I recently made an off-hand post about wanting to get some book editing done, but weather got in my way and made me flare. Sucks, but that’s what happens with unpredictable chronic illnesses.
What I was working on that day was a book about what it was like to job hunt as a completely up front, openly disabled (housebound) person for the first time.
As you may know, I have to job hunt again at the moment. And I’m really considering publishing this book at this time, instead of hella sanitising my online life? Well, yeah. Firstly, I don’t believe in sanitising my online life; if it meets my ethics to share, then it meets my ethics to share. (Side note, it’s funny that people think I share everything, because you have no idea how much I don’t share.) Sharing is not really dependent upon situation anymore for me. But mostly, it’s not my responsibility to make companies be non discriminatory. That’s their responsibility. If they don’t want people writing about discriminatory behaviours, then they can stop being discriminatory. It’s really quite easy. They can even hire me to help with parts of that.
Why did I decide to start working on the book again now? It just kind of felt right. I probably needed to face the trauma I’d been through last time, I need to make more money outside of work so publishing a book is right… I also had been feeling a bit lesser than for some writerly reasons, then I read a book that had been published and had a similar style to how mine will read, which boosted me up a bit. It was time, is the TL;DR answer.
After I had made the decision to start working on my book again, this came out in the news. Shocking literally no one in the disabled community, did you know employers can be discriminatory? Timing is a hell of a thing.
Will anyone read it? Who knows. I get really bored with marketing which never helps with that whole selling things thing. Will any employers who need to learn from it actually read it? I hope so. As much as I don’t like centring non-disabled audiences, I don’t think my fellow chronically ill, disabled, and/or neurodivergent people need to read this book. You’re welcome to, of course, but I worry all it will do is retraumatise people who have had similar experiences. (Yes, there will be content warnings.)
I don’t have a deadline or a pre-order page, because my body/my needs are more of a priority than the book, as they always will be. But I’ll update when it’s ready to preorder/publish. And there will be a way for low-no income people to read it.
