Toward a Disabled Writing Practice
An interview with Sarah Fawn Montgomery, author of Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice
Hi, readers of the intangibles! I’m Allison Kirkland, and this publication was created to celebrate and explore the writing life and the world of creative nonfiction. I’m so glad you’re here.
I first encountered Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s writing when I read her essay Unlearning the Ableist Writing Workshop in ANMLY Dis/Connect. After earning my MFA and teaching my own independent creative writing workshops, I was beginning to think differently about writing workshops and what might or might not make them supportive spaces for different types of writers. The concrete examples she provided in this essay validated my own experience as a former MFA graduate and gave me ideas for how to make the workshops that I lead more accessible and supportive for every kind of writer.
Montgomery’s essay has now been expanded into a new craft book: Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice, which is available now from Sundress Publications. The book begins with a vital question written in the author’s note: “If our bodies and brains aren’t universal, why should we expect this from our craft advice?”
Nerve provides readers with an incredibly helpful outline of how to create a more accessible writing practice, from the initial ideas of a first draft to the experience of existing in the current publishing landscape. “I cannot research the ways I used to, and instead gather information from accessibility devices. I now rely on friends and family to be my hands, to collaborate with me in gathering facts, helping with my correspondence, and even submitting my work.” Montgomery writes in Nerve. “Disability has shifted my writing from a solitary act to one that is part of a rich network of people, a collaborative creativity and care often left out of traditional craft conversations which tend to favor individualist approaches with fierce independence and rugged—which mostly means abled—willpower.”
The book is dedicated to “crip kin.” As a writer who considers herself part of the disabled community, I love the idea of having this beautiful craft book made just for us. But I am also struck by the ways in which every single creative person – disabled or not – could be expanded by this craft book, because it teaches us a new way of creating that’s more collaborative, intentional, and innovative.
When Sarah Fawn Montgomery announced the forthcoming publication of Nerve I knew I wanted to feature her on the intangibles. I was honored that she took the time to speak with me. We conducted our interview via email at her request to accommodate daily physical therapy and her post-op schedule in the wake of two recent surgeries.
AK: Sarah Fawn, congratulations on this gorgeous and necessary book. I could feel my orientation to my body and to my writing practice changing in real time as I read Nerve. I’d love to know how this book came to be and what challenges you faced while making it. How did you want it to be different from other craft books you’ve read?
SFM: Thank you so much! I’m so glad it resonated with you, and I hope it will resonate with others. This book came about after I wrote the ANMLY article you referenced because I received so much feedback from readers who shared similar experiences that I knew there was more to say. I wanted to build community but also share all the different ways disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent writers could unlearn the ableist writing advice they might have encountered in workshops. I also knew that many creative writing instructors wanted to make their classes more inclusive, but simply didn’t know how.
This book was definitely a challenge to write, because, as I explain in the book, I have a disability that makes writing for any length of time painful and potentially dangerous. In addition, due to this disability, I suffered several spinal injuries that left me with permanent nerve damage in each of my limbs, which makes using a computer impossibly painful. As a result, I wrote this book using a microphone and assistive software in short spans of time—sometimes just ten or fifteen minutes per session—over many months. My writing life is secondary to my disabled life, and my work must be scheduled around several hours of daily physical therapy, frequent appointments with specialists, symptom management, and various procedures and surgeries, which makes extended projects a challenge.
But writing this book while navigating my disabilities and injuries got me thinking about not only my own practice, but the many innovative practices of disabled creators, who find all sorts of ways to write beyond sitting at a computer or notebook for extended periods of time. Many craft books assume an abled reader and universal process, but this isn’t true for disabled creators. Instead, I wanted this book to dismantle the notion that writers approach the physical and mental acts of writing from a shared perspective. I also wanted this book to center disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent experiences, and to frame these identities as rich sources of innovation and creativity rather than deficits to be overcome, which is how the ableist world often frames things.
AK: You are prolific writer, and you publish in a variety of genres — from fiction and memoir to poetry. Was writing a craft book a different kind of writing exercise?
SFM: Prior to writing this book I’d written a fair amount about craft, because I find it helpful to articulate how and why a particular element of writing can be achieved. In the past, however, I’d written primarily about craft elements like point of view or flash, as opposed to about writing process. When I started writing Nerve, I discovered that doing so required a certain amount of vulnerability around my own writing process, a vulnerability I hadn’t experienced before, even as a memoirist. Much of my writing process negates what I was taught during my MFA and PhD programs, and so, over many years in graduate school, I learned to either stifle or conceal these natural parts of my process.
