SPOONIE WRITER: WORKING AT YOUR SPEED
I think one thing that a lot of people, writers and otherwise, chronically ill and otherwise as well, is that there are very little things in the creative space, especially writing wise, where it is a race. There's so many ideas, and even if someone else is literally doing the exact same idea and characters and all the rest, there is always, always going to be differences in the execution of that idea, that it's damn near impossible for them both to be exactly the same.
There is no race in publishing. There is no upper age limit that says if you've not published by x age that you will be banned from ever doing so. I say this as someone who seriously started writing at 19, and then had my first book out at 23. It is still not a race. Yes, there may be hurdles for some that aren't there for others. Disability showcases that all the time, as do BIPOC authors and their stories. Even in 2026, we are not yet in a place where the majority of stories that are being trad pubbed aren't a huge percentage of white authors. It sucks, and it's wrong, and I hate that.
But for the chronically ill and/or disabled authors, the last thing you gotta be doing is pushing yourself to breaking point when there is genuinely no need to do so. I'll admit, when Blackout hit shelves in 2005, I was very anxious about the fact that with how bad my health was, I would never get to publish another book. I'm talking the kind of anxious that kept me up at night. I knew the option to go with the people who published Blackout was out of reach, and it was really only six years later that things like KDP came into play and allowed me to finally put that second book out, followed by a third, and so on.
Too much of the time, with things like hustle culture and productivity being used to define our worth, we do get caught up in all of that. I know that coming back to work after 8 months off, I really struggled with knowing that my plans had been so derailed, and the worry about whether I would be able to be as 'productive' as I had been before would derail plans even more. There were a lot of conversations with myself, with my carers, with my doctors, about just how much would be possible. It was heartbreaking to realise that in surviving something so serious, I had, possibly, also lost a huge part of myself, namely my ability to write and such.
For me it wasn't, necessarily, about being back at the pace I was, but about being able of finding a new kind of routine that would work for me, and would, maybe, retain some of those parts of writing and the author life that I love, and look forward to. For example, I didn't know if blog posts would be viable. I didn't know whether I would ever be well enough to do AuthorTube videos again, and both of these are things I actually enjoy and I didn't want to lose them so that I could continue to draft and everything that went with it.
It came down to a lot of things, and I'm aware that a lot of chronically ill and/or disabled writers are already aware of in theory. I had to learn how to pace myself a lot more than I used to. I had to be really careful about not overloading myself with work. I had to be okay with maybe not getting everything done. I had to be okay with rest days popping up unplanned, and I had to be okay with leaving a task right in the middle of it, if that was what I needed.
It's still a work in progress. I don't yet have a solid routine, and I'm also aware that I might not ever have one. The constant flux in health, in symptoms mean that I just have to take it as it comes, and hope that it all works out in the end. But if you are reading this, if you're disabled or chronically ill, know that I see you. It's not easy, it has never been, and will, probably, never will be, but however you show up for yourself, for your writing, you're doing amazing, and I wish all the good days for you.
Keep going!
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