feel like they negate my disabilities because they aren’t ‘normal.’

We all get to measure ourselves against constructed parameters, because if we want to get accommodations in the world we have to prove our disability. What’s disappointing is that even people within the disability community won’t consider you ‘worthy’ to be part of it.

KAC: We have some overlap in Neurodiversity! Depression, Anxiety, ADHD—I have those, too. I also have severely debilitating OCD and Bipolar disorder, Trichotillomania, and an array of vision, neurologic, and mobility issues.

My disabilities are often invisible, too, unless it’s a mobility device day—and if it means anything, I say you’re valid.

It’s a journey, getting the treatment, support, and diagnosis we need in our dystopian, ableist medical systems. Thank you for sharing the specifics with us—it helps our Disabled readers place themselves into our conversation and parse all the excellent advice.

I want to ask you about how we Disabled creatives can find and build community. You’re describing this feeling of ‘not counting’ or being an outsider. You’re not alone: it’s a common issue in our communities. During this never-ending pandemic, isolation has been a big issue for Disabled people, and for Disabled creators especially.

Then there’s gatekeeping. People like to dismiss it as ‘impostor syndrome,’ but it’s not. It may be part of it, but to invoke ‘impostor syndrome’ without discussing exclusion and safety issues misplaces accountability. Would you agree?

CLP: Absolutely. I’ve been thinking differently about impostor syndrome because I have it myself. When I say, “I don’t feel like I belong here,” well-meaning people will reply, “That’s your impostor syndrome talking,” and I think to myself, “But is it, though?”

Because sometimes, the thought of not belonging somewhere isn’t coming from my brain weasels. That kind of message comes from people forgetting or ignoring me—or talking about my work, and mischaracterizing it in a dismissive way.

The subtext is: “It’s not our fault if you feel like you don’t belong, it’s your impostor syndrome.”

Most places where I feel like I belong are online: private Facebook groups, Slacks, closed-membership Discord servers. I feel more welcome in those spaces because I get invited to be in them, and even so, I’m still not quite at ease.

KAC: Readers, I’m going to address you for a moment. I’m focusing the Writing While Disabled series on multiply marginalized Disabled folx, and this is both intentional and important.

I’m seeking and interviewing Disabled creative folx in SFF who live at the intersection of multiple specific marginalizations because those aspects of who they are, those intersections, tend to get erased and excluded from Disability discourse and Disabled spaces. 

Disabled spaces too often default to whiteness and white fragility. It’s a big problem, because safe and welcoming spaces for multiply marginalized Disabled folx must be intersectional and anti-racist.  

So, Chelsea, back to you, are your feelings of isolation and outsiderness from Disabled communities related to how Disabled spaces exclude the multiply marginalized?

CLP: Oh, yes, definitely. 

KAC: Including in our SFF writing worlds?

CLP: Yes. It gets complicated in SFF because sometimes I can’t pin down why the vibe feels off. Is it because I’m Black? Not straight? Not cis? Is it because my writing doesn’t ignore oppression and social ills?

In some situations, in some communities, I don’t even bother trying. Sometimes at conventions I stick to one or two safe people, so I can pretend that I’m not being ignored. I go along having a good time until something shatters it—and it’s anybody’s guess when that second shoe is going to drop.

KAC: Are there related contexts where you’ve felt included, welcome, and part of the community?

CLP: I have several friends among SFF writers and publishing professionals, so it’s not like no one has my back—and when I’m out and about in person, I can rely on them.

This might make me look cliquey or unapproachable to some people, because I’m already huddled up with buddies. However, please understand that many multiply marginalized people in SFF do this to maintain a sense of safety.

KAC: I have heard people describe protective groupings as exclusionary cliques—so yes, this is important. Sometimes it’s not about you joining the cool kids’ table. It’s about finding people who aren’t going to misgender you or pile on microaggressions.

It’s exhausting to be yourself, even in spaces full of people with the best intentions. Too often, people don’t honor all the time their multiply marginalized guests spend socializing with everyone, how many spoons they spend educating others.

CLP: Right! I would like to attend a convention and simply enjoy it. If I’m at a convention, it’s probably because I’m sitting on a panel—and that is enough labor! I would like to spend the rest of my time socializing, without having to put on my To Sir, With Love suit.

KAC: Do you have any advice for folx experiencing this kind of marginalization at conventions or in other professional writing environments?

CLP: This: You don’t owe outreach work to anyone.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! There are thousands of articles and books available on the internet, and hundreds of podcasts, lectures, and panels. No one needs your time to get educated. If you feel like it, you can say: “This author has interesting things to say about that subject—check them out!”

KAC: Readers, if you’d like to be more inclusive and intersectional in your Disability community, please seek out some of these resources! For our multiply marginalized community members, having to constantly answer questions is exhausting and othering unpaid labor.

Chelsea, what’s on your wishlist for convention organizers who want to be more inclusive?

CLP: Oh boy. Can I talk about diversity panels? I want to talk about diversity panels.

KAC: Please do!

CLP: In 2019, I stopped doing panels—and I said so publicly—because I was never invited to talk about the things I’m good at talking about.

I would only get invitations to speak on panels about writing diverse stories or about being a marginalized writer—none of those left an impression on me. The panels where I had the best conversations about writing were the ones where I got to talk about epic fantasy, worldbuilding, character, craft, genre … the topics everyone else gets to discuss.

Last year, though, something changed. The invitations to great panels only came from marginalized organizers, while non-marginalized organizers consistently invited me to speak at events with titles like “Beyond European Fantasy.” I would see that and wonder why they wanted me. I haven’t written a single novel with a setting that hasn’t reminded people of England! What would I have to say on the subject? It made no sense.

… Unless they saw these panels as the diversity panel, rebranded.

I think marginalized writers should be on a diversity panel because they came up with the idea themselves and presented it to programming. When will convention organizers stop seeing us as bearers of a single story that defines us and is the only item on our list of expertise?

We’ve said it on previous diversity panels—to get invited, we have to be the best at what we do. Our bar is higher, so our skills must also be higher. Get us to talk about those skills, because we rock at them!

KAC: It’s why I love the ‘Not Another F*cking Race Panel’ at WisCon! Thank you for spelling this out so clearly for our readers.

Multiply marginalized folx are more likely to experience disabling events and illnesses—but Black and Native folx especially. I want people to sit with why Disabled spaces at our favorite conventions and in our anthologies, panels, essays, and stories are still so white.  

CLP: You know that saying, “Nothing about us without us?” Yeah. Asking multiply marginalized people what they want is always best.

Because honestly? I can’t give you an answer that will work for all of us—I’m not sure it exists. Different spaces in different communities have different needs, but I’m confident these two things are always going to be true. 

First, the answers will be unexpected. Second, the answers will carry the potential to tear that space’s system down—and sadly, if starting over from scratch is the only way to make a space accessible, organizers won’t bother.

KAC: Do you have some favorite topics you’d love to discuss on panels?

CLP: Well, things I already talk about on panels include romance, food, and fashion. I would love to talk more about prose-crafting. I also want to talk more about cities—my percolating science fiction ideas are deeply involved with cities. And I want to moderate a panel on worldbuilding technology, featuring a mix of second-world fantasy and science fiction authors … Gosh, I could go on for ages.

I’m sure people would love a few panels leaning into rabbit holes or specialized subjects, instead of the usual run of entry-level events. If I think about sitting in a room full of writers who introduce themselves with, “This is one of my hyperfocused special interests,” I’m like, “It’s a Christmas miracle! Let’s do this!”

KAC: Can we talk about your outstanding skills? I’m excited to ask you about your writing method and accommodation strategies! 

CLP: Oh yeah, let’s do it! Maybe I can help a reader out!

KAC: What’s your writing process?

CLP: My writing process? It’s hard to pin down, honestly. I think it goes from idea generation to exploration, research, documenting my enthusiasms, drafting, and managing continuous anxiety.

I come up with a story idea: for example, a magic musical instrument.

Then I wander around in my head; I look stuff up on the internet, collecting shiny things. If they don’t click together and start generating exciting connections, I get bored and forget about the idea. If the exciting connections moment happens, then I write everything that comes to my mind, and I keep doing that until the story talks.

Sometimes a good idea won’t talk to me no matter how hard I try, and that’s super frustrating. When it talks, though, I listen and write what it’s telling me—and I know this will sound weird, but whatever: I need to protect that idea like the slightest doubt or criticism will make it wither.

I can’t keep my story top secret, though, because I need someone to point out things I should pay closer attention to or implications I missed. With this feedback, I can reshape what I’m doing to better fit my vision.

Finally, when the deadline comes, I have to force myself to let the story go, even if to me it still needs fixing.

… No, I take it back. All of this sounds weird. I don’t know why I’m like this. It would be easier if I could do it differently.

KAC: This does not sound weird at all—it sounds familiar! There’s this fragile early stage for me, too, where I need enthusiastic excitement about the story idea until it’s grown and developed enough to handle pruning. My earliest readers are my most supportive cheerleaders: they think I’m brilliant and love my writing. The what-you-need-to-fix readers have to wait for the complete draft.

With an unfinished draft, sometimes I need feedback on the structure, or help in brainstorming an ending. I also need support when I’m finishing the draft, to keep up my enthusiasm before the anxiety or OCD or ADHD derails me. Is that resonating with what you’re saying?

CLP: That is it! Ha! Okay, so it’s not weird at all!

KAC: So anxiety shapes your creative process and the accommodations you use to get the work done.

How else do your disabilities impact your writing?

CLP: Well, some days I just can’t write, and that’s frustrating. Sometimes it’s a focus problem, other times my executives aren’t functioning. On certain days, I never make it to the manuscript at all.

There are other problems, too: if I’m pantsing, I might get stuck—but if I outline the book, there’s a chance my brain will say: “The story’s done,” and will not budge because it’s boring now.

To succeed at writing a book, I have to manipulate myself into becoming consumed by it. It has to feel like my brain is too full, and the only way to bleed off the pressure is by writing.

But I’m still afraid of screwing things up—like if this entire house of cards crashes, the consequences will be enormous.

KAC: Anxiety kills so many projects. I feel this so, so much.

A writing piece of advice a lot of us hear is to write every day, and I’ve found this to be deeply harmful to Disabled writers trying to put together a method that accommodates their disabilities. They are worried about being a writer who isn’t writing, about their writing routine or habits. They wonder: “Is this my disability? Is this just regular writer’s block? Have I lost my gift?”

Do you ever feel any of those things? 

CLP: Oh gosh, the write-every-day advice! I hate it, as I hate hell, all Montagues, and “Show, don’t tell.”

I understand the message behind the advice: ‘Writing is a skill that benefits from doing it regularly.’ Sure, it feels hard to start again if you don’t do it for a while, but I can’t stand people who insist that True Scotsmen Scriveners write—a lot—every day. And if you don’t, then you’re a poseur or a pretender who’s only after glamor.

Gosh. Could they please kindly stop? It’s so damaging and ableist I want to shriek. Sometimes we can’t write for a day, a week, a month, a year. We’re already on hard mode!

If you’ve been away from writing for a long time, you may be worried about skill erosion or the muse getting bored and abandoning you or whatever.

Beloved, please. It’s crap garbage. I know, because I’m going through it right now.

I’ve been struggling with writing for a while. After The Midnight Bargain and Soulstar, I took a break. I had planned to recharge, fill the well, learn stuff by listening to audiobooks while folding socks … I would consider writing new books in the new year.

That didn’t happen, because 2020 happened instead. Then 2021 said: “Hold my beer,” and through all that, I couldn’t write.

I tried, but it wasn’t working. I struggled my way through a couple of novelettes, I threw away three novel starts, and I tried to write a fourth, but it was so slow, so painful, so heavy—I’m trying to fight my way out of those nightmarish thoughts right now, and it’s so hard.

Writing used to be easy, but I couldn’t do it anymore.

Then a little while ago, while I was doing research for a story, I stumbled on a video of Mark Knopfler talking about how he learned to play guitar. In the video he would stop and play for a few seconds, and I noticed that everything else went away as soon as he started playing. It was just him and his favorite thing in the world to do.

And that’s what I needed: to get back to where it was just me and my favorite thing in the world to do.

So today I wrote for fifteen minutes, and in those fifteen minutes I found my groove. The words came, flowed—and I haven’t lost the skill. It’s in there. I can still touch it. And as for the rest?

Eh, I’ve gotten pretty good at editing.

KAC: Wow. Thank you.

You know, I think the reason I keep asking this question is that I’m worried. The negative voices are so loud when I can’t write. Because if I am a writer, if writing brings me joy, if what makes me valuable to others is storytelling, then what do I have left when that’s gone? 

Many creatives aren’t writing right now, because depression and suicide are so common. We lose many beautiful, brilliant people to suicide and despair—which are significant issues for Disabled people, and for multiply marginalized Disabled people especially.

I’m thinking about the kids who take a writing class and hear: “A real writer writes every day.” They go home and never write again, because they hear that as confirmation that they aren’t good enough.

To people who don’t struggle with truly disabling mental illness, who don’t know trauma from the inside, this exchange might sound melodramatic—but it’s not. It’s how my brain works. I will struggle with these intrusive, unwanted thoughts my entire life, so new tools are just invaluable.

I feel seen right now, so thank you. “Beloved, please. It’s crap garbage.” Someone is going to read this and use it as a lifeline. Thank you.

CLP: I hope so. It’s easy for me to slide straight into the darkness. It’s always waiting for me.

I persist, though. I try to find my way out. Lately, I’ve been saying out loud the things I would like someone else to tell me, just in case people who need to hear them are listening.

KAC: I’m so glad you’ve found ways to survive, persist, help others, and create. I love the idea of saying to others the things we need to hear ourselves. 

How do you return to a project after an interruption?

CLP: I don’t have a step-by-step list, exactly. I return to the notes I took while building the story. Some of them might be excellent suggestions.

I have extensive worldbuilding notes in Notion. In the section labeled ‘Inspiration’ I have Pinterest boards, playlists, face claims, lists of stories and movies, and even single scenes. I have journal entries, chat logs, and the research that I used to come up with the story: I refer to these things regularly to keep myself immersed in the feelings.

I can also read the manuscript, but usually that means doing a revision pass—which isn’t the mind state I need to create manuscript words.

KAC: Is this similar to your regular writing routine? What is your process?

CLP: Yes, this relates to my routine, but I don’t know if I have a set process: my writing activities vary from day to day. My ADHD craves novelty, so I must change what I do and how I do it. Otherwise, I will switch to ‘bored now,’ and that’s another problem.