But writing this book encouraged me to be honest with readers —and myself!—about the kinds of things that work for me as a writer. For example, as an autistic writer, I write while stimming extensively. While I can certainly write without stimming, doing so helps me get into a flow state, to discover certain aspects of a piece, to write more honestly, and to write much quicker. Yet many traditional classrooms do not allow students to stand, pace, or move much during writing exercises, and these activities are often framed as unprofessional, distracting, or disrespectful. If anything, writing this book helped me to get closer to my own unique process, to discard what I’ve long known was unhelpful and even detrimental to me and my work, and to embrace the notion that I can innovate by understanding that writing is an embodied act and by turning to other disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent writers for wisdom.
“I wanted this book to center disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent experiences, and to frame these identities as rich sources of innovation and creativity rather than deficits to be overcome, which is how the ableist world often frames things.” — Sarah Fawn Montgomery
AK: When I received the review copy I was initially surprised at how compact the book was, so it was illuminating reading about how your body informed the structure of this book. You mention, for example, that the majority of this book was dictated rather than written by hand. You also write: “I cannot write you a tome because I cannot hold one.” I’d love to hear more about the ways your body innovated the writing of this book. It made me think about the expectations we have about what makes “good” writing or what’s “enough” when structuring a piece of writing. Who is to say that a longer book would have been a better book; that we would have gotten “more” from it? Who’s to say that a book needs to be organized a certain way? So my question for you is this: What are other things we may be taking for granted or just not thinking creatively about when it comes to our writing practice and our writing? Did the book turn out differently than what you first imagined?
SFM: I’m so glad it was surprising! Subverting expectations —including my own!—was something I wanted to do with this book. So often craft books are pitched as weighty and serious, a kind of one-size-fits-all education that readers must implement in order to be successful. And much creative writing instruction is not only ableist but can actually prevent disabled writers from succeeding and even injure them to the point of not writing or publishing at all.
I wanted to play with expectation in this book to demonstrate the ways remaking our writing practice is essential for disabled writers. It is not enough simply to say that disabled writers must discover their own practices, so I wanted to write a book where everything from the compact length to the price (Nerve is available in digital and audio formats for free!) asks readers to reconsider expectations about craft and books. The length, in particular, was especially important, because disabled writers and readers often operate on Crip time and with fewer spoons, so I wanted a book that reflected this reality, one that covers a breadth of information in a succinct way.
There are some things craft books assume are universal when it comes to writing practice, which is why I tried to cover a range of topics in the book. Nerve includes sections on unlearning ableist craft advice readers may have come across in traditional writing workshops, strategies for developing supportive habits in a disabled writing practice, techniques and technologies for designing a disabled writing space, methods to discover a disabled form and structure for creative work, and practical tips for the business of being a writer. Confronting ableist expectations about each of these categories and innovating in ways that best support your body and brain can really revolutionize your practice.
AK: As a writer with a limb difference who is also short of stature, I found many parts of this book very validating. I’ve had writers in workshop doubt the veracity of my anecdotes or try to make my stories into a more positive narrative because they are looking for inspiration instead of reality, which is often more complicated. In addition to your writing, you are also an associate professor of creative writing. How has your time in the classroom influenced the ways in which you wrote Nerve? Do you implement the principles of this book in your classroom, and, if so, what has the response been?
SFM: My time in the classroom absolutely influenced Nerve. I wanted a book that spoke to students in an accessible way—one that was not only free in a variety of forms, but one that was also structured to give students a range of information about writing craft and the profession of being a writer. A lot of the advice in this book comes from my own experience as a disabled student, but I’ve also learned a lot from working with students who are incredibly insightful about the kinds of policies, texts, and assignments that best support their needs and goals. As a professor, I’ve worked very hard to create the kind of classroom experience that would have better met my access needs and supported my work.
