Welcome back to another month of Bookish Debates! 

In spirit of Disability Pride Month, we asked our dreamers to share their thoughts on disability representation in literature, for example the ways in which writing can be used to honour and acknowledge the achievements, experiences, and struggles of the disability community. 

Note: As always, we welcome everyone to share additional thoughts in the comments! However, we kindly ask that everyone maintain respect and patience everyone's opinions and personal experiences may differ, or not everyone may be fully familiar with the topic. Please also be mindful that some of the responses shared below contain personal experiences and that  disabilities can come in all shapes and sizes. 

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Questions posted on the 9th July 2024

Question for our writers: How can you make sure that the way you represent disabilities in your story is respectful? What is the proper process of educating yourself with a topic you may not be familiar with before ever setting pen to paper?

If you are a writer with a disability, do you have any struggles to share about your writing journey? What are some of the reasons you're proud? How does it feel to be able to express yourself through words, and does disability rep play an important part in your writing? 

If anyone has representation in their stories, we'd love to hear about them!

Question for our readers: What kind of disabled representation have you seen in stories? Good or harmful, how does it impact those in the community? Do you wish there was more disability rep in stories, and for what disabilities? What are some common mistakes you've seen, and how could writers better represent them and disabled characters' journeys more accurately?

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All answers are slightly modified for grammar and structure.

Winning answer posted by WrennaStone

For writers: Oooooh, boy, let's go. I'm a writer with physical disabilities and various chronic illnesses---EDS, POTS, chronic "regular" and complex migraines, arthritis, fibro... I can genuinely never think of everything at once. Let's just go with a general label of "has much pain and weirdness" for me.

Being a disabled/chronically ill writer is not easy and is often downplayed as "you're just sitting down writing" when even just existing is hard for us most days. Varying pain levels and brain fog make it hard to function in general aspects, and expending that energy toward something creative can be a wonderful distraction, but also become frustratingly difficult at a moment's notice. Maintaining a proper spoon budget is crucial. (Also, being a writer with chronic migraines? Screen time?? Recipe for disaster)

While I don't always include disability rep in my stories, I'm always proud to do so. The writing world is becoming much more inclusive, but with so many forms of disability and chronic illness out there, it can still be hard to find characters you connect with on a personal level even if they have the same condition, since presentations can vary wildly from person to person. It's an incredible feeling knowing I can create characters like myself or others so that more people have the opportunity to experience a character like themselves on the page. Whether it's Sam in Ghost of You also struggling with EDS and showcasing the use of different mobility aids for different days, or Emrys in the Keepers of Astraela series having an unnamed physical/chronic pain condition that is a culmination of various illnesses of my own, there's a wonderful release in writing about characters I share these things with. In a way, for me, it's healing.

Which is the perfect segue to proper, respectful representation—because without that, having rep can be damaging. Even for illnesses and disabilities we face personally, there is a lot of research to be done to ensure that we aren't catering to harmful stereotypes or accidentally giving misinformation.

In the age of the internet, being online has provided major assistance to learning about disabilities and having so much knowledge at our fingertips. Instead of poring only over medical journals and stiff research, we can find people with first-hand experience. There are a plethora of influencers working to spread awareness for disabilities and chronic illnesses they face daily who document their lives for others. There are often groups of people all facing the same thing who are more than willing to share their story. But there is a lot of caution that comes with this as well—and general research to help ensure that the information you're receiving is correct.

I also can't express enough how important it is to have sensitivity readers who are willing to read through your work and give honest feedback, whether it's on small details that house incorrect information or portions of a story that may accidentally perpetuate something harmful. Sensitivity readers are wonderful to utilize and ensure you're bringing proper representation to the table!

For readers: While there's been an incredible uptick in proper disability rep in writing, I still struggle to find ones I relate to—so I will always advocate for more rep! 

 One of the most common mistakes that bothers me is something I describe in Dungeons & Dragons terms: the Long Rest Healing. In D&D, when you have one long rest for so many hours, you're typically healed back to full HP and rested. I see this so often in stories—usually fantasy or paranormal stories—where a character is grievously injured and never bothered with it again, or they suffer from something that is supposed to be a chronic issue that's often forgotten about until there's a need for nerfing their power in a story. 