As a writing friend said, though, the important thing is to touch the manuscript. So I open the manuscript things. Those are:

On my desktop/laptop:

• my Scrivener file;
• my worldbuilding database (I’m currently using Notion, but I’m feeling the itch to try something else);
• my Pinterest moodboard;
• my streaming music service playlist;
• my Google Docs (I use Docs so my readers can get a look at what I’m reading);
• my 4thewords project page for the book;
• One Stop For Writers (I love it);
• a word tracker (I like Christie Yant’s “Tools for Writers.” It’s a Google sheet!).

I have a to-go kit as well:

• iPad;
• Google Docs;
• Nebo/Apple Pencil;
• Pinterest;
• playlist.

I used to lose writing days because I didn’t want to type, but I knew that if I wrote by hand, I wouldn’t want to transcribe. So I use this digital notebook called Nebo with my Apple Pencil, and handwrite it up on those days when I don’t feel like typing. It’s lighter than any laptop I’ve ever had, including my MacBook Air, and it fits into a big purse, so I don’t have to haul a backpack around. The charging time is also decent, and I can hotspot it to my phone for internet connection. I just started using it, so I’m in love with the novelty!

KAC: Where do you fall on the outliner versus discovery writer spectrum?

CLP: I need both.

I want my first draft to surprise me, so I don’t painstakingly outline the entire book. If I wind up making a choice that renders my outline useless, I get angry at having wasted time on it, and I rebel. But then, what dominoes will get knocked over in the plot? And what will my ending revelations be?

When I was still in the early stages of The Midnight Bargain, I knew what would happen at the climactic battle, and I wrote it down immediately. I steered the story toward that moment—part of the book’s climax is essentially that page I wrote back then. At that point, I was still unsure about what characters to keep in the story! (I didn’t keep the magical perfumer from Chapter One, sadly, but maybe I will write something about her in the future.)

Sometimes, though, I can’t rely on my inner vision. I write a route, and I grumble—but it’s for the best.

I outlined Soulstar, for example, figuring out the situations, the choices, the consequences, and how to arrange them. The story wasn’t as fun to draft as The Midnight Bargain, but I’m still pleased with the outcome.

KAC: Would you mind telling us about your worldbuilding process?

CLP: My worldbuilding process? It’s really chaotic! 

I start with the magic, usually. For example: “Magicians can only accomplish small magical feats on their own. For larger feats, they need to summon a spirit.” Hold on. What does that imply about the world?

And I immediately wander off. How does a magician summon a spirit? Maybe the people who could do magic used it to gain societal power, and they maintain their hold on said power by … then it’s off to the races.

That’s my main worldbuilding action. I come up with a neat idea, figure out how it affects the world, then those ideas branch into other ideas—it’s quite a jumble.

Once I have a lot of material, I sort it and separate it, but that’s secondary to the actual worldbuilding. I dash from one enthusiasm to another, stopping when I have a realization, then diving in to explore. It might be backwards, but that’s how I do it.

KAC: Does thinking about disability play into your worldbuilding?

CLP: Yes. Thinking about Witchmark, I wanted the primary mode of transportation to be the bicycle. I designed Kingston’s streets so that cyclists and pedestrians were dominant on the roadways—sidewalks are wide, stair entrances to businesses are rare, and all carriages feature lifts for wheelchair users.

I love thinking about societies that work toward accessibility in design and public space—even if I haven’t yet written a story that reflects how a fully accessible world could be.

KAC: Do you have a particular narrative approach to Disability and Disabled characters?

CLP: I don’t think I do? I haven’t written enough to have a handle on that approach. Maybe after a few more books?

KAC: Would you mind telling us about some of your Disabled characters and their arcs?

CLP: Well, there’s Miles from Witchmark, of course, with his PTSD and c-PTSD; he sustains serious injuries that he hasn’t fully recovered from even by the end of the third book. He’s not all better now, and he won’t ever be, but he has received the treatment he needs to continue living his life—it’s not a tragedy.

KAC: Pre-published or early-career Disabled and Neurodiverse writers often get this message that their own lived experiences are ‘unrealistic’ or ‘unbelievable.’ They’ve heard from their writing groups, mentors, and editors that abled or differently abled readers might not identify with a character like them. Does that sound familiar?

CLP: Yes.

One time I was writing a scene from the POV of a character who is experiencing the ADHD symptoms I like to call ‘pinball brain.’ It’s that state where you are supposed to do a task, but your ideation is firing willy-nilly. You think of something, that makes you think of something, which makes you think of something else. It happens to me all the time—it’s the bane of my life.

I thought the character’s ADHD was the most obvious thing ever, but a beta reader littered the scene with comment after comment about how overwhelming and hard to follow it was. They were surprised I had neglected to edit it, seeing how well the rest of the story was written.

I stopped working on that story. I wasn’t good enough to write that crucial scene, so I threw the whole thing out.

I didn’t know what I was doing, or that I had ADHD: I was describing something that happens in my head. Sometimes I try to fix lunch, but pinball brain leads me to scrub the grout in the bathroom, with four more started and abandoned housekeeping tasks in between. In the end, I can barely make it to the kitchen because I’m nauseous and on the edge of fainting—and recovering is going to take hours.

Still, pinball brain is how I find creative solutions to problems or understand complex situations quickly. 

Sometimes that’s a problem with my writing, too. My character figures out what’s going on, and it makes perfect sense to me. My edit notes, though, say: “This character jumps to conclusions too often.” One time I said, “I don’t understand this! It makes perfect sense to me. I left a ton of clues! Look here, here, and here.” The response: “Slow it down for the readers who can’t connect those things.”

That made me think about it in terms of accessibility.

How accessible should a story be? The prevailing attitude is that books should be accessible to a straight, white, able audience, and I see the merit in that. Other experiences, though, have to be explained—context clues are not good enough.

This makes me angry. It makes me feel like that white, straight, able reader should never try to understand me. Instead, I’m supposed to center my stories on them. It feels like no one cares about your experience if you’re not the right kind of person.

KAC: “The right kind of person.” I feel this so hard. ADHD hits me in much the same way, so I feel you’re describing my brain.

With OCD, when I try to capture how my brain works, some readers don’t understand. I end up feeling like it’s only okay to write mentally ill or Neurodiverse characters as an outsider. I’m giving other outsiders a fascinating look inside—but as a ‘tour guide,’ not as a person who lives in that kind of brain.

It’s like I’m not allowed to write for people like me; everything has to be translated for that fascinated outsider. 

CLP: Yes! Sometimes reading a story is about gaining a perspective you don’t have, so you can walk away understanding new things. You shut up and listen, without expecting everything to cater to you.

KAC: We are communicating stories into one another’s minds, but that process can’t work if the audience doesn’t understand the story—every writer has to wrestle with that.

For own voices Disabled authors, though, there’s a particular set of challenges, because they’re writing at that intersection of Neurodiversity and storytelling to a broader audience.

CLP: Can I point out that it’s the same problem Disabled people face in everyday life? We have to make extra efforts to navigate the world with a disability, while able people are free to select whatever aid they feel like using.

Here we are again in writing, trying to be understood—and when someone understands us, it feels like an exceptional event.

KAC: What about harmful tropes around Disability and Neurodiversity? Do you have any pet peeves? Storytelling trends you’d like to see people stop following?  

CLP: Pet peeves? Uhm.

I get mad at unkind portrayals of teenage girls who love something very much. Like … oh, Harriet Clayborn from The Midnight Bargain, who knows Bargaining Season up, down, and sideways. She has dedicated herself to gathering this knowledge because it is intricate and fascinating, but also because her whole life and future hinges on it! Shouldn’t she want to know everything about it? Some readers say very unkind things about her, and I get so damn defensive about it!

I am prone to enthusiastic delight, too. Maybe that’s how I do my Neurodivergence—I find something that is so cool it becomes an obsession, and I learn everything I can about it. Then I will move on to something else. I want to experience all the cool things the world has to offer!

KAC: The people I’ve experienced as the mansplaining gatekeepers of fandom want to interrogate the validity of women, femmes, enby folx, and the things they love. So I love this as a reframing: “enthusiastic delights.” 

CLP: I have heard about “collecting” or “curating” fans—who want to keep/preserve/enshrine their fandoms—and “adapting” fans—who will adjust/create/transform their fandoms.

What I notice is that the adjust/create/transform people love a thing even though it is not created in their image, and they fit themselves into it. But the keep/preserve/enshrine people resent them for this, and that’s sad.

KAC: You’re allowed to love a thing even if you don’t know all the same facts, have not watched all the same films, have not read every book in order!

Then we get into misogyny, because people love to hate teen girls and what they love. But teen girls are wonderful! What they love is wonderful! Tell me about your favorite deep sea creature—I want to know all the details! If you’re a young femme or enby writer, tell me about your incredible character. She’s not a ‘Mary Sue!’ 

CLP: Mary Sue is fake. I am not taking questions on this. Ever.

But if ‘Mary Sues’ exist, then Luke Skywalker is one too, and we are allowed to love wish-fulfillment characters!

KAC: Thank you. 

Then we get into the problematic fave territory, where women, femmes, and enby folx are held to a different standard. We aren’t allowed to speak about the troubling elements in media, because if we do we aren’t genuine fans: we’re social justice warriors destroying SFF.

This attitude compounds across multiple intersecting marginalizations. “How dare you love black elves?” “How dare you imagine a Disabled black queer elf outside the gender binary?” What it means is: “How dare someone like you love elves?“ That plays out across writers and writing communities, too. 

CLP: Let’s play it out like this: “How dare you love queer, black elves?” “This way! It’s super easy! Queer, black elves are awesome!”

KAC: From the POV of a multiply marginalized writer, scholar, and fan, we’re just trying to see ourselves in the imagined worlds we love. Still, us being part of fandom as actual peers ruins it for a group of angry, vocal people.

CLP: It sucks that we have to be coolly unbothered by this stuff. What if you weren’t a total jerk about people doing what they like? It doesn’t harm you, so what is your problem? 

KAC: Of course, no one wants to think they are part of the issue. But when we don’t listen to each other and make changes, marginalized fans are blamed as troublemakers and get pushed out of the community.

Chelsea, we’ve talked about accommodations and accessibility, meaningful inclusivity, safety, and about building community for Disabled people at SFF conventions, workshops, and professional writing spaces. Do you have any additional thoughts for us?

CLP: Actually, a lot of efforts to get feedback from marginalized people fall apart. And the reason is always the same: non-marginalized people jump to defend themselves or indulge in self-blame when the feedback they get is negative.

Don’t do it, and don’t let anybody else do it, either. It’s why a lot of marginalized people dread feedback situations: they can’t talk about what hurt them because they have to soothe the feelings of non-marginalized people.

Non-oppressed people must understand how they have unknowingly internalized the beliefs and techniques that perpetuate oppression. While you fight that oppression, you’re going to screw up—and someone will point it out to you. It might hurt a lot, but you’ll also gain knowledge you didn’t have before.

That marginalized person needs you to get over your distress at the mistake—and trust me, I know that distress is powerful! I’m a perfectionist!

Drill this into your head:

Step one: Say: “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize what I was doing. Thank you for pointing it out.”

Step two: Shut up. Don’t put the marginalized person in a position where they have to soothe you.

Step three: Go to your people, those who are working hard to end oppression. Tell them what happened and discuss solutions.

Step four: Don’t do it again.

KAC: Thank you.

Okay, moving back to craft, may I ask you how your approach to worldbuilding impacts your pacing? In Witchmark, for example, your protagonist never infodumps the reader about the world of the story—but as they encounter elements of how magic and the world work, you give us brief explanations that are needed to understand the action without dragging it down.

Did you know all these worldbuilding details before you started drafting the story? Was the pacing good from the beginning? Did you nail it down with revision?

CLP: It’s been a while, so I don’t remember the exact details. I look at it like this: the reader already knows everything I wrote about because I drew most of it from everyday knowledge. I trust the reader to pay attention and pick it up, and try to write in a way that invites them to engage their knowledge. That kind of active participation is valuable and generates interest. 

“What is Barrel-printing ink? Oh no, what bad news? Mathy must be this character’s boss. Oh crap, they have to kick people out of treatment? There was a war, and they expect to treat even more people for PTSD? But those beds are already full … oh shit, no wonder he’s angry!” I wanted this to be the running internal reaction of the reader.

Stopping to explain stuff doesn’t let the reader involve themselves in what’s happening on the page. That’s why I’m an exposition holdout. It’s not that I don’t want to do it—I just need the reader to be desperate for that exposition!

KAC: In Witchmark, each new character brings new dangers and new conflicts, which keep things tense and compelling for the reader.

Did you have these characters well fleshed out before you drafted the story? Their arcs and goals, and how they would create conflict for the protagonist?

CLP: I don’t know! Maybe? I don’t know how much detail I went into before I started writing.

The things I write about a character in advance never actually appear on the page. That doesn’t make pre-writing about a character useless, but more like a gesture sketch—I’m scribbling stuff down as fast as I can, trying to capture the character’s energy.

Sometimes I list the characters by name to see who will clash with who. I don’t use forms or formulas, but I have some questions: Who are they? What do they want? Why haven’t they succeeded at that yet? What do they need to talk about in therapy?

After that, it’s anyone’s guess. I like to be surprised when I’m writing. If I know everything, it becomes a chore.

KAC: Chelsea, I appreciate you letting me take up so much of your time and energy today! This conversation has been delightful and informative. Thank you so much!

Readers, Chelsea writes as C. L. Polk. Their Kingston Cycle trilogy is up for a Hugo right now! Please look for it at your local bookstore, or order it online! Again, their website is https://clpolk.com/. 

Do you have a method or accommodations to share with us and other Disabled creatives? You can join this conversation on social media using #WritingWhileDisabled and #StrangeHorizons! The rest of this series is available on Strange Horizons!

KAC:  Hello, readers! I’m sitting down with the fabulous Petra Kuppers today. Petra is an author, an activist, a performance artist, and a scholar! She teaches Disability Studies, Performance Studies, Writing, and more, at both the University of Michigan and Goddard College. Petra uses she/her pronouns.

Petra, how do you fit into the disabled community? Which disabled communities do you identify with? 

Petra:  Thank you for that question. It shows that you and I are in the same general discourse field because we're talking about communities. 

I've been disabled my whole life but only discovered the disabled community as an adult. Growing up in Germany, I felt very isolated and alone. There was no disability culture as we understand it now, and the other disabled people around me were often those injured in the wars, particularly Second World War Veterans like my grandfather, who lived in the house with us.

I come from a perpetrator nation, a nation that killed many—among them, disabled people. My parents' generation, the generation who started the disability rights movement, had been decimated by the Nazis. Growing up in Germany in the 1970s and 80s meant to me a deep ethical engagement with the Nazi and colonial past—and the absence of disability in public life was one facet of that for me.

KAC:  Is it different now, being in disabled communities here in the US and in Germany? 

