When I finished my work for The Catchpole Agency, I started looking for entry level jobs in the publishing industry. I’ve always dismissed publishing as too competitive and cut-throat, but my work with the submissions inbox showed me I was actually suited to the work, and spurred me into grasping the idea that publishing might actually have a place for me. Writing this at home, I feel skeptical because I’ve never actually worked in an office: during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 I did an internship with Sheffield Doc/Fest, but it was all remote. I know government schemes like Access to Work exist to help people with impairments access work, but I still haven’t experienced what working in an office really looks like (yes, I’m aware it’s not very exciting). I’ve applied for an internship with one of the big 5 publishers, which sounds ridiculously far fetched for me to be aiming for, but I fit the criteria, so all I can do is see what happens?

—

After I applied for this internship, I was thinking about what James Catchpole said about Becoming Sweetwood, and it came to me that what I have written is only part one, and part two needs to happen 16 years later when Sky is in her 30s. For a long time I’ve wanted to call it a fantasy memoir, and maybe it actually will be? Looking back, one of the books which has most impacted me was Rebekah Taussig’s memoir Sitting Pretty: The View from my Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body, and I think the reasons is that she talks about her childhood and teenage years, and then as an adult. What happens next. Reading it as a new wheelchair-user, it was like she was giving me clues as to what life could be like. If stories are like a blueprint for living, maybe a bit of adult life is what my story needs, and yes, I’m aware that I’m not even in my 30s myself yet! To me, both disability and growing up are all about identity, and it seems like by your 30s people are more comfortable in who they are (yes, debatable). I know younger writers can still write people older than them, it’s called using your imagination, but there’s something about writing from experience that makes a story so much richer. I don’t know yet if I’ll be waiting until my 30s to write part two of my novel, but either way I have lots of time.

—

I’ve just been away for a few days with my friend in Lyon, taking the train and seeing my cousin who is a student there. Whilst lying in bed one morning, awake before dawn, it came to me that Sky should become a teacher. When I was at school, before I was Disabled, I had a teacher once who used crutches. I didn’t have any special relationship with him, to me he was just another average teacher, but I think that is what is so important about children seeing Disabled adults. They don’t have to be inspirational or admirable, they just need to exist as ordinary adults. They don’t need to be telling their story to everyone for them to be an average worker. Just seeing them living successful adult lives is enough.

This is one of the reasons I don’t want to write a memoir. I’m okay with using my experience to create fiction, but I want the fiction to be able to stand up alongside others objectively. Not everyone will like my work and that is the way it should be. I’m just an ordinary adult after all.




(Featured Image is the cover of Rebuilding Tomorrow, created by Geneva Bowers, 2019)