I invited author and fellow blogger Steve K. Smy to share some thoughts today. We exchanged a few emails about potential topics, and Steve settled on writing about writing with a disability. I was very inspired when I read his post, and I think you will be as well. Please be sure to visit Steve at Imagineerebooks.wordpress.com to read his entertaining and engaging posts.
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I suffer from some very significant health problems. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say, I’m virtually immobilised and housebound. Back in 2011, when I came far too close to being terminal, I began to vegetate. Now, it’s one thing to be a couch potato when you choose to be, but it’s another to become the whole vegetable garden by force of circumstance! On a long, slow road to recovery, I began looking for things to do. I took up knitting and made some real progress in it. I moved on to beading and jewellery making as we moved into 2012, together with cross-stitching. But these excellent therapies were aiding only in a physical sense. I really needed mental stimulation. It was then that I returned to something I had loved doing since I was 13 years old—writing!
I had recently discovered these things called ebooks. I’d created PDFs in the past, for other reasons, and it seemed like this ebook thing might be a way to do more than just write for my own pleasure. There was no reason why I shouldn’t, I thought, write and produce PDFs, which I could then offer via a web site. You never knew—somebody might actually even want to read things I had written. Miracles do happen, after all.
Now, back in the day, I liked writing with those peculiar items—pen and paper. A typewriter had been even better. When the opportunity presented itself, I fully embraced personal computers. It was natural, then, to use a computer for my writing efforts. Not! On every previous attempt, I had gotten nowhere at all. But now, I had a reason beyond simply wanting to write. I wanted to survive! Not only that, I wanted to recover my mothballed grey matter and make it into something like its old self. Teetering on the brink during most of 2011 proved to be a powerful motivator. That and going nuts because I seldom saw anything outside one room of the house!
It wasn’t easy, and there were long periods when I simply couldn’t write, but I started work on a novel. It’s still a work in progress but the creativity had been reawakened. I was also learning new things. In fact, I was getting downright excited by the whole scene! So much so, I started writing a blog all about it. I had discovered this wonderful thing of modern times—self-publishing. I had also acquired this piece of software that would take what I wrote in Open Office and turn it into various formats of ebook, with very little effort on my part. Well, the writing was an effort, of course, but the software made things much simpler once the writing was done.
When I hit a block in writing my novel, I started writing short stories. These fulfilled my need to write. More, they gave me the opportunity to actually become a self-published author! What was even more gratifying was that people actually downloaded my short story ebooks. I had a sense of having arrived. It was a sweet feeling.
Still, there were those nasty, inconvenient health problems. I admit it. They still leave me unable to function at times. But they’ve also contributed to my writing. I have a better understanding of many things thanks to them. Partly that’s because I have more experiences to draw upon, but partly it’s a side effect. Being pretty immobile, I’ve become an even better observer of others. It’s all grist to the mill. Ultimately, any writer takes elements of everything they encounter and turns them into a stew. That stew will, eventually, turn into something entirely new, a creation in which tiny parts of no huge significance are brought to life by a spark from the author.
I can’t claim that bad health has inspired me, but there is no denying that it has driven me. Since February 2012, I’ve written more and more as time has passed, and the need to write has grown steadily. So in a sense I owe my health problems some thanks for that much. I’m not even sure that I would continue writing if I was to be miraculously cured, so I guess that I need the problems to keep me doing something I’ve always loved doing. They give me permission to write!
~ Steve K. Smy
I write fantasy, science fiction and occasionally other genres. I have, to date, published nine short story ebooks, five of them in a single series. I’m also working on a fantasy novel. My works are available from various sources and are all free to download, for the currently published short story ebooks. I also blog about writing, self-publishing and related matters. My blog also contains book reviews, author interviews and various other material of interest.
My ebooks to date can be found on Smashwords (in various formats) and as ePubs on Goodreads, Kobo (for kobo eReaders), iTunes (for iBooks), Barnes & Noble (for the Nook), Diesel eBooks and Sony ebook store (in the USA/Canada only). None have DRM applied to them.
My blog: http://imagineerebooks.wordpress.com
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/imagineer.ebooks
- A Few Words About The Blog (imagineerebooks.wordpress.com)
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