 Whether it's fatigue or chronic pain, we are rarely ever "better" with a good night's rest (if we can sleep well at all). Fatigue lingers no matter how well you rest—you could sleep 2 hours and be hell on wheels, but you could get a full 8 after a week of good sleep and be absolutely miserable and hardly able to put one foot in front of the other. Chronic pain also knows no bounds. It doesn't care if you've slept well, favored a hurting body part, taken meds...it will come up behind you and knock you off your feet to remind you it's the one in charge. 

 Let chronic illness be messy! It's absolutely not glamorous, and it's okay to showcase how hard your characters have to fight to make it through a normal/good day, let alone a hard one. 

Second place answer (tied) posted by sandydragon1

As always, I seek out stuff created by people with the disability about their experiences (blog posts, comics, etc.). Even when I'm writing about my own disability or ones where there's some overlap in symptoms, I still do research because one person's experience is far from universal.

 I'm very proud of the fact I'm willing to write characters who have the same disability I do (cerebral palsy) because I used to be extremely insecure about my disability, to the point where the ableism I dealt with as a kid severely damaged my mental health. It was so satisfying to have Amy from Camp Antler Point get to do really cool things in an action-heavy story since I am constantly craving more disabled characters that are allowed to be just plain awesome. I'm even prouder of Miguel from The Taste of Home because of how much depth there is to his character, including how he deals with his mobility issues. 

In terms of rep I'd like to see more of in stories beyond the obvious (avoiding harmful stereotypes, thinking through implications of how other characters react to the disability, etc.). I would really like to see more fantasy and science fiction exploring how characters deal with their disabilities. Even if it's something as simple as using a different kind of animal as a service animal (like the awesome saber tooth tigers Silverdawn_ included), it really means a lot to see authors thinking about including disabled people in their world building. Heck, I was so happy one of my favorite authors wrote about the main character of one of their stories working as an assistant for a man with cerebral palsy because his client's fine motor skill issues made it difficult for him to create magical runes. It made me so happy I cried. Never underestimate how important disability rep can be to people.  

Second place answer (tied) posted by Dramaqueen1o1o

I struggle a lot with this question, and this month actually. I'm not open about this IRL but I have chronic pain that is very manageable right now. I'd argue that it's in remission but sometimes flares. It'll likely continue to get worse as I get older. My sister has CRPS and I have been told that I'm likely to develop it as I get older due to my symptoms, which is scary — my boyfriend also just makes fun of how "weak" I am. He does his best to understand and just thinks I'm overexaggerating all the time. I'm also quite strong despite being sensitive to people touching and probing me. Plus, my pain tolerance is absolutely insane. But yes, when you poke me, it often does hurt... a lot... because of the constant inflammation.

I don't really talk about this... to anyone... really. It's just my life and doesn't get in the way much, so I don't think about it a lot.

I also have ADHD. I've always felt different but don't always resonate with the disability community. I think it comes from a privilege—both my disabilities are invisible - and both my disabilities are very mild. They don't interfere with my life... until they do.

And when they do it's suffocating. There are certain things that are just much harder for me to do than others. And at the same time, I see my disabilities through the lens of strengths. I love my ADHD. It's like an annoying best friend that you never want to part with. She makes me creative, curious, innovative. I can recognize patterns and predict things like no one else I know. When I watch movies I almost always predict the ending or one line of dialogue. My boyfriend thinks it's so annoying and I love it.

And at the same time, the ADHD paralysis makes it really hard to write sometimes. It's hard to get started and it's hard to finish things. It's why I joined discord and wattpad to try to have some external motivation.

I find it really difficult to write characters with disabilities, even though I have invisible disabilities. I hate putting labels on people - IRL and in my head. I think this is something I personally need to work through.

For example, I write so many ADHD characters. I am ADHD, it is my normal and so I write people like me. But not every reader might know, "that's an ADHD type character" and I think that's ok. But I also question if that is OK because I think we do need more representation.

At the same time, I do write characters who don't feel like they belong or they feel different and I think this whole conversation is helping me think more critically about the portrayal of the people in my worlds and how they come across.

The story I'm working on is called, "Markom" and about a world in which genetics and science rule. Essentially, people are put into classes based on their genetics at birth.

I've been very careful about writing depictions of color and disabilities as our understandings of race/color/disabilities don't affect how people are characterized in this scientific society. In fact, I think I'm naturally putting ADHD-like characters in the highest class because I think those characteristics make them very intelligent and valuable in this world.... Anyway this has been tricky to navigate and I'm always excited to discuss this further

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That's all for now! We appreciate all that those took a moment out of their lives to participate in this discussion and congratulations once again to all the winners!