There are so many ways to support disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent students in the classroom. Attendance and late work policies, and physical and virtual spaces impact students’ abilities to participate in a course. Strict page length or genre requirements can impact not only a writer’s ability to complete assignments during symptom flare or recovery but can also limit the experimentation and hybridity many disabled writers incorporate into their work to mirror their lived experiences. Failure to call attention to microaggressions—like workshop colleagues discussing disabled identities without a writer’s consent or utilizing ableist metaphors—are demoralizing and abusive. And the list goes on. My main goal as a professor is to provide an environment that allows for the innovation required of any writer. I want students to develop the instincts they need to write well not only in my class, but long after the class has ended. The way to do this is not to presume that every student will succeed similarly within a rigid system, but to design a system that is able to shift in order meet students where they are so that a class can grow collaboratively together.
AK: One thing I loved about this craft book is the permission it gave me to continue to step into my full identity. When I first began writing for an audience I didn’t write about my disability, partly because I was scared to get “pigeonholed” and also because I didn’t yet understand how much my body was informing my life experience. Then when I began writing about my disability I started wondering if I had the authority to write about anything else. Did you have your own journey when it came to giving yourself permission to be your full self in a creative writing space?
SFM: Absolutely. I think what you describe is common for many marginalized writers, who are rightful to be wary of tokenization by the publishing industry. So many disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent writers are siloed into writing only about these identities and only if their work conforms to ableist expectations. This pressure and limitation leads to what you describe—writers feeling like they must choose between stories about disability or stories about other subjects, but also feeling like either decision is not much of a choice.
For a long time, I only focused externally, looking for subjects that had little to do with my body and brain, and crafting work based on my perceptions of audience expectation, even if these audiences had little in common with me. Not only was this work less enjoyable to write, but it was much more difficult. It was only when I began seeking out work by other disabled writers—most of it outside of the workshop—that I found the community and audience I needed to begin to refocus my work. What was most interesting, however, about beginning to write about disability, is how much it impacted my ability to write work outside of disability. Writing about my authentic, disabled self gave me the confidence and helped me develop the instinct to be able to write about all sorts of subjects that had nothing to do with disability.
AK: You have published widely and you’re also an associate professor. What are your thoughts on ambition, and have they evolved as your body has changed?
SFM: For a long time, I used to think of ambition as something beyond the body. My MFA, my PhD, and achieving tenure as a professor all emphasized the work of the mind, as though the body and the brain are separate, as though we can write well if we do not live well. I write about this a bit in Nerve, because while I have always had multiple disabilities, a few years ago I sustained several severe spinal injuries as a result of being too ambitious about the success of my career and not ambitious enough about the success of myself.
I think this kind of thinking is really common in our capitalistic hustle culture where we are expected to give up everything in order to succeed, even our health and safety. But everyone deserves to live well, and when you’re disabled, you have to work so much harder at this. Now, my goal is to look after my body so that I can look after my body of work. It’s a new kind of ambition, and one that involves a lot of unlearning, which I describe in the book.
But at the same time, I still remain incredibly ambitious when it comes to my writing. I think this is important for disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent writers to keep in mind. It is possible to advocate for ourselves and our careers. For me, this means being very purposeful about the kinds of projects I pursue. Whereas before I might have taken on too many projects—some of which I wasn’t as passionate about, some of which might not have even mattered that much in the long run—now I’m very deliberate with my projects. This doesn’t mean I only tackle big projects. I take on all sorts of smaller projects, but the ones I devote myself to are those that speak to my soul, rather than simply my résumé. And I still tackle big projects, which I think is incredibly important for disabled creators to do. It can be easy to get discouraged when we are in chronic pain, when we are being denied accommodations, when we are struggling to pay our bills, when healthcare is under constant attack in this country. This doesn’t mean that we can’t write and publish. I conceived of Nerve, pitched it, wrote it, and published it at the most difficult time in my medical history. Despite everything going on with my health, I maintained my ambition, and this helped me not only with my writing, but also provided me with a lifeline as a disabled person.
Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice is available now for free in digital and audio formats via Sundress Publications. Click here to access.
Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice. She is also the author of Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir, which The Paris Review describes as “the wakeup call we need” and The Atlantic says “exemplifies a nuanced approach to life with mental illness.” She is also the author of Halfway from Home, winner of a Nautilus Book Award for lyric prose, as well as three poetry chapbooks. Abbreviate, a collection of flash nonfiction, is forthcoming. She is an Associate Professor at Bridgewater State University, where she teaches creative writing and disability studies.
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What a fascinating interview! And what a needed book! I cannot wait to read💛
This was an excellent conversation! Thank you Allison and Sarah for your time and willingness to share.