Petra:  I haven't lived in Germany since I was 24 years old. I left because there I couldn't be who I wanted to be - as a queer disabled woman, artist, and educator. Remember, though, that I left over twenty years ago. There are many strong disability culture activists alive and working in Germany now, and I am connected with them to some extent.

Thanks to the Olimpias, the performance collective that I have led for the last 25 years, my disability community is now a fairly international crowd: my people are in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Wales, and here in the US. And we are a very loose collection—basically, whoever wants to hook up and do fun stuff together.

KAC:  Well, we're lucky to have you here in the US!

Can I ask you a little more about the barriers you faced in the writing community or in artistic communities as a multiply marginalized disabled author? 

Petra:  Long before I wanted to be a writer, my goal was to become a choreographer. To attend choreography school, though, you needed a medical certificate attesting that you had (at least!) four sound limbs, and that was not available to me.

I instead applied to a German university, which was also inaccessible. One time my degree was at risk because I was in a wheelchair and couldn't attend the seminar on the fourth floor of a building. There were no other options, and I didn't even know how to be upset about it. Luckily, this female professor—and they were a rarity in those years—decided to hold the seminar on the ground floor so I could participate and get my degree. I would now call it a crip aesthetic of making do. A lot of my understanding of the disability culture world comes from creative adaptation. 

The first artist residency that I ever received was a disabled writer's retreat at Ted Hughes’s estate in the north of England, where he used to live with Sylvia Plath. I was living in Wales at the time, working as a disability dance artist, and writing was part of my dance practice. The Arts Council of Wales had a disabled writer's bursary, so I applied for it, and found myself on this moor up in northern England! Those were the early years for things like disabled artist’s bursaries. There were very few back then. 

KAC:  Yeah, that makes sense. What about in the science fiction community? 

Petra:  Well, I applied to that bursary with a fantasy piece, a rewriting of the Lady of the Lake myth. Women swimming deep in a lake together, dark eros, transformation—which is what I'm still writing today. 

KAC:  That’s great! Can you talk to us about how your disabilities impact and inform your work? 

Petra:  I live with pain — significant, ongoing pain — and with notable mobility challenges, but I am also a dance artist. Language has always played a part in this complicated mixture of longing and sensibility. When I can't move, I write, and those two things are deeply connected. I love the sound and feel of language in my mouth. It’s why I write poetry, and why I write dark fantasy.

Some of my work has science fiction elements, but I am not interested in a sociological approach, in building a better world in my fiction. I'm fascinated by the intensities and extremes of experience. So in many ways, pain and restriction, together with transformation and interdependence, have shaped what I do in my bodymindspirit and in my writerly imagination. 

KAC:  I love this idea of disabled artists switching forms or genres as their accommodation needs change. I think that could be useful.  

Petra:  And it does not feel like accommodation. It's an ongoing undulation of what is possible. Even my movement, of course, is never straight dance work. Usually, it involves rolling around on the floor, strange sensory speculations, trance work, and exploring limit stages.

KAC:  Or being in the water.

Petra:  Definitely being in the water. I am a total water babe. In the summers, I swim in Michigan lakes, and in the winters, I try to dance in my local hot therapy pool. Closed right now, because of COVID… so many pain crips I know are having a hard time. 

KAC:  Oh, no!

Petra:  Oh, my God, I'm just missing it so much. 

KAC:  Hopefully, the pandemic will be over soon. 

Petra:  Yeah, let's hope so. Let's hope that we all survive, and that we can all get into our therapy pools. Many people don't have access to these essential resources—I wish (and work) for much better holistic healthcare and free, imaginative well-being resources in this country.

KAC:  Yeah. What is your creative process like? 

Petra:  Again, it's very much characterized by performance and movement. My creative process often involves being in a particular location, with its Indigenous roots, the layers of colonial encounter and immigration history, and the different violences and dreams that mark US land. But I can't just go for a hike, so often I'm just sitting on my bench or in my wheelchair. I take in the space, ask for access, make myself familiar, and wait.

Eventually, I feel myself being moved—by the wind, by things I hear, by the slight shifts and movements of the plants. I let my senses engage with the land and its non-human inhabitants. We enter a small dance. And then I write. And quickly, I find myself weaving the land into strange intensities: horror moments, gothic strangenesses, weird speculations. I call this kind of interweaving of personal sensation, land, and sociocultural histories an eco soma method of writing: somatic/environmental dances.

This is the process for my movement rehearsals, performance experiences, and travel experiences. It is my creative process—doing, writing, doing, writing, doing, writing, intertwining.

KAC:  What tools are you using? Do you write primarily on your phone or on your laptop? 

Petra:  Primarily on my laptop, but I always have my notebook with me wherever I go, and it’s filled with squiggles and visual graphs, small sketches and mind maps. I do a lot of... like this. I don't know if this is accessible to you. 

KAC:  Readers, Petra is holding up a notebook with unlined pages that has words and illustrations in different colors of ink. 

Petra:  I have a lot of fine pens, usually MUJI pens, in multiple different colors. That's what I draw with, and how I do a lot of plotting and jotting down ideas. The actual writing is on my laptop, though.

KAC:  And are you sitting up, standing, lying down?

Petra:  I am sitting. I don't use the desk—can't have my legs down for that long. I prefer having my legs in a tailor seat, or lying down on softly cushioned surfaces, like I'm doing right now. My legs are on my sofa straight out, and I'm angled towards the laptop, looking at you. That feels like a divan kind of situation.

KAC:  Do you have a specific time of day or a space to write in? 

Petra:  I generate ideas in sites, but when it is about the revising process, i.e., the bulk of my work, that’s usually early in the morning, when no one else is around.

I'm an early morning person. My wife—dancer and poet Stephanie Heit—is bipolar, and she has a very specific rhythm in her day, which usually involves her getting up a bit later than I do and staying up later than I do. This way, we both have private writing times.

KAC:  Thank you. What advice would you offer to newer disabled writers about getting their writing done, especially with disabilities similar to yours?

Petra:  Write. Just write. I know that every day is not possible for many of us, given our disabilities, but write as much as you can, and revise. There's great potential in both the generation and the deepening of ideas. You don't always have to generate new material, but you can become conscious of what's going on in your writing as you revise it.

Try to figure out how your disability—your particular, wonderful experience—shows up in your writing. Once you're in the flow of writing regularly, ask yourself what your unique voice is, and how it is shaped through your beautiful bodymindspirit—specifically if you write in non-realist genres. Your disability might show up through interesting transformations.

KAC:  You know, I think many people are afraid to write their own disabled experiences because they've encountered people in writing groups, or submissions editors, who have said, ‘This character isn’t believable.’ ‘This character isn't disabled enough.’ ‘This character isn't disabled in the right ways.’ I hear this often from people who are saying, “I was writing my own experience. Are they saying I'm not real?”

Have you run into that?

Petra:  Yeah. I mean, people have all kinds of weird responses to my surreal stuff, and I'm like, whatever. That's ok. Most things get rejected, for most people.

Slowly the world is waking up to the fact that disability culture has multiple different voices and other forms of expression. Many people now get excited when they see disabled writers who can offer a different perspective. 

Some people won't see value in disabled perspectives, but you can’t get around them by covering yourself up. They will find another way of chucking you out, because you're queer, you're a woman, you are of color, you are trans, etc… There isn't much you can do about them. What you can do, if you have the capacity and the time or energy, is apprentice at a journal—that will teach you so much about what is coming in, what is good, and what is not. You can support diverse publications and editors or submit to places that look for your kind of work. 

Also, you can learn more about writing. Just because something is part of your experience doesn't mean that you can automatically write about it in an exciting way. That's a skill you'll need to work on, and reading for a journal might be a good way to do it—especially since getting higher education is still hard for many disabled people.

KAC:  Right. Do you push against these harmful narratives about disabled people in your work?

Petra:  Oh, yeah. Most of my stories have disabled protagonists or main characters. I mean, why would I write about a non-disabled perspective? Many authors do that already, and I know little about non-disabled locomotion, so it doesn't come naturally to me. Most of my characters have some kind of difference, and I try to approach that with respect and with the notion of disability gain—without stereotyped villains and victims. 

KAC:  Awesome. I want to go back to the community, because you've done a lot with community event organization and performance art in a group setting.

Can you tell us how you got into community event organization?

Petra:  Oh, yeah, of course. That's completely connected to my educational journey. I already mentioned that I couldn't go to choreography school, so I went to university instead. As the first person in my immediate family to finish high school, it was quite a big adventure. I didn't know what the hell I was expecting—I came from the flat countryside, and there I was in the big city! But on day two of my visit, I showed up at a feminist queer theater collective, and everything flowed from there. 

My interest in community performance developed when I found out that the University of Cologne had a theater where you could pitch productions. They gave me—a young woman who had been there for less than a year—time and space to run a community project. I got all these people involved, some from within the university community, but mostly from outside. Some lived as squatters, one was an architect, and they all came from a wide variety of socioeconomic places and gender expressions. 

We worked together for a year, using somatics and bodily experience workshops to put on Frankenstein, such a core piece of feminist horror work—and believe me, we it was a very strange and fun Frankenstein.

KAC:  That sounds wonderful.

Petra:  Yeah, it was. We were writing the script and creating the scenes as we worked together. It wasn't like I came from a different tradition and then switched to community theater: improvisation and community creation were right there from the beginning.

I am reliant on being interdependent, as I cannot run everything by myself. I really do need my friends— even though sometimes I behave like I might not!

KAC:  How can disabled communities like the ones you're describing create and hold space for multiply marginalized disabled folk?

Petra:  That's an excellent question. I grew up within a dominantly white German environment influenced by an awareness of genocide, by the heritage and presence of racist violence. There have always been non-white people in the Olimpias, but it still is a white-centered framework. Our axes of difference lay with our experiences regarding psychiatric institutions, incarceration, and class. 

The best way of building vital communities is to encourage as many people as possible to write. We can learn from non-disabled people—from Cave Canem, Kundiman, and other identity-based writing organizations. It's so important for disabled people to create spaces like that—for instance, check out Zoeglossia, a disabled writers' community, or Relentless Bodies: a Detroit-based creative disability and healing justice collective. 

But while we're living under white supremacy, I think it's hard for truly coalitional work to happen naturally. We need to offer space, money, and the necessary stuff for all people to create groups, instead of only enabling white-led initiatives.

KAC:  That makes sense. I feel like industry professionals, like agents and editors, will often put out calls for submissions, specifically inviting disabled authors to apply. Are there things they could do to create more space for disabled authors?

Petra:  They can reach out and pay disabled writers to be on the organizing teams. Let them infiltrate the decision-making process. Have disabled authors as readers and editors. If you value that diversity, pay people. Don't expect to get disabled or non-privileged demographics on board by offering unpaid internships, because they can’t afford that.

Of course, many of our genre magazines are teeny-tiny, and no one gets paid. But publications could, for instance, offer something like a slot for an interview, or a writing workshop, or another kind of mentorship. 

KAC:  I love that idea. Let us infiltrate the selective process. That’s powerful. 

When you're going to conventions, writing workshops, or receiving an award at an awards ceremony, accessibility becomes an issue. Safety becomes an issue. What can cons and other writing venues or groups do in terms of accommodation to help Disabled folk attend safely?

Petra:  Yeah, the answer is: “Ask Disabled folk.” And not just one. Not always the same one. But ask a variety of disabled people. There are always growth possibilities. Look to other places that have had success and where people feel comfortable. The main convention I go to is WisCon, which I think has learned to do an excellent job.

KAC:  Is there anything else you want to share with anyone reading this interview?

Petra:  Just write. Be creative. Your expression is important. It's not always about voice—we’ve got to be careful with our metaphors, right? I want to read the expression that you bring to the page.

It's great that there is a larger number of panels by disabled writers at all kinds of cons. We have more complex and intriguing Disabled characters in our narratives, and they’re slowly filtering up into the mainstream. It's going to be a while, but we're seeing progress.

I'm just so delighted that we have enough to support you in writing an interview series about us. We're no longer where we were, say, 50 years ago. We are moving forward, but we can still enlarge our community and make sure that more and more people get access to decision making and writing. 

KAC:  Thank you.

Readers, You can find Petra’s books at your favorite bookseller, online or local, including foundational texts like Studying Disability Arts and Culture: An Introduction. She has a queercrip short story collection, Ice Bar (2018), and her most recent poetry collection, Gut Botany, was on the New York Public Library's "Best Books of 2020." Her most recent performance book, Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters, is available as an economically just open book access here. You can find more out about Petra's work at her website, www.petrakuppers.com.

KAC:  I’m sitting down to chat today with the fabulous Derek Newman-Stille! Derek lives in Toronto and is a writer, an editor, a visual artist, an activist, a nine-time Aurora Award winner, and a professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. Derek’s pronouns are they/them.

Hi, Derek! I’d like to start by thanking you for giving this interview! Would you mind telling us about yourself and your work?

DNS:  Sure. Thank you, I am excited to chat with you today. I teach at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, currently finishing my PhD on representations of disability in Canadian speculative fiction. I’m an artist, activist, academic, and editor.

I also run the nine-time Aurora Award-winning website Speculating Canada: a digital humanities hub where I share reviews of Canadian SF, interviews with authors, and discussions about SF topics. I’m Disabled, Queer, and Nonbinary.

KAC:  How do you fit into the Disabled community? Which Disabled communities do you identify with?

DNS:  I have a collection of disabilities. I have a spinal disability and use a walker; I manage chronic pain; I have learning disabilities and ADHD. I also have psychiatric disabilities—primarily depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

When I was around nineteen, I came to the Disabled community and finally felt a sense of belonging. I’ve been lucky to meet incredibly brilliant Disabled activists, artists, and teachers.

I also engage with our community as a DisArtist—I do DisArts (Disabled-informed artwork): it’s a space for me to do some of my activist work and speak back to our society’s portrayals of disability.

I currently teach courses on Gender and Disability at Trent, so disability is also essential for my teaching and engagement with students.

KAC:  Can you tell us how disability intersects with your teaching?

DNS:  Disability informed a lot of my learning early on. I could see the problems with my teachers’ ‘one-size-fits-all’ model that favored neurotypical, nondisabled ways of learning. After these experiences, I knew I needed to be more adaptable when teaching. I wanted to get at everyone’s strengths in my classrooms and to listen and learn from my students.

So, my disabilities have allowed me to be an adaptable and responsive teacher. I got to know my students’ diverse types of learning and found ways of sharing information and ideas with them that highlighted their strengths.

KAC:  Where can we find your artwork?

DNS:  I’ve created a few art pieces, mostly in local spaces. I just finished working on a project for the Electric City Culture Council in Peterborough that imagines a Peterborough about twenty years in the future, where the city has become accessible and is inclusive of diverse Disabled folx. I collaborated with brilliant artists in our community—Sioux Lily Dickson, Bethany LeBlonc, and Hannah Keating. We used performance art, visual art, and creative writing to imagine a city that would include Disabled voices.

