Blog
How Disability Shapes Conflict: A Craft Guide
Conflict is the engine of story — but not in the way most writing advice frames it. If you want deeper, more layered conflict in your fiction, disability offers one of the richest craft lenses available. Disability and conflict are deeply connected, not because...
Slow Productivity for Writers: Sustainable, Disability-Informed Creativity
Slow Productivity offers disabled writers a sustainable, disability‑justice–aligned way to build a writing life that actually lasts. In his book, titled Slow Productivity, Cal Newport writes: “Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality.” That line...
Exploring the Social Model of Disability
After writing about the Charitable Model and the Medical Model, stepping into the Social Model feels like opening a window in a stuffy room. Suddenly, there’s space to breathe. Space to imagine. Space to belong. Where earlier models locate disability inside the person...
Sensory Worldbuilding – An Introduction
Sensory worldbuilding is the craft of designing a fictional world through the sensory realities of the characters who inhabit it — especially disabled characters whose bodies perceive, navigate, and interpret the world differently than the assumed norm. It’s not just...
Exploring the Medical Model of Disability
When the Body Becomes the Problem The Medical Model of Disability is the one most people know—even if they’ve never heard the term. It frames disability as a problem located in the body, something medicine should diagnose, treat, or cure. For centuries, this was...
Rewriting Disability in Fantasy and Sci‑Fi
Most fantasy and sci‑fi stories begin with the same assumption: if a character is disabled, the plot must eventually cure them. Magic restores what was “lost,” technology repairs what was “broken,” and the hero’s journey becomes a quest for normalization. My creative...
Exploring the Charitable Model of Disability
When we talk about disability, many people default to one idea: charity. Helping. Giving. Doing good. But the Charitable Model of Disability is far more complicated than simple kindness. It grew out of centuries of moral judgment, industrial pressures, and religious...
Broad Shoulders and Bright Colors: Creative Reawakening in Chicago
Sixteen years ago, Chicago bullied me into reclaiming my creativity. Last week, it reminded me why I still need it. Back then, I had just weaned my fifth child and was clawing my way out of the gray world of postpartum depression. I arrived in Chicago wrung out,...
Exploring the Moral Model of Disability
What is your first reaction when you encounter a disabled person? What are your instinctive beliefs about them? How do you interact? Are you natural? Fake-friendly? Do you ignore them? Do you try to figure out “what happened” while not seeming to stare? Welcome to the...
My NaNoWriMo Alternative: Making a Writing Habit that Lasts
Last Fall (2025), my writing group decided to do its own NaNoWriMo, and my stomach clenched with dread. National Novel Writing Month was born the same year as my oldest child, twenty-six years ago. NaNoWriMo started as a writing community in 1999 and later became a...