Writing
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Emmanuel: Truth — Even in Chaos, God is With Us
Chaos, here we come. I’m out of my mind. I’ve officially lost it! “Chaos”, was what I thought this week when I scheduled a meeting with my developmental editor to go over a manuscript I’ve spent the past several months refining to (hopefully) make my debut as an author. That means dealing with chaos. The weather gets colder and messes with my body. Even when I oversleep on the day I’m supposed to meet my editor. I scramble to reschedule! I (barely) succeed. (Yeah, that happened. Not proud of it, but I’m offering transparency to hopefully make a point.) Holidays can mean chaos Chaos seems to reign at the holidays.…
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True Thanksgiving: Gratitude in Spite of Challenge
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I trust the One who calms the waves: How a recent injury tested my faith and made me stronger
It’s scary to step out and do new, different things. I’m not ashamed to admit that it’s been hard, and that there are times when fear has gotten the better of me. I’ve openly struggled with my mental health in a way that’s been freaking me out a little lately, but I trust that things will get better the more I work toward what I’m supposed to do. Because I live with a disability that affects my feet, I find myself dealing with issues with them all the time. If it’s not my feet, it’s my knees or my legs in some way. I haven’t been able to walk since…
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True Thanksgiving: Gratitude in Spite of Challenge
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“My Complex Relationship With Disability, Representation And Healing Made Me Shift Perspectives. But Are We More Accepting Now?”
My relationship with my specific disability diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy has always been tumultuous at best. Most people who know me personally will tell you I am one of the most joyful people they have encountered. Church people tell me that I have what they call a “sweet spirit” or that I’m strong because I deal with such a challenging life. I live with my aging parents, spending most of my time in my room typing blogs or editing my novel. We have a van, but I still rely on them to get to appointments or places because the paratransit in my city is unreliable. (That’s something I will discuss…
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True Thanksgiving: Gratitude in Spite of Challenge
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Faith over Fear…Defining and Utilizing Faith in the Everyday
As a Christian, I’m taught to choose faith over fear. Sometimes, faith isn’t what we believe it to be. As someone who lives with a disability, there’s a lot of fear that tends to try and creep into my life. Fear that my disability will get worse. A worry that I’ll end up alone. The voice that tells me that I’m too held back by those things to really make the calling that I believe God has on my life stick. I’ve been feeling a lot of these. I’m a currently unpublished author, in the weeds of editing my first novel in a series. I also live with Cerebral Palsy.…
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True Thanksgiving: Gratitude in Spite of Challenge
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Exploring True Freedom: Reflections on July 4th and Personal Struggles
Happy belated Fourth of July to my American subscribers! Yesterday was a pretty quiet day for my family. We’re fairly low key when we’re home for the Fourth. That is, unless we’re in West Virginia visiting my relatives who live in that area. Once again, my disability has been causing some issues. The wounds on my foot have healed, but I have an ingrown/infected toenail that I am squeamish about getting treated. (Bear with me, I’ll tie back to that in a moment with a disability anecdote. To quote Shakespeare [because I’m a nerd and I can’t resist the reference]: “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” –Polonius…
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True Thanksgiving: Gratitude in Spite of Challenge
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NaNoWriMo is done. Now What?
[Transparency note: This post was originally drafted in part on the day NaNo announced it was shuttering the non profit, April 1. It has taken me this long to process and sit with my grief. Some of what you’ll read in the blog is a response to that.] If you’re an author, you may be keenly aware of the controversy that has been brewing over the last month in connection with the troubled National Novel Writing Month organization. I addressed some of the issues in my last blog, The rise and fall of NaNoWriMo, and a disabled author’s take. But now, it’s official: After 20 years, the scandal plagued non-profit is…
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The rise and fall of NaNoWriMo, and a disabled author’s take.
NaNoWriMo? More like NaNoNoMo. At least, that’s what a lot of people seem to be saying this November. If you’re just now finding me, let me take a moment to give you a quick rundown on why this is so important to me. Short version? “Hi, I’m Erin, a fantasy romance author, who also happens to be a Christian, disabled, and weaves romantic themes into her stories!” Long version? Read on, my dears. For the uninitiated, I’m a 10-year veteran participant of the writing event known as National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo for short. The goal of NaNo is to create the rough draft of a “novel-length” work (50,000…
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Learning to find joy in the complication
My favorite type of weather is actually the one that causes me some of the most difficulty. As a non-ambulatory wheelchair user, I shouldn’t love snow as much as I do. But being a child born in winter, there’s an almost magical joy that fills me when I hear that it’s going to be cold outside. Winter poses its issues for me as well, though. It gets slippery, and difficult to manuver my manual chair if it’s snowing or raining. On top of that, I have issues with my knees that flare up in cold weather. I have to find clever ways to get around it or keep my hands…
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Creating Space
You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like? My perfect space for reading and writing would be hard to imagine. As it is, I live at home with my parents due to my disability. I do most of my reading and writing in my bedroom in their home, simply because I feel comfortable there. But okay, here goes. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m a very messy person. My room is currently filled with piles of clothing, papers scattered to the floor and a desk right beside my bed, so I have my computer near on days when it’s difficult for me to get up.…
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True Thanksgiving: Gratitude in Spite of Challenge
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Reflex and Reflection
Sometimes I wonder about my own body. Dealing with Cerebral Palsy, I have a lot of issues with reflexes and muscle pain. There are days when it’s all I can do to get out of bed, something I struggle with anyway because it’s nearly impossible for me to flex at the ankles. I also have a lot of other health issues that are unrelated to my CP. I’ve often wondered why it’s so hard for me to write characters that are like me. I question if I shy away on impulse because there is something I’m terrified of “getting wrong”, since there are so many variants of Cerebral Palsy, and…
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True Thanksgiving: Gratitude in Spite of Challenge