My DisArt has also been featured in Aging Activisms and Feminist Space Camp Magazine.

KAC:  How do your disabilities impact and inform your work?

DNS:  My disabilities inform most of what I do—I think of myself as a Queer Crip. To be more specific, I think of my ADHD as my Muse. It inspires my need to write and create art. I go into hyper-focus and enter the world I want to build with paint or words, then I get wrapped up in that world until I make something.

KAC:  What is your writing process?

DNS:  My writing process involves a lot of experimentation and daydreaming. I spend weeks imagining a world and playing in it before I get down to writing. Once I know the world and characters, I write. It’s like an imagination purge. I just let everything go onto the paper as I type it.

Often my words have trouble catching up to my thoughts, which I credit my ADHD for providing. I then do a lot of editing, which I hate!! It’s the most challenging part of the process for me because it’s where my nitpicky side comes in, and I end up criticizing everything I have done.

When it comes to dyslexia, I credit it with most of my poetry. I already view words as strange, so poetry just makes sense for me. Poetry is a complicated form of wordplay, and dyslexia already plays with how I view words.

KAC:  So dyslexia informs your poetic process like a formal constraint might? Or a word-association exercise?

DNS:  My dyslexia means that everyday words are “weird” to me. They make little sense and require a lot of decoding.

Because of that, I have a fascination with words. I love their weirdness and their incomprehensibility. I play with them for hours and hours, and they end up on the page. To me, words have a taste, a certain mouth-feel, and I am fascinated with how they form. Their spell-like quality and the power they have to shape the world enthrall me.

It’s like an association exercise: I watch how certain words generate others and how words enter conversations.

KAC:  And dyslexia leads you to ideas and possibilities you might not otherwise have discovered?

DNS:  Absolutely. I love how words shape ideas but can also constrain those ideas. In some of my poetry, I feel like I’m freeing words of their boundaries and letting them absorb new meanings and new possibilities.

KAC:  Where do you fall on the spectrum between an outliner or a discovery writer?

DNS:  I think somewhere in between. I play around a lot before starting the writing process, so I have a lot of mental maps for what I want to do. But a lot of my stories and plans also get taken over by my characters: they often decide to steer the story in a new direction, or change themselves in ways that I didn’t expect.

KAC:  Do you have a regular writing routine? What do you do?

DNS:  I don’t have a regular writing routine. I’ve read so much from authors like Stephen King about how you need a writing routine to be a proper writer, but that has never worked for me—my ADHD makes a routine challenging. I need a sense of inspiration to write, to feel absorbed in the world I’m creating. So, I often end up getting an idea and spending all day or night working on it.

KAC:  Are there specific accommodations or tools that you use to get the writing done?

DNS:  Mostly, I rely on my spellcheck. But I also need a laptop to write from weird positions. Because of my spinal disability and chronic pain, I have to change position often. I can’t sit somewhere for a long time, so I end up moving around to find the sweet spot where my body will let me write. There are also days when I can’t sit up, so writing from my bed often happens.

I was inspired by something that Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha said about the tradition of Disabled people “writing from the sickbed.” It is extraordinary to think about how the Disabled community has historically taken part in this process of writing from the bed: it’s a connection between all of us. When I read her words, I felt connected to all the other Disabled writers writing from the bed. Her words made me feel a sense of community with all the other Disabled writers out there using the same practices.

KAC:  I often feel like commonly repeated writing advice is geared towards abled writers and that some of that advice can be a poor fit for Disabled writers. Do you ever hear writing advice and think, that will not work with this disability? What’s the worst writing advice you’ve heard?

DNS:  Nicely said! Yes, absolutely. All the advice I have been given on writing is to think of it as a career: just sit at your desk for eight hours a day and write. It doesn’t work for me and probably for most Disabled people. Sitting at a desk for long periods is not possible when managing pain. I also find that because of my ADHD, I need to be fuelled by inspiration, to feel like I have to write. I can’t imagine just working on something from 9 to 5.

KAC:  What advice would you offer to Disabled writers about getting their writing done? Any practical tips for writers with similar disabilities to yours?

DNS:  My key piece of advice for Disabled writers is to remember that writing advice, like everything else, is elaborated in an ableist world and constructed to feature only one type of body. So, remember not to internalize that ableism and instead find your way.

I encourage Disabled writers to find the methods that work best for them. This process often requires a lot of experimentation to find the right writing niche or parameters. For example, experiment with which time of day works best; try using different technologies; consider writing in different spaces; explore various background noise. The most powerful thing is discovering what works best for you.

KAC:  Do you have any advice for the Disabled writer who isn’t writing right now, who keeps losing momentum because of medical interruptions? How do you get back into the flow of writing after a period of not being able to work?

DNS:  My advice would be to take time to play and not feel pressured to write. It is vital to let inspiration happen when it happens. Again, that might be my personal bias because I only write when inspired, so everyone should find what works best for them.

In terms of medical interruptions, this has been a challenge for me, too. I often lose the flow of my work because medical procedures or health issues prevent me from writing, so I have to go back and re-read it all to start up the writing process again—I need to keep notes about where I was going.

I also suggest keeping a writing utensil nearby all the time, even when in hospital, so that if ideas come, you have a space to record them right away. When I have been too ill or unable to write things down, I’ve also used a tape recorder to record ideas.

KAC:  One issue I often hear from other Disabled writers is this pattern of abled people telling us our #ownvoices Disabled characters aren’t Disabled enough, or believable, or that they aren’t Disabled in the right way. Is this something you’ve seen?

DNS:  Yes!! This!! Absolutely. I have had so many people tell me that my Disabled characters aren’t Disabled in the right way, that they need to fit into tropes. Many abled writers have difficulty with the idea that a Disabled character can be Disabled and still have a worthwhile and fulfilling life. I have had editors tell me that my characters should be “fixed” or “cured” to create a happy ending. It just does so much damage: they assume that one can’t live a happy and fulfilling life while Disabled.

As Disabled people, we are accustomed to people telling us their view of our bodies and our narratives. This is why counter-narrative is so important: we can write back to the tropes and assumptions about us. We can change those assumptions. But the issue is that most publishers or anthologists don’t give us that opportunity. They often reject our work because we aren’t telling the stories they expect about disability, those informed by tropes and biases.

I was lucky to encounter the anthology Nothing Without Us (Renaissance Press), which emphasized own voices narratives. It was edited by Disabled people, and I think that makes a lot of difference. It was a wonderful experience to have my work understood. I presented them with my story “Charity,” which had been previously rejected because it wasn’t optimistic or inspirational enough. But Nothing Without Us provided a space for what we often call “Disabled Snark.”

KAC:  How do widespread harmful narratives about Disabled people impact the way you write Disabled characters and stories? How can writers push back against harmful tropes about Disabled people?

DNS:  People often ask me why I choose to work analyzing literary representations of disability. They tell me I should be doing policy work because “that will make a real difference.” I have to remind those people that writing and fictional representations define society’s concept of disability. They shape the policies we develop and whether/how people will follow them.

Writing back or counter-narrative writing is so essential because representation matters. I don’t just mean we should write Disabled characters: the characters should represent Disabled lives and not be draped in harmful tropes.

The tropes that do the most harm are the “cure” narrative—where disability is something that needs to be cured—and what we call the “better dead than Disabled” trope, where the character dies to achieve a “happy ending.”

I do a lot of work in science fiction writing, and one of the most harmful things authors can do is to erase us from the future—to present a world where there aren’t Disabled people. This eugenicist approach takes away notions of Disabled futurity. We often have to fight for our rights against the idea that eventually we won’t exist anymore or we will be cured, which is a justification for not working toward accommodations or supports right now.

KAC:  How do you write disability in your work? Would you mind telling us about some of your Disabled characters and their arcs?

DNS:  I write disability in two fundamental ways. One way is by purposely countering existing narratives about disability. For example, in my story “Charity,” I speak back to the idea of disability as something that should be primarily supported by charities, disrupting both the charity model and the medical model of disability.

The other way is to present disability as just another aspect of a character, part of how they engage with the world. And I do that largely to remind readers that Disabled people do exist and that disabilities shape our lives in different ways.

KAC:  Accessibility can be a big issue for Disabled writers taking part in conventions and events, applying to writing workshops and fellowships, even receiving awards at award ceremonies. What can cons and workshops do to help Disabled folx attend safely? 

DNS:  The main thing they can do is consult with the Disabled community. Often convention organizers believe that if they have elevators and ramps, they are accessible. They don’t understand the diversity of disabilities, nor do they consider the ableist mentality of many people involved in the cons.

I have at different times been told to “check” my cane—they think it is a prop—or that I can’t use elevators because they are “only for the special guests.” I’ve encountered barriers around people’s ideas of how a Disabled body “should” look.

Finally, it is critical to have a Disabled person specially designated to oversee accessibility.

KAC:  How can Disabled communities create and hold safe spaces for multiply marginalized Disabled folx?

DNS:  This is a central issue within the Disabled community. So often, intersectional identities are ignored, and people assume that everyone encounters the same barriers. Like any other community, the Disabled community can be racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic: we need to be working toward challenging not just ableism but also other forms of injustice. Our social justice work always needs to be intersectional.

For folks that don’t know the term “intersectional,” it is one that was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, who pointed out that experiences of discrimination aren’t the same for everyone, and that people experience overlapping discrimination depending on the connection between race, class, ability, and gender.

KAC:  So we should listen to what multiply marginalized Disabled folx are saying about these issues and make sure our spaces are inclusive for everyone.

DNS:  Absolutely.

KAC:  What advice would you offer to publishers about finding and working with #ownvoices Disabled writers? How can industry professionals create and hold space for us?

DNS:  The fundamental thing is to ensure disability representation in all aspects of the publishing process. Representation matters and can be the difference between perpetuating harmful ableism or creating significant Disabled works. We also need to remind editors that Disabled people are the experts on their narratives. We know our stories best.

KAC:  Last but not least, I’d like to come back to finding community. There’s something magical and rare about Disabled creative communities, about meeting other Disabled folx outside of a medical context. How can we find and meet other Disabled writers? How do we connect with Disabled communities?

DNS:  I can’t underestimate how powerful the Disabled community is. It allows us to do our work because if we are looking for support and accommodations, odds are someone has already encountered the same barriers and overcome them. Frequently, we find out about hostile or problematic markets from other Disabled writers. And our Disabled writing communities support us.

I find a lot of my writing process involves checking in with my Disabled friends—getting their support and supporting them in return. Social media are dynamic spaces for connecting with these communities. In particular, I’ve found what we’ve called Disabled Twitter to be a powerful space for creating community and not feeling alone. We can see that others are experiencing the same things or working through the same issues. It allows us to feel a sense of community and connection, and prevents the isolation that is often part of the Disabled experience in our highly ableist society.

KAC:  Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up?

DNS:  I think that covers everything. Thank you for such powerful and thought-provoking questions, and thank you for the opportunity to chat with you and reach out to others in our community.

KAC:  Thank you so much for sitting down to talk with me today! 

Readers, please check out Derek’s work at speculatingcanada.ca and dereknewmanstille.ca!

Disabled readers, we’d love to hear your thoughts! What writing advice do you have for other writers like you? Join the conversation on social media with #writingwhileDisabled and #cripwriting!

Kristy Anne Cox: I am so pleased to be interviewing the wonderful Mary Robinette Kowal today. Mary Robinette lives in Tennessee and is a writer, puppeteer, writing educator, podcaster, and the winner of many awards. Mary Robinette's pronouns are she/her.

So hi, Mary Robinette, let's start by introducing your work. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do? 

Mary Robinette Kowal: Sure. You covered most of the bases about my larger biography. What I write are science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels. The novels that are published are all historical in some way, either historical fantasy like my ‘Jane Austen with Magic’ series, The Glamourist Histories, or alternate Apollo-era science fiction, which is my Lady Astronaut series. 

KAC: Lovely. And how do you fit into the disabled community, which disabled communities do you identify with?

MRK: This is an interesting question because while I have some invisible disabilities, most of my interaction with the community is actually as a caregiver. I have depression and ADHD. And then I also have an essential tremor. But most of the engagement that I do with the community is around Parkinson's, which my mother has. So, the interesting thing about the depression and the ADHD is that I was diagnosed very late. I'm 52 and was not diagnosed with depression until I was 45. And with ADHD, I think it was 49?

In hindsight, they are things that I have dealt with my entire life and have affected my ability to move through the world, because the world is not built for people whose brains are wired the way my brain is wired. But because, for decades, I didn't know that my brain was wired differently, I have come up with so many work-arounds that I just didn't realize it was a disability. And with ADHD in particular, I tend to push back against that very much. I'm like, you know, this is the way my brain is wired, and it's very useful in a lot of different ways. 

The parts of it that are a disability are parts where the world and the definition of normal have been rigidly defined based on a brain model that is not my brain model. But my brain model is not broken. 

KAC: Right. And this is very typical of women and femmes who are neurodiverse, right? Neurodivergence is an identity or diagnosis we discover later in life than many others do. And the process can be muddled by debates over labels, disability, and neurodiversity.

MRK: Mhm. 

KAC: I think both labels, for me, have been useful in understanding what sets of challenges I'm dealing with so that I can gather information and make informed decisions. 

MRK: Yes, and once I understood that was what was happening, it opened up a whole new toolbox for me to use. You know, it's like—I have the tools now to recognize, ‘Oh, that thing is happening. You need to take steps now instead of waiting until it becomes debilitating.’ 

KAC: Or until it becomes a medical crisis.

MRK: Yeah.  

The essential tremor is so mild, that if I were not also a professional puppeteer… you know, it causes me to drop things. I can no longer do very fine close-up work.  

KAC: Yeah. 

MRK: I shouldn't say in any other field... But in my life as a writer, it has had no impact except my handwriting has gotten messy. And I drop things a lot. 

KAC: Well, thank you for sharing the details. I think that's going to help our readers place themselves in this conversation and sort out which advice might be useful. I have bipolar depression, OCD, ADHD, Anxiety Disorder, and neurological issues. So, I identify with all of that. Thank you. 

MRK: Sure.

KAC: I feel like there's a whole lot of overlap between the Venn diagram of ‘writers and depressed people’ or ‘writers and people with ADHD.’ What specific barriers in the writing community have you experienced as a writer with these neurodiverse conditions?

