I began writing mental illness fic around the time I became mentally ill as a child, and it's still very, very easy for me to write.
On the other hand, I began writing other types of disabilityficbefore I became partially sighted. I remember trying to figure out who should beta a story of mine that featured a blind character.
"I know!" I said. "I'll ask my friend Katharine. She does disability access work for museums. She's sure to know someone's who's blind."
It took me a minute to remember that Katharine is, in fact, blind.
I think that what scares off a lot of writers from doing disabilityfic is the need to do research. I've run across conversations about this among fanfic writers, and there's a lot of feelings of anxiety that arise among them - a feeling that they need to do tons of research and get their stories vetted by folks who have the disability. Of course it's always great to do research and to have a story betaed by somebody who knows the topic, but my goodness, I don't stop writing medieval fantasy just because there aren't any lords handy to check whether I've depicted them accurately.
A worse problem I've seen is people turning disabilityfic into problem stories. One novel I really, really liked as an emotionally disabled child was Peter Dickinson's "Annerton Pit," which was a thriller starring a blind protagonist. The story was about something other than the fact that the protagonist was blind. I thought that was neat. I'd like to see more of that type of thing in disabilityfic.
But as Janice Lester put it above: "The folks who could do it justice tend to be able-bodied and hamstrung by fears of appropriation and causing offence."
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Date: 2010-06-14 02:17 am (UTC)On the other hand, I began writing other types of disabilityfic before I became partially sighted. I remember trying to figure out who should beta a story of mine that featured a blind character.
"I know!" I said. "I'll ask my friend Katharine. She does disability access work for museums. She's sure to know someone's who's blind."
It took me a minute to remember that Katharine is, in fact, blind.
I think that what scares off a lot of writers from doing disabilityfic is the need to do research. I've run across conversations about this among fanfic writers, and there's a lot of feelings of anxiety that arise among them - a feeling that they need to do tons of research and get their stories vetted by folks who have the disability. Of course it's always great to do research and to have a story betaed by somebody who knows the topic, but my goodness, I don't stop writing medieval fantasy just because there aren't any lords handy to check whether I've depicted them accurately.
A worse problem I've seen is people turning disabilityfic into problem stories. One novel I really, really liked as an emotionally disabled child was Peter Dickinson's "Annerton Pit," which was a thriller starring a blind protagonist. The story was about something other than the fact that the protagonist was blind. I thought that was neat. I'd like to see more of that type of thing in disabilityfic.
But as Janice Lester put it above: "The folks who could do it justice tend to be able-bodied and hamstrung by fears of appropriation and causing offence."