SPOONIE WRITER: USING WHAT WORKS FOR YOU
One thing you will get a whole ton of in the writing community, and outside of it, is advice. Whether that's on how to draft, or how to revise and edit, or which publishing path to choose. There is all this advice out there, and while a lot of the time, it's useful, it's also, usually, tailored to the abled and healthy writers. One thing I learned very quickly when I started writing properly, was that a whole big chunk of that advice did not apply to me.
It wasn't because I didn't want it to, or because I thought I was some special snowflake/unicorn of a writer, it was because I wasn't physically capable of doing the majority of it. Now I've talked before about how writing every day isn't a favourite piece of advice for me, and also doesn't apply to a wide variety of writers, but there's other bits and pieces that just don't work, because they assume that you are capable of sitting for hours, or going out and walking distances. It assumes that you aren't going to be trying to fit things into this chunk of time when your body is finally playing ball and letting you work.
That's not a slam against the givers of that advice. They can only give advice with things they have experience with. It's one of the reasons why when I started this blog, and started giving advice, that I made sure to make it clear that I was disabled and chronically ill, because my advice is going to be coming from that place, and that's my experience. People who don't know what it's like to have to carefully plan for energy crashes, or bad days, or pain that makes it impossible to think, let alone do anything, aren't, necessarily, going to tailor their advice to that experience, and that's okay. It's why I do a lot of what I do, so that there are some voices out there who are thinking of those writers like me, and I know there are a lot of them out there.
So what do you do when you realise that the advice you've trawled the internet and community for doesn't apply to you? You can find ways that do work for you. Whether that's through trials and error, or reading through my posts, or just adapting the way everyone else is doing things to fit your needs and abilities. You find a way that allows you to keep within your limits, and still do the things you wanna do.
I know that sounds wishy washy, I know it sounds like I'm expecting you to automatically know what works and what doesn't, but this is where a lot of writing advice is hard to apply to your own process and work, because no one else works the same way as you do. While you may have a lot in common process wise with some of your faves, no one else deals with the situations you're dealing with in the exact same way as you do. It's why the majority of writing advice is not universal. It's why, when giving advice, I always make it clear that if it doesn't work for you, that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong, just everyone creates in their own way, and that's okay. That's normal. That's to be expected.
But when you're a spoonie, and you're dealing with limited time, energy, and everything else, it can be doubly hard to find a way that does work for you. It can be next to impossible to latch onto an idea and turn it this way and that, and find that it fits you. It's not easy. It's not something where I think you'll come across this blog post and be like: ah ha! Now I know how to do everything! I know it's not. But at this point, I can't tell you how to make it work for you. Only you can do that, which I guess might sound like a cop out, but it's also true.
I don't know your circumstances. I can give you mine, I can tell you what works for me, but I can't then apply all of that to your life, because that's not something I have the ability to do. My advice? The whole point of this? Keep trying new ways. Keep moving forward. Keep doing this and that, and while yes you should ignore the advice that has you pushing through and causing flares, you do need to do a lot of trial and error, and when you find that magic answer, that way that does work? Put it in your toolbox and keep using it.
We all want to be writers. We all want to succeed, and we all have to find our own ways of doing things, and if that takes a while, if that takes years compared to abled and healthy writers? Then so be it. As I've said often enough, it takes as long as it takes, and that's okay. The world needs your stories, and it will wait for you to get them out there.
Any questions? Lemme know in the comments!
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