MRK: There are two things, I would say. One is time management because being a writer professionally is all about hitting deadlines. Like, there's all of the creative stuff, but you have to be able to hit deadlines, and you have to be able to switch gears very quickly and easily from, ‘now I am writing’ to ‘now I'm doing self-promotion,’ and you have to do all of these things and keep a lot of balls in the air and not drop them. And the problem that I run into is that I have very little sense of time passing, which is great when I'm in the zone. But that can also mean that I can go two weeks without checking email and feel like I checked it yesterday. Yeah, and that's not ideal.

So that one is for the ADHD side. With depression, the thing that I realized, and I think this is why it hits writers and other creatives so hard, is that part of what happens when you're depressed is that work becomes difficult. And as a writer, part of my identity is the fact that I write. 

So one of the things I think we do as a community that's very damaging to people with depression or ADHD, is to tell them that a writer writes every day. Because not everybody does. And when you tell someone that, what happens to me and to a lot of other people is that you think, well, I'm not writing. Therefore, I must not be a writer, which makes the depression worse, which makes it harder to write, and it's like this downward spiral that is built on a basic misunderstanding of who you are. It's like—you're a writer, even when you're not actively writing. When you go to sleep at night, you do not stop being a writer.

KAC: Yeah, it becomes a big identity crisis for a lot of people. I feel like a lot of writing advice that we kind of accept as ‘the way things are’ can be detrimental to disabled writers trying to find their approach. Is there another piece of commonly repeated writing advice that always hits you as, ‘That's not going to work for everyone?’ 

MRK: I mean, I think there's very little… I'm trying to think of a piece of writing advice that does work for everyone. One of the things is that sometimes I'll hear people say, you know, ‘Come up with your ideal perfect writing environment.’ And I'm like, ‘That's a great luxury if you can do it.’ But, there are so many reasons that people can't do it.

So what is more useful—for me, I should say, what is more useful for me—is the idea of form versus essence. Form is something you can touch or buy, and essence is the way something makes you feel. I think what happens a lot of times when people are saying to come up with your ideal writing environment, is they're like, ‘Figure out what the form is.’ And the problem is that when you chase a form over and over again, at some point, the form isn't going to work for you because it was designed to fill this ‘essence’ thing.

What has worked better for me is to figure out what my barriers are to writing. And if I can figure out what those are, then I can create an area anywhere I go that gives me the space that I need. So like, I figured out that for dialogue, my brain will go to the human voice. But if there's enough white noise in a coffee shop, I don't identify individual sounds. So, white noise works. A quiet place works, earbuds work. Music without lyrics works. There are a lot of different things that will work. But if I tell people, ‘No, I have to have absolute silence when I write,’ it's like—that's a form that is not addressing the symptom. And the symptom is actually that I'm easily distracted.

KAC: In disability lingo, we’re talking about accommodations. You're finding the set of tools that works with the situation you're in that day. And for neurodiverse people, we might have to have a diverse set of tools from day to day. One day depression is in ascendance, so I've got to use these tools. But another day, I'm dealing with OCD. So I'm going to use different accommodation tools. Kind of like that? 

MRK: Yeah. Yeah, very much like that. And also that—the external factors may also change.

KAC: Yes.

MRK: Particularly when you get farther down your career path. I can write on an airplane, I can write in a car, I can write in an airport lounge, because I figured out, okay, this is how I can take that. You know, these are the things that I need. It's like, I cannot have my perfect clean writing desk. But, what I can do is sit with my back to a room. I can sit facing a window so that I can look out at general movement but not be distracted by narrative.

KAC: Yes, that makes sense. I'm kind of bouncing around here in the questions, you're talking about all things that I'm going to ask you about. This is great. Can I ask you what your writing process is like?

MRK: (Laughs) Well, I'll talk about what my ideal writing process is like, and I'll talk about what my writing process is like in the middle of the pandemic because they are not the same.  

My ideal writing process—when my brain is working well, when the environment is cooperating, when the world is not on fire—is that I have a word goal. Usually 2000 words. And I sit down and work for about an hour and a half, and then take a break, and do other things, and then sit down for another hour and a half, and do that every day. I also like spending several months leading up to sitting down to write; coming up with an outline and using that time to sort of figure out what I want the book to look like, the overall shape, so that when I'm sitting down to write, I'm not having to engage as much executive function, because I know what's going to happen next—and again, I did not have the words to describe what I was doing before I was diagnosed. I don't have to engage the executive functions, which is hard for me. But I can let all of the free association stuff happen, which the ADHD brain is extremely good at. I bring all of that in and just kind of do the art of it. Plus, all of the other stuff that I've internalized about the actual writing process. That's the ideal way. 

The way I am writing now is that I want to write in the morning, have tried to clear the decks for it, but I still get distracted, despite having every piece of a nursemaid software turned on that I could turn on. And I'm writing in about 500-word chunks if I'm lucky, at night before I go to bed, when my brain finally clears. I don't enjoy that as much because I don't get into the flow state, which is what I enjoy. But, I am moving forward in things. My general feeling is that any words are good words. So there are some days where I don't write—at all—and I am okay with that because the world is on fire. And has been for over a year at this point.

KAC: Yeah, it's a scary time. Do you find yourself writing about characters who have similar disabilities to you? Like, have you ever written an ADHD or depressed character?

MRK: Hmm, no, well not depression. Yes, I've been thinking about how to write ADHD. The problem is that, because it's the way my brain works, it's hard for me to tell what's the way other people's brains work. So probably all of my characters have been that way because I've just described the way my brain goes. But writing is linear, so it's much easier to mask that. Although again, I have not written someone like the main character who has... Oh, that's not true. Nicole, in Relentless Moon, is dealing with depression, but hers is situational depression. I mean, I know that she is dealing with depression in there, but I have not yet had a character dealing with depression and ADHD simultaneously for the same reason that I have only had one story where my character is a puppeteer—because I cannot tell what is common knowledge and what is jargon.

KAC: Yeah, it's hard when you know something so well, to figure out how to portray it from an outside perspective.

MRK: Yeah, like—anxiety was easy because I know what it looks like from the outside. And I spent several years working for a theater company where I was being sexually harassed daily by the artistic director in my 20s. It was not pleasant. In hindsight, I was dealing with anxiety and panic attacks on a pretty regular basis. I read my journals from that period, and I just want to say, ‘Get out!’ So I know what that feels like. Like, I lived in that place for much longer than I should have. But it's not something that I deal with on any kind of chronic basis.

KAC: Well, you had an article on your blog, called ‘Sometimes Writer's Block is Really Depression,’ which, thank you for writing that. That hit me when I read that and I found it to be really useful advice. But you have some specific accommodations on that article that you talk about, like using Written Kitten writing. Do you still use a lot of those things? Do you have any updates?

MRK: Yeah, I still absolutely use those. I go through and update the list of tools, and add new ones, and remove ones that have stopped being supported. The one that is working for me consistently pretty well is 4thewords.com. And I will also say—one of the interesting side effects of 4thewords is that because you are fighting, you pick the monster you're going to fight. You know, whether it's a monster that's a 150-word monster or one that's a 1400-word monster. And what's interesting is that it also serves as an early warning signal for me. Because when I sit down to pick monsters right now, I am only interested in fighting the monsters that are 150 words, because that's all I think I can sustain.

KAC: Does it give you an actual monster? Like a cartoon or drawing…? 

Readers, here Mary Robinette is opening up her tablet and showing me the 4thewords program.

MRK: Let me get this open. So, here's my writing environment. In the game, here are all of the monsters you can fight. Like this one, you have to write 15 minutes without stopping, so sometimes I'll fight this if I just can't start. I'll fight them for five minutes. 

For this one, you have to write 100 words in 10 minutes. It's like, ‘Oh, I can!,’ but actually, you know, sometimes I can't do that. And so I'm like, ah, 100 words in 20 minutes—I could do that. But then, like, 2000 words in 12 hours—on a normal day, that's easy. But now I'm just like, ‘No, just give me the short ones.’ And I would rather fight 10 of these, which is ridiculous, than one of the big ones. 

KAC: That's not ridiculous. That's like the, ‘Would you rather fight 100 horse-sized ducks or one duck-sized horse?’ Readers, what we're looking at is the 4thewords.com game, and there are very brightly colorful monsters. There's a quest book. This looks amazing. I'm excited to try this.

MRK: Yeah, oh, and also you get a wardrobe so you can dress your character. But to get these wardrobe items you have to earn them, so it's good at externalizing the internal consequences of writing and the internal rewards of it.

KAC: It's gamifying it.

MRK: It is, 100%. It's a role-playing game in which the metric for defeating monsters is the number of words you write and the time in which you write them.

KAC: And then does it know, or do you have to tell it?

MRK: It knows, it tracks it.

KAC: It knows. (Creepy voice. Then laughs)

MRK: Yeah, so this works super well for me, but for other people I know, that kind of pressure causes them enormous anxiety. I have another friend who likes the idea of it but can't deal with the pressure. So they write in their word processor, and then they come at the end of the day, paste into the thing, and pick a monster. They're like, ‘Okay, so I wrote this many words. And it took me about this long to write them.’ It’s like that.

KAC: Yeah, I thought about things like this before, when I did NaNoWriMo. Because you've got those tools for, like, just the month of November. But it shows you how many words everyone else in your state has written - the teamwork aspect of it works well for me.

MRK: Yeah, they don't have teams yet. They have a community, they're bringing teams. But honestly, the only reason that I write some days is that I don't want to break a streak. 

KAC: Yes! What about a writing group? Do you do a writing group too?

MRK: I don't, I have in the past. Yeah, I have not had a writing group for probably five years. And I miss that. I have several coworking groups and peer groups where we talk about writing, but I don't have anyone currently reading my fiction, which also, that external motivator is enormously helpful. And I've been thinking about needing to get a critique group again.

KAC: Or, even just the social support of a writing group. Right? Like even if they're not giving critiques, if they're just meeting in a coffee shop once a month to complain about where they're stuck in their plot, or talk through a problem, or just sit there and have friends around the water cooler.

MRK: Yeah, so in that regard, yes, I have a daily coworking session with one group of folks through the Lady Astronaut Club, which is a group of my fans and friends at this point, and then I have another group that just meets once a week at a different time. And those two times, I try to treat writing as sacred. And I hope that when I am no longer president of SFWA that will be easier to do?! (Laughs)

KAC: (Laughs) I hope so!

MRK: But often now I get into a session and I'm like, ‘And now I have to go do this thing!’

KAC: Yeah. Scheduling. 

MRK: Yes. 

KAC: What about your process is different when you're writing a short story as opposed to a novel?

MRK: Not much, honestly. It doesn't take me as long to plot a short story, and I can wing it if I need to. But in both cases, if there are other pressures, external pressures, I can't keep the whole story in my head, so I have to outline it. I tend to do small outlines for short stories. They're not incredibly detailed but just like ‘this is the scene,’ ‘this is who's going to be there,’ ‘this is what's going to happen.’ ‘This is the order in which you were hoping things will happen in that scene.’ Sometimes it's just ‘this is what's happening next.’ You know, ‘they're going to go to the coffee shop,’ and you're like, ‘all right, yeah!’ But it's not much different. For me, the primary difference between novels and short stories is the number of characters and plot threads, but otherwise, it's just fiction.

KAC: Yeah, and one thing I do is, I'll switch genres—if I'm at a point where I just can't write coherent fiction. I'm also a poet, so I'll switch to poetry because there are days where I can write poetry, but I can't write fiction, and there are days where I can write nonfiction, but I can't do poetry or fiction. And it helps to be able to jump around. But not everyone writes in multiple genres. 

MRK: Yeah, I have often used structured procrastination, where I have multiple things going. But for me, usually when I'm switching it's like, “I have been writing for a while. Now I will go build a puppet.”

KAC: Yes, the visual or tactile arts too. I think a lot of times people don't tend to think that's also stimulating your creative brain. You can sit and color an adult coloring book page or crochet something, and that might get juices stirring to help get you in the zone to write something.

MRK: Yeah. 

KAC: That has been pretty useful, to think about other means of warming up my creative brain.

MRK: Yeah. So one thing that I will do as far as warming up the creative brain is that I will try to do some physical activity. Something that engages a different part, or engages me kinetically, and is not a language-based thing. And while I'm doing that, I am then consciously thinking about the scenario in the words that I want to use. It must be something that has a finite amount of time, like doing the dishes, or walking around the block. Then I will finish and immediately go to the computer and sit down and put down the things that I was thinking about. I found that's incredibly useful for switching gears and warming up.

KAC: Yeah, and that could be a means of behavioral activation, too. Just from a mental health perspective. Getting that part of your brain going may not look like putting words on paper, depending on what's going on for you.

Earlier you talked about how writing becomes part of our identity. I feel like a lot of writers who have depression, in particular, will often fall into these cognitive impairments or this negative self-talk. Right? So, then you don't write because you're having a depressive episode, and you're worried that you're not a writer now and you'll never write again. And the negative self-talk becomes, like, really strong. Do you ever experience that now? Is that still an ongoing struggle?

MRK: It's less that I am a terrible writer and more that I have written a terrible thing. Which is the same thing. And it's always at the three-quarter mark.

KAC: Oh, yeah? That's useful to know.

MRK: Yeah, I know it, too. And it's really common. There's a thing called the ‘three-quarter effect.’ When you are three-quarters of the way through something, the remaining quarter seems impossible. And with storytelling, the reason for that is really easy to pinpoint, which is that we're switching modes from unpacking things and opening questions to needing to put everything back in the box. If you think about, like, going on vacation, part of the thing that's a pain in the ass about the end of vacation is that you have to get everything back into the suitcase.

KAC: Yeah, all the books you bought at the con table.

MRK: Yes. Everything that you didn't plan on acquiring, everything that you took with you that's now a little grubby. You have to go back into the suitcase. Getting it out of the suitcase was fun and delightful!

KAC: Yeah, that makes sense. So, what advice do you have for getting back on the horse after you have a period of interruption? 

MRK: I'm a firm believer in doing something just for joy. I'm also a firm believer in an easy setting, which means working with something that you're already familiar with. So don't necessarily try to get back on the horse and change genre at the same time. I'm a big believer/proponent in the value of fan fiction as a way to just be happy and remind yourself that you began writing because you love it. 

KAC: Without the pressure.

MRK: Without the pressure, right. You can decide whether you want to share that with people or whether you don't. And you can use that time just to nurture yourself, or you can use that time to work on your craft. But much like other aspects of my life when I am trying to get back into the swing, the biggest thing that I run into is, it's not that I don't want to write. It's that there are barriers, and some of those barriers are of my own making, and some of them are not. So, what I do is identify what my barriers are. Like, ‘Am I having trouble writing because I don't think I could do it?,’ ‘Am I having trouble writing because I don't know what to write? Or I don't have any ideas?,’ ‘Am I having trouble writing because I'm just tired, or hungry?’ You know, like, ‘Why am I not sitting down?’ And if I can identify what the barrier is, then I can usually come up with a solution. Basically, what I'm doing is I'm taking the writing process and making it more granular. And that's one of the ways that you solve problems; you break them down into smaller pieces. So if I'm not writing, it's like, ‘Well, why am I not writing? Okay. What can I do to address that?’

