Just a thing I wanted to post

Harrakar

Women care about explosions. Men care about feelings.

Okay, we’ve all heard about that idiotic National Review article about how the womens don’t write science fiction, right? This one? The one arguing against the Bechdel Test? Yeah, I probably shouldn’t even bother and I definitely shouldn’t link it since reading the piece won’t add anything of value to your life. But I wanted to talk about this premise.

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Betrayal from Within

I recently submitted a pitch to a website that was asking for essays about being a disabled writer. Being that I’m going blind, I thought it was a decent fit. The response was your typical polite rejection – fairly toothless, the kind of rejection that says “We don’t really care but thanks anyway” in the nicest way possible – but one of the things that really hit me in the gut was when they said “It’s an interesting idea and you should write it anyway.”

Like this was fun for me.

The only reason I had even bothered to submit the pitch was that I need new publication credits. That was it. I’m in my 40’s and I’m going blind, I need career traction now. That’s the fact, and I’m not going to sugar coat it or pretend otherwise. I have to be mercenary about this. No one else is going to do it for me.

But I decided after tweeting some petulant shit that I would, in fact, write the essay anyway. That there was no reason not to, and a few good reasons (like the preservation of what little sanity I have left) to do it. So here goes. Here’s an essay about what it is like to be a writer whose eyes are slowly deteriorating.