Category Archives: autism

My First Rejection

To be fair, this is the only publisher I’ve submitted to.

I heard back from Sara at Inspired Quill yesterday evening, although I only read it this morning. Unfortunately, they aren’t accepting Hidden Fire this time round but the advice she gave was really useful. I’m going to go back and look at both Hidden Fire and Fire Betrayed again, with her feedback in mind.

I was chuffed with this:

wonderful authorial voice that flows well and is a pleasure to read. Your characters are interesting, and it’s obvious that you know every detail about the world you’ve created.

… I like the way you don’t end every sentence with ‘said’ or ‘she shook her head’ (or similar!)…

I’m just sorry that currently, Inspired Quill doesn’t have the resources to offer you a contract and work with you.

 

The feedback boils down to:

  • Dialogue can be hard to follow when there are groups – non-verbal cues
  • More telling than showing – non-verbal cues
  • Episodic (good because keeps readers engaged) but needs a unifying arc running through.

The autistic writer has a problem with non-verbal cues and tone of voice. Now there’s a surprise! (This is a humorous comment, not a criticism of the feedback).

I can work with this. It’s not a problem.

I published Hidden Fire and Fire Betrayed a year ago, and I’ve learnt a lot since, especially during my dissertation writing. My supervisor, although a bit harsh at times, pushed me to write better, and his advice coincides with what Sara has written, to a certain extent.

Yes, it hurts my ego a bit and I’ll be shying away from doing anything for a while, but, I know how I react. Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll start work on them all again.

Completely random thought re: criticism and autistic people:

People say auties are rubbish with criticism, but I think it’s just a case of us needed longer to process and reflect so our automatic response is ‘nope, not happening, not doing it’, because, I at least feel like, when people criticise they expect immediate change and improvement and it’s just not possible, so ‘shut down and refuse’ is the go to response. Given time and no pestering, it’s possible to integrate the criticism into my worldview and work on it, but I need enough processing time (about two weeks). I don’t know if that’s how other auties feel, but that’s how it works for me. Maybe, instead of just listing ‘doesn’t respond well to criticism’, people should ask about how we feel and approach criticism, how we process and integrate it, instead?

I am almost definitely not a great loss to science

I was having one of my ‘can’t turn brain off’ nights last night. I had a few thoughts, like autistics are about 1% of the population, add the other neurodivergents and that probably comes to 5 – 10% of the human population. Maybe there was a evolutionary advantage to having a small number of people in a group that thought and processed the world differently.

And then I got up this morning, did my usual Twitter, Facebook and WordPress gander and realised, it’s all been thought before and articulated better, by people much more intelligent than I am.

So I think I’ll go back to writing stories.

Ignore the pacing, tapping and twitching, I’m just stimming.

This week I’m going to write about stimming. The calendar asks the questions what is stimming and how is it related to masking.

Stimming is autie slang for those things we do to self-sooth when anxious, among other things.

I have a variety of stims. I flap my arms, like a confused penguin, usually when I’m in the chemists and waiting for my medication. It works particularly well when I’m wearing my waterproof jacket, because it makes a rustling sound that I like. I rub my hands on my thighs especially when I’m wearing jeans. The texture and movement is soothing. Texture seems to be important for me, rough textures work well. I also like physical actions, like throwing a ball at the wall and catching it. Crafting is possibly a stim too. It’s a socially acceptable stim to crochet or sew in public.

Why do I stim? Because I get anxious and I need to send the energy somewhere, I suppose.

What has stimming to do with masking?

If I can redirect the anxiety to an activity I can hold up until I get home. It helps me maintain the facade of calm and attention, except when I can’t and then I stim because I need to. That’s when the mask drops in public and I get funny looks. That’s not fun. Especially as I think some of my behaviours that might have been stimming as a teenager were the reason some people bullied me at school. It was twenty years ago but the worry is still there that someone will attack me for doing what I need to do to be comfortable.

So that’s my take on stimming and masking.

Anyway, I’ve discovered this evening that Monday evening after 8 pm is a good time to go shopping. There was only two other people in the shop when I went to get my food shopping. It was great. No queue at the tills, no children getting too close, hardly any staff getting in the way with containers. It was great. Plus I had an audio book on my tablet, with the volume quite high. I’m going to end up deafening myself.

Pass my Mask, I need to leave the house

So, the delightful ladies and gent on this poster are doing a thing under the tag TakeTheMaskOff. I recommend following them on social media, they’re very interesting people.

Anyway, I thought I’d contribute in my own small way, with a blog post. I don’t know whether I’ll be doing one every week, it depends on what else I’ve got on.

 

 

 

 

 

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