KAC: Yeah, that makes sense. You know, I remember in Writing Excuses. There is an episode where you guys were talking about Newton's law of writing. You say, “Butt in chair, hands on keyboard.” I remember thinking, ‘That is great advice, except on days when I can't sit, or use a keyboard,’ right? Those might be days that I'm making an audio file and transcribing it. I just think that being aware of what that looks like for you might be different.

MRK: Yeah, exactly. ‘Butt in chair, hands on keyboard’ is the form, but the essence is, 'Make space, do the work.’

KAC: Yeah. Get yourself in your writing space, get out the tools that you need. 

What common harmful narratives have you seen about disabled people with your disabilities?

MRK: The one that kept me from getting diagnosed. It is that the people who are depressed are sad. And I'm like, ‘I'm pretty cheerful.’ And while the sadness does come with depression, that is so not all it is. It is not just hanging out in a room wearing all black while listening to emo music. And while my worst episodes were very like, ‘Oh, yeah, that is textbook’—not getting out of bed, not bathing—the problem is that that depiction is the point at which you are in crisis, and not depicting all of the stages that lead up to it does not give people tools for recognizing when it's happening. 

The other narrative is that you can just pull yourself up. Just buck up, shake it off, pick it up. It's like, ‘No, this is this brain’s chemistry. This brain is going to brain.’ And the idea that taking medication is shameful.

KAC: Oh, yeah, that's a big one. Yeah. Everyone, take your medication, please!

MRK: Yes.

KAC: Which, we should just take a moment here to acknowledge what a privilege it is to have access to a diagnosis and treatments. But if you have those tools, by all means, be, you know, using them.

MRK: I spent 45 years without knowing that I could take medication. And when I finally went in and took it, it was life-changing. I don't take it now, because we have cognitive tools that work for me. The ADHD meds that I take are on an as-needed basis. And in both of those cases, it's because I didn't like the side effects. But I will go back on them when I need them.

KAC: Yeah. I feel that becomes one of the barriers that we face as disabled writers, just basic access to health care. That's a barrier in the way of writing. And then the more marginalized you are, the more layers of marginalization you add in, the more likely it is that you're going to have more barriers like that. 

MRK: Yeah, and I would say, the flip side of the ‘medication is life-changing,’ is the idea that medication is the only thing you need to do. Because that is not the case.

KAC: It's almost always the combination of tools. Very true. What about conventions and writing spaces? What can organizers and people who run these spaces do to help people with disabilities like yours access those events and spaces?

MRK: I think very strongly that every convention should have a quiet room where you can go and have no sensory or as little sensory input as possible. Easy access to food, and the ability to go back to your room easily. Gaps in the programming, like one thing that we will do—and I say this as someone who runs cons—is that we want to make sure that people get the value out of it. So we'll create so much content. And there's no downtime. 

KAC: Yeah. More time to get from room to room with a mobility device. 

MRK: Yes, exactly. No time to get from room to room. No time to process anything. You know, no time. And so, like, with the Nebulas, in the physical thing, we have all of the rooms close together, and we build in a half hour between each program item. And we build in a lunch break, and then we stop, and at the end, there's a sizable dinner break. We have things that begin after breakfast. So that you can go and eat things.

KAC: A variety of schedules. Scheduling options.

MRK: Yes. Some of these are things that are not addressing my stuff, but disabilities in general. Ramps should not be a controversy. Microphone use. I was very resistant to microphone use, and I have to acknowledge that. The reason I'm resistant to microphone use is that one of the side effects of microphones is that they cause all of the voices to come from one location, and as someone who has trouble focusing, that can make it harder for me. But, the flip side of that is that I can crochet and do something with my hands to help with my focus issues. And having things come over speakers makes it significantly easier for people who are hard of hearing or deaf. Make sure that you do not put the microphone in front of your mouth so that people who lip-read can see your mouth. Oh, glare also, paying attention to where the light is when you set up tables.

KAC: There are so many different physical needs that people might have. I feel like the biggest question is, ‘Are you involving disabled people in planning your convention?’

MRK: Yes.

KAC: If somebody needs a button to open doors, that's a huge issue if they can't physically enter the space.

MRK: I am keenly conscious of wheelchair access, mobility access in general, scooters. Because my mom uses an ability device. And boy, I was not conscious of that before her diagnosis. Yeah, maybe a little bit, but my awareness of things like the microphone in front of the mouth is because I have friends who are deaf. Because I've worked on cons where we've got people working with us on disability. And for God's sake, if you're doing an online convention and you do not have closed captioning, what are you even doing? 

KAC: Oh, I feel like that's one of the beautiful things about an online form, that you can lean into captioning. And the live chat at the bottom, if you're doing a panel—although it also can be intimidating for some people learning this technology , and it presents its own accommodation challenges.

MRK: But again, that's a thing that you can accommodate as an organizer. You have practice sessions. You have a tech team who's willing to talk people through and make that available before the convention starts. Because you're not limited to ‘everyone has to arrive in the same location.’

KAC: That's true. What about publishing professionals who want to work with Own Voices writers? But the thing that they're talking about is stigmatized, so a lot of people aren't ‘out’ about being disabled in that way. A lot of people who have depression never share that with anyone because they're still so ashamed. So like, editors and other publishers, what advice would you give to them about finding people with invisible disabilities to write those stories? 

MRK: You have to educate yourself first so that people know that you are a safe person to be able to have those conversations with. I got a note from an editor about a character. So—this is not published yet—but there's a character with a chronic pain condition. And there's another character who is retired. And the note that I got was maybe the reason he's retired is that he has a physical deformity, and I'm like, okay, so I have multiple problems with this note. First of all, differences in the way we are built do not prevent anyone from that. A lot of people do work with, quote-unquote, “physical deformities.” Second, really? Is that the language we want to use there? Or maybe that was first. I'm not even sure.

But also, part of my philosophy is that a character with chronic pain or depression or anorexia is allowed to have a story that is not about dealing with that issue. Their disability. Yes, it's like, ‘Will it affect the way they move through the world?’ 100%. And if it doesn't affect the way they move through the world, then it's just set dressing and not very good set dressing. But there's a difference between affecting the way they move through the world which will affect the plot, and being about ‘it.’

KAC: Right. Disability is not a thing you need to overcome as your plot arc. Like the only plot available for disabled characters is, ‘Well, in the end, he magically grew legs!’ Yay, he's not disabled anymore!

Another issue that I see a lot in feedback is abled people or differently disabled people who think my disability isn't realistic. 

MRK: Right. 

KAC: So I'm writing a story about a girl with OCD, and depression, and ADHD, and mobility issues, and people are like, ‘There's too much going on here!’ and, ‘You can't do this and have her fight dragons. That's just too much going on in one story,’ and I'm like, ‘Well, great, thank you for telling me my life is unrealistic.’

MRK: Oh yeah. The other one that I love is, ‘They're so whiny.’ 

KAC: Yeah.

MRK: I'm like... Are they, though? Like, I don't think they are.

KAC: Yeah. Another one that I hear, like from depressed writers is, ‘I would write a depressed character, but who wants to read about a guy with depression?’ And people don't think anyone would be interested in that story. But I don't know if you're familiar with Mr. Robot. Did you ever watch that series? 

MRK: I watched a couple of episodes.

KAC: There are all these scenes where they just do a brief flash, and you see him crying alone in the hallway or talking to himself alone in the bathroom. And they don't spend a lot of time with it, but it's clear that that is going on. The story isn't necessarily about that, but it's clear that he is disabled. I found that refreshing.

MRK: Yeah, that was one of the challenges when I wrote Relentless Moon and Nicole was in an extremely bleak place. Because you are not aware of the passage of time when it's happening, but you're in there with her. You're in that terrible spiral for a long time, conveying both the passage of time and the character’s awareness of it simultaneously because they are kind of opposed. 

KAC: Yeah. Well, I think it's usually helpful when the author frames that around what they get done while this is going on, even if it takes them a long time to get that thing done. Like, ‘Okay, I'm in the bleakest pit of despair here. This is, you know, despair. And then I did X. Despair. And then I did Y.’ You know, even if those are small steps towards whatever their plot goal is, that could make for more interesting reading. It doesn't mean you can't have a depressed character. You just don't want to trigger a depressive episode in all of your readers, right?

MRK: Right. So, in Relentless Moon, Nicole has anorexia, and I wrote that in a way that talked about what that experience was like without hitting triggers…

KAC: That's a real challenge.

MRK: And I felt like it was important to try to do because I'm like, I don't want, the word is, ‘thinspiration’.  And you know, that was also one of those things wherein the process of working on it, I was like, “Oh. Huh. Look at that behavior in me.” Again, you don't see the steps or stages. 

KAC: Well, I think that's one of the beautiful things about writing, is that writing can become the tool by which we discover things about ourselves. Really important things.

MRK: Yeah. And at the same time, I think that interrogation of self can often lead to better fiction. I also don't think that everything needs to be therapy when one is writing. 

KAC: Yeah. 

MRK: Which is the other stereotype about writers that makes me a little cranky sometimes. 

KAC: Yeah. If that's what you do with it, that's great. And that is one way to approach writing. But it doesn't have to be that.

MRK: Yeah, it does not have to hurt. It can hurt. But it is not a requirement.

KAC: You know, I think we've covered most of the topics that I had. Although, I do want to circle back to the community. That's the last topic, if you don't mind.

So, I wanted to ask you how disabled communities can create and hold spaces for multiply marginalized folk. And you talked about the communities you're a part of, including the Lady Astronaut community. What do you do to make that space safe for multiply marginalized disabled folks?

MRK: One of the things that we do, is that when people come into the community, there's a code of conduct. But the other thing we do is telling people that our channel is not just about health and disability, because we believe that these are parts of your everyday life, and that you should be able to discuss them anywhere and anytime that you need to.

KAC: So destigmatize it.

MRK: Yes, and we do that every time new people come in, so that you can talk about whatever part of your life you need to talk about, wherever it is that you're in. If you're in Aaron's space and you want to talk about the fact that you can't get a pilot's license right now because of your depression medication? Do that.

KAC: You're not separating those people. You're treating disability as just a normal part of the human condition.

MRK: Because it is.

KAC: Yeah. I love that. How did you start that? Like, for those of us who don't have fans yet, if we wanted to be part of a community like that, how do you get involved in meeting other authors?

MRK: Good question. Let me think about that. What I would say is, start with people that you trust. There's often a community already in existence. Sometimes it's a question of searching for it. Sometimes it is a question of starting it on your own. Sometimes it's asking, does this exist? The community that I have for essential tremors and Parkinson's I found through Facebook. It is not my ideal platform, but it is very handy to hear other people's stories. 

KAC: Yeah. It can be hard to find places to meet other disabled people outside of the medical or caregiver context. 

MRK: Yeah, exactly. But if anyone wants to join the Lady Astronaut Club, there's a link on my website. I can give it to you. There's a place. It's a self-addressed stamped envelope. 

KAC: Readers, you can join the Lady Astronaut Club at https://maryrobinettekowal.com/the-lady-astronaut-club/

MRK: Yeah, so you send a letter away, and you get a letter back with a membership card and password, like in the actual mail, because it's fun.

KAC: An actual card!

MRK: An actual membership card. Yeah, member-Ship card. Occasionally, I send other mail too, because why not?

KAC: That's awesome. I love that. 

Readers, if you haven’t already, please check out Mary Robinette’s work at her website, https://maryrobinettekowal.com. You can look for her books at your favorite local bookstore, and her short fiction is available in varied magazines and Mary Robinette’s anthology, Word Puppets. If you’d like to learn more about writing, she teaches with the Writing Excuses podcast. You can also look for her on Patreon, where she offers more writing instruction and fun content for patrons.

Thanks again, Mary Robinette, this was lovely.

MRK: You’re welcome!

Nisi Shawl

Kristy Anne Cox: I’m so pleased to be interviewing the wonderful Nisi Shawl today! Nisi lives in Seattle, and is a writer, editor, educator, Nebula finalist, and winner of both the World Fantasy Award and the Tiptree/Otherwise award! If you’re lucky enough to hear one of Nisi’s readings live, they may even sing you a song! Nisi’s pronouns are they/them.

Hi, Nisi! First I’d like to thank you for giving this interview! Let’s start with introducing our readers to you. Would you mind telling us about yourself and your work?

Nisi Shawl: I'm a 65-year-old writer from the Midwest. I began my writing career as a poet, and have gradually lengthened the forms I create, moving on to short stories, novellas, and eventually novels. I'm working on a sequel now to my debut novel Everfair, so I may be about to write a series! The sequel is called Kinning, and I've been focusing on it almost exclusively since March 2020. I've also written three short stories in that period, but usually by this time I would have finished eight or nine, so that's definitely a decrease.

I also write nonfiction—reviews, essays, and so on—and edit.

KAC: How do you fit into the disabled community? Which disabled communities do you identify with?

NS: Broadly speaking, I'm someone who wasn't born disabled but acquired disability over my life. And most of my disabilities are invisible, so I identify pretty strongly with that sort of meta-community.

I think the first identity I found as a disabled person was that of a fibromyalgian, as you might say. Very mysterious pain syndrome, and yeah, it's not real visible in others, even to those in its grip. I attended a class of people coping with fibro and that was my first real community experience of that bond.

I'm about eight years into life with glaucoma, which has placed me in the low-vision community. My experience there is less chummy, but I still find myself gravitating to others I know are sharing common concerns, such as the ex-drummer of my punk rock band, who recently got back in touch with me. We have writing sessions together. More than sympathy, he offers me concrete solutions, technical approaches, things that he knows will help.

KAC: What specific barriers or speed bumps in the writing community have you faced as a disabled writer? As a multiply marginalized disabled writer?

NS: Since my disabilities have emerged gradually throughout my life, my experience of the barriers erected because of them is that I encountered these barriers after my writing career has had a degree of success. Specifically, people are asking me to blurb books, or speak on panels, or do all this other unpaid work that I would love to do but that I simply can't afford to do. I have only a certain number of vertical minutes in a day, and I have to monetize them. And I get that I'm expected to mentor emerging disabled writers, and to support the presence of writers from many, many marginalized communities. I really want to do that. I am the exact opposite of a snob. But it's just not always possible. I despair sometimes of people realizing my limitations in that sense.

KAC: So, as a follow up to that question, I heard you speak on a panel once at WisCon, where you said that women and non-binary folk often come to the writing milestones that one expects of a writer later in life because of all the marginalization that they face. Do you feel like that applies to disabled people as well?

