by Amelia Loken | Jul 10, 2026 | Writing
Some weeks, writing feels like trying to light a match in a windstorm. Even if you get a spark, it’s extinguished before you can feel its warmth or transfer it to the waiting kindling. It can feel like an exercise in futility. Why even bother? But what happens, then?...
by Amelia Loken | Jun 6, 2026 | Writing
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...
by Amelia Loken | May 25, 2026 | Writing
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...
by Amelia Loken | May 8, 2026 | Writing
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...
by Amelia Loken | Apr 7, 2026 | Writing
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...