NS: Yes. I do for any marginalized group. That definitely applies. I had this sort of twisting in my gut the first time I saw in The New Yorker a list of you know, what was it? 40 Writers Under 40 or something that people were supposed to be applauding. And I thought, well, you know, that's all very well. And, you know, I can see how people would think that someone that's coming up and emerging deserves special attention. But why make it agist? You know, there are forces that work against you, being older as a writer and in publishing. For instance, you'll get pushback if you try to get into publishing as an intern in your forties. The rationale that people are giving, I guess, is like, well, why didn't you know that you wanted to do this before? Well, maybe they did, and they had to take care of their pain levels. Or they had to raise children. Or, they had to get an education which, because of class reasons, they had no money to do until they were in their thirties. I find it incredibly privileged, actually.

KAC: Yeah, I had kind of a similar reaction to seeing lists like that because then you feel guilty. You're comparing yourself, like, why am I forty and I haven't done all those things in my writing career yet?

NS: Yeah, and the way that that education, for instance, has been set up in the past. Someone who is not cited has a really hard time. Or at least has had a really hard time. I remember. I don't know what the medical cause was, but there was a period in my freshman year at Residential College, University of Michigan, where I was told not to read for three weeks. And that was out of the question. That was totally out. That could not happen. Was I supposed to hire someone to read for me, and then highlight the text for me and go back over the parts that were highlighted? For all these historical reasons, that is a totally unrealistic yardstick to go by for anyone in a marginalized community.

KAC: Yeah, that makes sense. Can I ask you how your disabilities impact and inform your work?

NS: Well, as we've seen, typing right now—not really the greatest thing for me to do for long periods. Fortunately, my writing process is such that I am editing as I go. I'm not one of those people who say, "I'm going to write three thousand words and then I'll edit them." I just write very slowly. And hopefully what I write stays. I don't know if that was—I think that's just fortuitous circumstance that my method fits with my capabilities, my physical capabilities. I'm now using a huge, eighteen inches ... no, it must be larger. I don't even know. I should get out a ...  it's got to be at least at least a thirty-inch computer screen so that I can see the words! Because, like with the glaucoma that went untreated for eight years, because I had no insurance, that has reduced my visual acuity to about sixty percent of what it used to be, even with glasses. So, that's an accommodation, but it also makes it very hard for me to read other books. I can't read on the screen because that means that I have to sit up, and that causes me physical pain after a certain period. I can't read in bed because there's no screen there and the print is really small. And so, for many years, I have been the editor of the reviews section of Cascadia Subduction Zone, and I have also done my own reviews for Cascadia Subduction Zone, for The Seattle Times, for The Los Angeles Review of Books, for all these different places. Washington Post. I have a really hard time doing that now, because reading is part of it. And reading causes difficulty.

KAC: Yeah, it takes time and energy to find the right accommodation for you. And that can be really hard when you're dealing with medical problems or a full-time job or kids or all these other issues that that not everyone has, but they're writing.

NS: And also, the thing is not just that you have these issues, but that they change over time. So you can come up with an accommodation that works this year. But be prepared to change, because that accommodation may not work in two or three years.

KAC: Okay. So, what is your writing process like?

NS: Oh, that? Ha! I went once to a writing retreat. That was basically just me living in an apartment and writing. But the person who was running the whole facility, all the apartments and everything, came over to visit one time, and she saw that I had this altar built up. She saw that I had photos that were sort of models/templates for some of my characters pasted on the wall, that I was like burning incense, that I associated with what I was writing. It was Everfair at the time. And I was listening to music, to evoke the place. She said, "Well, you have a very developed writing process." which just cracked me up. What a diplomatic way of saying, "You are doing a lot of stuff that nobody needs to do." A very developed process. Yes, yes. She wasn't British, but that is like, I think, a classic example of British understatement. So yeah, what I do is, I wait until ... often until I've either gotten inspiration from someone's prompt or from a concatenation of different ideas; one idea is not enough to write. It's just not. But if I have an idea, and then someone else has a prompt that comes at something from a different angle, then I can write it. And usually what I will do is start a file with notes on a story that I'm thinking of writing. Like, is the wood wide web involved? And I'll put links to online articles. And I'll write the names of authors that I'm interested in investigating and just make this sort of ... it's like hummus. Uh, no not hummus. Sorry. It’s like humus. It's like this soil that my story can grow in. Then when I'm trying to write it, I set aside the time, and I don't let anybody mess with it. And I pray. I pray to the deity of communication in my tradition. My tradition is Ifa and I pray to Eshu, also known as Elegba, who communicates between different realms and is also ... pretty much in charge of the written word. So I pray for help there, and to my ancestors, and to any other deities that I think are particularly prominent in what I'm trying to present. If I'm writing about something that takes place in the ocean, maybe an ocean deity. And I start to associate incense and sometimes foods and often music with the story, because then I can go away from the story and live another relatively normal life, but then come back and the sensory cues will put me back in the mental frame of the story. So I keep notes, like when I wrote this story, I was listening to this kind of music and making an offering of cornmeal. And I was burning a candle anointed with Lily of the Valley oil, and all this different stuff because then, when people want revisions—and editors almost always do—then I have those cues on the card. And even if it's been months or a year, I can go back and reconstruct the sensory cues.

KAC: That's amazing. I love using sensory cues for writing, but I hadn't thought about tying them to a specific project like that before.

NS: Uh huh. So you just would do it for, like, all—any writing.

KAC: Yeah, I like it. I light candles whenever I write, and they always smell like pomegranate. And that's the smell I have associated with writing. But I really love the idea of having a particular fragrance or a particular sound or any other sensory cues to help you kind of get back in the zone of a particular project. I think that would work for abled people, too. But that's a really good accommodation.

NS: It's not foolproof, right? And like, you know, some people have sensitivities to certain smells so that, you know, they couldn't do that.

KAC: So, has the pandemic impacted your writing? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

NS: It has definitely impacted the process. Before the pandemic, I wrote in as much solitude as I could get. It was okay if people were around me as long as they didn't talk, like, no words. I didn't want any words in my ears because I was too busy hearing what I was going to write. Now I find myself writing basically during Zoom meetings. I have two scheduled meetings.

But I have two scheduled meetings every day with different writers. We get together, we talk for a few minutes. We talk about craft questions or what's going on in the world. You know, politics, music, whatever. And then we mute and write for forty-five minutes, fifty minutes, something like that. And then we report back. So there's this accountability thing going on, there's a sense of community, and yet there's also separation. I'm not hearing people talk. I don't have to see them if I don't want to. Although sometimes I take a peek because it's kind of inspiring to see other people focusing.

KAC: Yeah, getting the work done.

NS: Yeah. Although once I took a peek and someone was picking their nose. (Hahaha)

One of the things I've noticed is that the people that I do this with almost all have disabilities of one sort or another. And part of what we talk about is, "how are you feeling today?" Sometimes people have to bow out for the day because they just can't be vertical. They have to be lying down, with their eyes shut. But almost all of them are neuro-diverse in some way, or they have some physical issue ... I don't even know if I can run down the different things because I also am distrustful of the categories that are given to us as far as what our disabilities are called.

KAC: And that's a really loaded question, when it comes from an abled person, "how are you doing today?" But when it comes from a disabled person, it's kind of community building. Do you experience that?

NS: It really is. You know, there was—there were a few days when I was in—I would call them High Pain Days, and with fibro, I have not found a reliable pattern for what triggers the pain. Some things do, but then some things don't, and then the pain comes without it. So we were talking about the experience of pain in our breaks. What does pain do for you, and how do you experience it, how do you handle it, what do you dislike about it? And all that kind of stuff. And then we would get back to writing. So it was a very much an integration of understanding and sharing thoughts about disability, and sharing and understanding thoughts about writing and doing the work.

KAC: Yeah. Do you have any specific methods you use to write when you're in pain?

NS: Well, drugs.

KAC: Yeah.

NS: Let's not forget about the wonders of ibuprofen. And I recently discovered—this was also writing related, actually. It's funny how they feed back and forth. But I was writing in Everfair about a herb called dagga, or wild dagga, also known as lion's tail. So for research purposes, I decided I needed to try some of this herb. It is completely legal in the US, so I went online, I found a source and started smoking it. It does wonders for pain. I guess it makes sense, because the effects are very much like marijuana, and marijuana is noted for easing pain. Sometimes I'll have to roll up a joint of this dagga stuff as one of my aids to writing. I also have a brace that one of the people in my group loaned me, a wrist brace.

KAC: It's a wrist brace, is it like a carpal tunnel wrist brace?

NS: Yeah. Yeah. And I don't have carpal tunnel, but sometimes, for whatever reason, one of my wrists starts paining me.

KAC: For our readers, Nisi is holding up a wrist brace that has Velcro attachments that runs from the wrist and part way up the arm towards the elbow. It's the type of brace you will see for carpal tunnel.

NS: And someone else who had carpal tunnel and had recovered from it, in one of my writing meetings, just sent it to me, gave it to me. So that's the kinds of accommodations I mentioned that I had gotten together—one of the members of one of these groups, he was the drummer for a punk rock group that I had started, and he's low-vision. Totally different cause than my glaucoma. I can't remember the name now. It's like macular degeneration, but it's not. It's a genetic thing. He's in his fifties and he hasn't seen a star for forty years. He offers also all sorts of low-vision accommodations for writing. It's not that I feel like I'm going to stop. It's just going to change.

KAC: Have you used many voice-to-text dictation software programs?

NS: I have. But quite a while ago, when I broke one of my arms. Gosh, this must have been twenty years ago, and I used Dragon Naturally Speaking, then. I'm sure that it has improved, but my experience was not that great for two reasons. First, I write science fiction and fantasy mostly, and we have a lot of what are called neologisms. It's like, you have to train the program all for all these new words like "Khanate" and "ansible". It doesn't come knowing what an ansible is, so it tries to translate it differently. The other thing is that I correct and edit as I go. That is very clumsy when you're trying to do it verbally, as opposed to while you’re writing.

Kristy Anne Cox

KAC: Yeah, that's something I've really struggled with as I'm trying to learn voice to text. The learning curve, also, has been an issue. I think for newly disabled people, a lot of potential accommodations can be really overwhelming at first while you learn how to use the technology.

NS: Yeah. And sometimes the technology is just not well thought out. Another person in one of my meetings, she's using a reader, an audio reader. Because she can't focus by looking at the thing. It's a neuro-atypical thing, right? She needs to hear it. So, she has things read to her. But the person who designed the software made the stop button much larger than the pause button. And so, if you hit the stop button, which is much more visible, then it goes all the way back to the beginning of whatever text, rather than just pausing and then resuming where you left off.

KAC: So, interface issues can be a problem too.

NS: Yes, definitely as you—I'm sure you've experienced.

KAC: Yeah, I mean, the issue I've had with text readers is that they will describe emojis to me one by one. So if people put twelve clapping hands, it will describe the skin tone of the clapping hand, and that hands are clapping. "Yellow hands are clapping, brown hands are clapping, pink hands are clapping, rainbow hands are clapping." It really depends on your program. That can be really agonizing.

NS: Yeah, that sounds awful. I'm sorry, I'm laughing. But what else can you do?

KAC: It's funny, too, right?

So when you are working with low-vision characters, are those inspired by your experiences? I recall a short story you wrote where you have a character with, I believe she had glaucoma, but she had a vision impairment.

NS: The only one that I am very conscious of having done is a short short that appeared ... I think it was in Wired. It was called "The Third Petal", is that the one you're talking about?

KAC: I think so.

NS: Yeah, that was completely drawn on my experience down to ... the classic idea of loss of sight is that everything gets darker, but my experience is that everything gets brighter, right? And instead of a field of black, gradually engulfing what I can see, it's the field of white, and I used that. And other people were like, "Where did this come from?" And I'm like, "From me."

KAC: From lived experience.

NS: Yeah, but I don't think I have written any other characters that I can recall that are human that are low-sighted. I did write a story from a dog's point of view, and the dog didn't really care about what things looked like anyway. It was all about how they smell.

KAC: You know, that segues nicely into another question that I wanted to ask, which is, this pattern that disabled writers are hearing from abled or differently abled people that their disabled characters aren't disabled enough, aren't believable, aren't disabled the right way, you know? Have you experienced that?

NS: Yes, I have. And some of that I take to heart because I do not necessarily write everything from my own experience. That particular character, I think her name is Bridy in "The Third Petal", that's based on my own experience. But I also wrote a short story called, "The Things I Missed the Most," in which the narrator, the protagonist, had a seizure disorder. And I don't and never have. So I had to base that on research, including talking with people that I know that have seizure disorders and listening to things that they said without them intending to describe and lecture about what they were going through. So I fully acknowledge that I can get it wrong. I just question when people are saying that I got it wrong ... Well, how do they know what's right?

KAC: One thing I've particularly seen is, "This character has too many disabilities. You need to have them focus on one." And most of the disabled people I know have multiple disabilities.

NS:  Thank you. Yeah, I had not heard that one, but yeah, that's sort of like people not getting intersectionalism, isn’t it?

KAC: Right?  Like, "There's too much going on for this character. Please make them conveniently marginalized in only one way, so that our non-marginalized readers will get it."

NS: And they'll have a convenient label to put on them.

KAC: Yeah. I mean, the assumption there is that marginalized folks don't read science fiction. Which is not true.

NS: Yeah.

KAC: What about harmful narratives about disabled people, like "the cure" or, "the scrappy best friend who gets killed off"? Have you seen a lot of that, or do you push back against those narratives with your work? Are you thinking about those harmful stories when you're writing disabled characters?

NS: I am, mostly from the point of view of wondering, "Do I somehow accidentally match these slots?" I'm not thinking like, "Oh, good. We can have this person die off so that now we don't have to worry about representing their disability," and also the person that's able will take on the mantle of responsibility for living out that person's dream. I don't do that. That is not how I approach my work. If I am writing about someone with a disability, then I am just writing about their agenda and how they interact with the world and the consequences of their difference from the dominant paradigm. But I'm not thinking about how they can serve someone abled.

KAC: Right. I mean, one really specific example would be in films and movies or books where it's a wartime situation, or combat situation, and someone gets injured in a way that would make them permanently disabled. And they always say, "I'll stay behind and hold off the enemy." And they sacrifice their lives so that the non-injured characters can escape. That's a really common one. And it's hard to avoid that, but the message is, if you're disabled in that way, you're expendable now.

NS: Yeah, and kudos to you for seeing that and recognizing it. I had not even thought about that one. The one that I'm most conscious of is, someone who survives that kind of injury and kills himself. Because they can't stand living as a disabled person.

KAC: Right, which is the Million-Dollar Baby ending of that. Like the famous movie ending, that controversial euthanasia scene. And then Gattaca has that too.

NS: Oh, God. Don't get me started about Gattaca. I hate that film. Come on, I hate it.

KAC: It's not my favorite either.

NS: I belonged for a while to a group where we would mostly read books, sometimes play games, watch films. And I watched this film as part of that group, and I was fuming the entire time!

Yeah, just the individualism of it to just really got to me. If this person really does believe that their physical handicap will cause harm to others, why are we applauding them going beyond it? On so many levels, so many ways, it's wrong.

KAC:  Oh, I 100 percent agree. I could rant about that film for a while, but why don’t we move back to process?  Where do you fall on the spectrum between "outliner" or a "discovery'" writer?

NS: Oh, a 'discovery writer', that is a polite term. I'm more familiar with "pantser", as in, "seat of the pants." It is not binary, is it? It's a spectrum. So yeah, a great way to ask that question. I would say on a scale of one to eleven, with one being "outlining" and eleven being "discovery", I am about nine point five. I do know where I'm going. I don't always recognize when I get there, though.

KAC: Do you usually have an ending in mind?

NS: I usually have an ending in mind, some sort of resolution, be it emotional or event based, or attitude or philosophy based, whatever. But, one of the exercises that I have my students do is—and I stole this. I totally stole this from Nicola Griffith, by the way—is come up with a metaphor for your writing process. So here's mine: I have a machete, a compass, and a canteen full of water. I'm standing on one side of the Rift Valley. The end of the story is on the other side of the Rift Valley. So, there it is.  And the task of the story is to go across, to take me across. So I descend into the valley and I'm cutting away at metaphors and hacking off phrases and examining minute choices that lead to larger consequences. And occasionally I can climb a tree and look. And "oh, this is the way I go!", and do a course correction or whatever. That's how it is for me. It's a lot of discovery with a goal in mind.

Now I have come up with outlines. I've done an outline ... for me, there are two kinds of outlines. And they're both lies. All outlines are lies. Some of them are lies you tell other people, some of them are lies you tell yourself. I've done it. I did an outline for Everfair, for instance. I did an outline for Kinning, the sequel that I'm working on, to Everfair. And I sold Everfair based on that outline. It was a lie. It was not what happened. The other kind of outline is something that you do... It's not so much a lie. You do it after you've written something, you can outline it and see, "Well, what did I do?" And who's going where, and what's happening with this thread ...

KAC: Structural analysis.

NS: Yes; and that still is not so much the truth, because you can change it then, right? You know what to change.

KAC: I've heard other discovery writers or "pantsers" describe their process as "unearthing a fossilized skeleton", or "planting a tree in a garden". There's a lot of different metaphors that people use to get at that process, and understand it. So, yeah, that works well. Do you have a regular writing routine?

NS: Yes, yes, I do, especially these days. I write in the afternoons, which I think puts me in a minority. Most people write either very early in the morning, or some of them late at night. But I write in the middle of the day, and I trace that to going to Clarion West, where we had classes in the morning. So the afternoon was when I had large chunks of time to write, and then in the evening I would interact socially with other people. So these days I write in these meetings and I write in the afternoon. Very, very rarely will I do anything other than write. Sometimes I will look at emails or prepare for a class or something, but it's almost always writing. The routine is “hurry up and get writing”. Get some food ready so that I don't have to interrupt the process, and write for forty-five minutes, break for fifteen. Sort of a Pomodoro kind of thing.

KAC: And then do you get up and move around during those fifteen minutes?

NS: Yes. And I get up and move around during the forty-five. Also, I can't sit for forty-five minutes. That is painful. Someday I hope to do a class called "writing while fidgeting." Because I'll get up. I'll go to the bathroom. Walk around. This is something that I think people who are new to having a disability need to take in. You are writing whether you are putting words on the page or not. You are writing if you are standing at your bed, smoothing the pillows out and thinking, "Well, why would the baron say that?" The process of writing is something that takes place, basically, in your mind. And your mind is a little portable. I may be sitting during that forty-five minutes, I may be sitting for thirty of it, but I'll be getting up and moving around, and then I'll come back and I'll type a sentence or two. And then I'll get up and let my cat in, and then I'll come back and write a couple more sentences and change a word or two in the previous sentence, "No, that's how it goes."

KAC: Do you switch devices, depending on what position you want to be in? Like, do you ever use your smartphone?

NS: I have not used my phone for writing much, but I think that that's a great way to go. Because I mean, it has its own limitations, right? The number of sentences that you can see on the screen at a time, depending on your phone, and you know the font size that you're comfortable with, and what you do with it afterwards, where do you save it? Where do you store it? Do you send it to yourself? That kind of stuff. But I've used it for a few things, including writing songs.

KAC: What accommodations or tools do you use that disabled writers might enjoy knowing about?

NS: I think I've covered that pretty much. I recommend looking into dagga, or lion's tail. The thing about that is it does get you high, but the high only lasts for, like, maybe ninety minutes. So that compares favorably to being high for, like, four hours from ingesting marijuana. The thing is, though, that you have to smoke it. You can't eat it. It's incredibly bitter. I recommend that. I recommend getting a larger screen for people who are low-vision but still sighted. Um, what else do I use?

KAC: Well, it sounds like you alternate between your phone and your PC.

NS: But mostly the PC. Because, like I say, I get up, I move around and then come back to it.

KAC: You talked about Pomodoro. Do you use Pomodoro?

NS: I do not, but I know the method, and I advocate people using it. I'm fine without actually having the manufactured timer and all that kind of stuff. I've more or less adopted the method without paying for it.

KAC: Well, let's go to the next question then. I often feel like common writing advice is geared towards abled writers, and that some of that advice can be a really bad fit for disabled writers. Do you ever hear writing advice and think, "that's just not going to work with this disability?"

NS: I have not made that connection, but I remember when I was looking over your questions earlier, you mentioned writing every day as a piece of advice that does not apply to disabled people, and I think it doesn't apply to abled people that universally as well. Because I do write almost every day now at this point. But for a long time, I didn't. I would schedule writing time on my calendar, but there would be days when I was traveling, for instance, where writing was, the way that I liked to do it, was not possible. And I can see how ... the days when you know, I'm just I'm suffering too much to focus. Those are not writing at the computer days, but I will just say again, writing is more than putting the words on the page. Sometimes it's having a dream. You could be writing in your sleep. And I am also a big advocate of not having to be conscious about everything going on in the writing process. So it's almost universal. I have found very few writers of any ability of any community that will not say, "I write this, and then I sleep, and the next day I look at it again." And so, my advice to other writers who are experiencing some form of disability is just to trust that if you are a writer, writing is going on, whether you know it or not. And if you're lying there in pain, just know that although much of you is preoccupied with what's going on medically, or if you're just really, really ready to escape pain, or to escape depression by killing yourself, just know that there is some writing going on in you, because you're a writer.

KAC: Yeah, this is a thing that I think will be really meaningful to a lot of disabled writers because I always hear "I'm the writer who is miserable because I'm not writing right now." You know, like 'I haven't actually put words on paper in a month, in a year. Am I still a writer? Do I still count?'

How do you get back on the horse after a period of recovering from surgery or something of that nature? Do you have tips on how to get back into the flow of riding after a period of not being able to work?

NS: Actually, I have not had extended periods like that. The most I've had is maybe a week, ten days. So I don't think I qualify to give advice on that.

KAC: So, I loved the steampunk prosthetic arms that you invented for the amputees in Everfair. So, if you were a steampunk cyborg, which attachment would you want the most?

NS: Just one?

KAC: You can pick more than one.

NS: Obviously, I'm focusing on sight right now, but I would want something where I could combine perception and manipulation on multiple levels. As in, I could have telescope eyes and microscope eyes. I could have strength-multiplying hands, and hands that can manipulate on a near microscopic level. That's what I would choose. What about you? Wait, I want to hear what you would do.

KAC: Oh, mine? So what I really want is a heads-up display that connects to my brain somehow, that would somehow remind me who the person I'm talking to is, what their name is, their pronouns, and maybe a fact about where I met them or what we last talked about. Because, I have partial face blindness, and I have cognitive impairment issues around memory. So sometimes it's acutely distressing to be speaking to someone, and I know I know them. I can remember the last conversation we had, but I don't remember their name, and I can't tell their face apart very well, so I feel like that would be an accommodation that would be transformative for my life. But I could see how it would also be really invasive of people's privacy.

NS: Oh yeah, you would have to be able to turn it on and off.

KAC: Yeah, or maybe people could opt in, like I want to upload my data to this system so that other people using these glasses or implants will always see my name floating in the air next to my face. That's what I would love.

NS: Yeah, like filters.

KAC: Yeah, and maybe even like a virtual personal assistant like in the Halo video games. There is  Cortana talking in your ear and telling you about your environment.

NS: There's Cortana on my laptop, too.

KAC: Yeah, I would like to have a Cortana in my head. That would be great.

Do you see disabled folk as part of our future and our futurisms? How does disability intersect with science fiction?

NS: So, that is a really interesting intersection to look at because I can see all sorts of changes in the future regarding what we consider a disability. Many things that are not consider disabilities now, like breathing oxygen. Those could become disabilities, right? And at the same time, things that we consider disabilities such as paraplegic conditions could be perfectly fine in a non-gravity environment, for instance. And it could actually be adaptive rather than maladaptive. I definitely see disability in the future in so many different ways, at least—as I'm sitting here just thinking—at least three ways, the way of things that are now not considered disabilities becoming disabilities, things that are considered disabilities no longer being disabilities, and also new technology and new living conditions spotlighting things that were never ... well, actually creating conditions that are new disabilities. For instance, I think that probably the closest thing we have to ... a story along those lines is "The Morning and the Evening the Night" by Octavia Butler, where there is a new disease generated by a cure for cancer. So there's a genetic disability passed along that has both physical and neurological and behavioral expressions. And it's because of a technological advance. Have you read that story?

KAC: I have, it's been a while, but I really enjoyed it.

NS: Yeah. So again, that kind of thing, I think, is another way that the future and disability will intersect.

KAC: Yeah. Are you familiar with, or are you watching, The Expanse?

NS: You know, I tried to watch it because Daniel Abraham, one of the authors of the series, is a friend of mine. I couldn't do it.

KAC: Well, I asked because there's this really interesting theme or idea that's kind of running through it, that people who live out in the asteroid belt or on Mars, have grown up in different gravity. So their bodies are different shapes and have different bone densities. And those conditions are not disabling in their environments. They're not impaired in their own environments. But when they come back to Earth, they are impaired and disabled. So, I really like this idea of disability as a product of your environment, not a defect in your body.

NS:  Yeah, that's another one. I mean, you know, as I said only three, in like, three minutes. I'm sure there are great things to be learned about looking at that intersection.

KAC: Yeah. So I want to move to publishing professionals, if that's all right. What advice would you offer to publishing professionals on finding and working with own voices disabled writers?

NS: That is a hard one. It's something that I have done myself as an editor, but in the very crudest fashion. So what I do when I'm editing something is I keep a spreadsheet in which I have different categories for the work and the creator that I'm looking at. And I don't try to fill a quota of how many people with visual impairment, or that kind of thing. How many people from the Gulf states? But I keep track of what I have come up with. So, rather than finding, I'm more focused on recording and tracking what I come up with. As far as finding, I would say read widely, engage widely. Because if you're just focused on something, then it can be in danger of becoming a fetish for you, which we don't want either. But there are workshops and learning programs that are inclusive. And, paying attention to those probably helps. I mean, I know it's helped me. I know that there's a Facebook group for writing the other, which is not disability focused, but is disability inclusive. And I would say, there's the same sort of thing going on with Clarion West, so probably with Clarion as well. Just look for variety and inclusion.

KAC: Thank you. What about accessibility? I mean, that can be a big issue for disabled writers who are going to conventions or events, or who want to go to workshops. Sometimes even when you're getting an award, at an award ceremony, accessibility becomes an issue. What would you like to see cons and other spaces doing to help disabled folk attend safely?

NS: Paying attention and modelling. I think that the best model I've seen of this, frankly, is WisCon. I don't know, have you attended WisCon?

KAC: Yes.

NS: It's not perfect. But there's a real effort, a real intention to be inclusive of people with all sorts of disabilities. There's a safer disabled people space. There are rooms where you can just pull back from what can be overstimulating in terms of being at a convention. I mean, I still see things. For instance, there was one year I was part of the opening ceremonies, and there was no way—there was no ramp to access the stage. And this was not the fault necessarily of anybody, but it was something that apparently was a lower priority. The ConCom and the hotel liaison had made a point of mentioning this need. But the hotel had put it lower on the agenda, and it just fell off. Fortunately, we who were arranging the ceremony, the opening ceremonies, were like, "This is not going to work." I don't know that adding another layer like a disability advocate helps, because then you run into the problem of committees fighting each other and that kind of stuff. But, having the intention and following through on it. And I think that what empowered us was that we knew that this was a value of the community behind the convention. We knew that even though it wasn't necessarily part of our remit, "Get a ramp to the stage!", we knew that it was important to the community and that we would be backed up by insisting on it.

KAC: Thank you. So, I want to talk about connecting with other disabled people, particularly at conventions like this. But outside of a medical context, what are the best ways you found to meet other disabled authors, artists, and friends?

NS: I know that there are things, I've seen a sign at my ophthalmologist for discussion groups, people who get together because they're low vision or something. I've never participated in anything like that. But as I was saying in another part of our interview, I found that the people that I am gravitating towards as authors are all people who share this commonality with me in some way. So the only advice I have is to find people that you like hanging out with and bring up the subject, because not everybody is out about their disabilities, right? So you would miss those people if you were going for discussion groups that were official and supported by your doctor or whatever. So hang out with people that you like and bring up disability. And you may be surprised at who you find that is a fellow traveler.

KAC: That's lovely. Well, we're at the last question, which is just, is there anything else you'd like to talk about or share with anyone reading this interview?

NS: The one piece of advice that I have for writers with a disability is to be flexible. To expect their situations and their needs and their abilities to change. With new regimens, with a new doctor, with a new living situation, whatever. And to fold that into your writing practice.

KAC: Thank you, that’s very useful. Well, thank you so much for the interview, and all the advice! Readers, Nisi’s website is http://www.nisishawl.com/. You can find Nisi’s novel Everfair at your local bookstore or online bookseller! You can find their short fiction in multiple magazines and anthologies, and also in their collections Filter House, A Primer on Nisi Shawl, and Talk Like a Man.

Authors' Note: Readers who would like to join in this conversation on social media, please feel free to do so with the #WritingWhileDisabled hashtag! We'd love to hear about your experiences writing while disabled, especially your favorite accommodations and the methods you rely on to get your writing done as disabled folx. The relevant twitter handles are @KristyAnneCox, @NisiShawl, and @strangehorizons.