Valentine’s Day (and Day After) and a Discussion of Book Promotion and Maintaining the Writer’s Life with a Disability or Chronic Illness

Valentine’s Flowers

Valentine’s Day (and Day After)

This week didn’t start out great – I went in for a dental exam and cleaning and they found another tooth in need of an immediate root canal, I was put on more antibiotics, and at midnight on Valentine’s Day I got a text that said my dad was back in hospital with pneumonia. I spent a worried night and didn’t celebrate much on Valentine’s Day, especially since I had to spend an hour at the doctor’s office getting more tests. Sigh. My sweet husband did get me this wonderful bouquet, which actually had flowers that smelled good – even the roses, miraculous in February – which helped, even though I was mostly wiped out from an anxious night.

The day after Valentine’s Day was a little better – first, no doctor’s appointments, second, my dad was responding to treatment, and third it wasn’t pouring rain so we were able to get out of the house a little bit (although it’s been cold, in the forties, so still not like, awesome outdoor weather yet).

Glenn and I celebrating at Willows Lodge

So Glenn and I went to Willows Lodge for drinks, dessert, and their live music, for a belated Valentine’s celebration. We came home and watched romantic movies and had chocolate-dipped strawberries and duck for dinner. This morning the morning actually had a little bit of light in it, as opposed to total gloom.

Also this week we got most of our taxes and (ahhhhh) I turned in my NEA grant application. Always a long shot, but I’m glad I got it done. I also sent work out to two more “dream” journals and had an invitation from a press to send a full-length manuscript, so that was nice. (Also had a couple of rejections, but of course that’s part of the process.)

I also read a really eye-opening essay on disability and expectations of writers, which brings me to my next topic…

Birdwatching in Woodinville – Peacock at Chateau Ste Michelle

Book Promotion – and Maintaining the “Writer’s Life” – with a Disability and/or Chronic Illness

I came upon this article almost by accident: Cripping the Book Tour, Guts Magazine.  In it, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha discusses ablism in how it impacts the book tour industry – expectations for traveling which are hard on those with immune problems or wheelchairs (or who, like me, have both), inaccessability at readings, and, most interesting to me of all, how abled people who run readings and invite people to speak at colleges can make things more equal for the disabled. Like, putting in a ramp to get to a stage is the bare minimum. What about paying for writers to Skype into classes or readings? What are the ways, if they say they want disabled poets to participate, they actively provide for accessible venues? What about reconsidering the way that a writer maintains a life? Anyway, the whole thing got me thinking…

When I write PR for Poets,  I was grappling with a terminal cancer diagnosis (my tumors have since been classified as “stable” but I still have to get them scanned every six months). I was about to get a diagnosis of MS. These things have changed how I view book promotion in my own life and also how I might write about it next time.

Since I started promoting poetry books in 2006 (I’ve had five books published since), things have changed – the technology, the realities of travel, and in my case, my health has become a constraining factor. Last year, for instance, I was invited to read at a college for money – but ended up not being able to go for health reasons. I was also invited to be a featured speaker at a lovely-looking conference in Colorado – but given how difficult travel has been with a wheelchair, and the impact on my immune system, I had to turn it down. In both cases, I offered to appear virtually, but that offer was declined. AWP is coming up, and one reason (well, besides the money AND persistent accessibility problems at the conference itself) is that the travel is so hard on my system and the rewards don’t seem like enough to balance that out. The book addresses ways to reach new audiences that don’t involve physical travel – blog book tours, for instance, or virtual appearances at book groups or colleges, as well as social media outreach – but it could have gone further.

If you, as a healthy able-bodied writer in the world – an editor or a professor or someone who runs a conference –  want to support disabled or chronically ill writers, teach their books. Encourage your students to buy books, or request their books from libraries. Give disabled or chronically ill writers chances to do phone interviews, Skype sessions, radio appearances.

The reality is, my health and disability can limit my ability to have a writer’s life – the way traditionally the writers make money from books is being invited out to speak at colleges or at readings at conferences, so if you limit your travel to, for instance, locations you can drive to because the last two times you flew you caught pneumonia or the airlines lost your wheelchair (yup, both happened to me) – you’re also limiting how much you get paid, how many audiences you reach, how many copies of the book you sell.

Or…is that still true? I started thinking harder about this. When I started promoting my first poetry book, the number one way to sell copies was to travel to readings and people would buy books there. For my second book, the best way to sell was to send out paper postcards with buying information on them. By the time my last book came out, yes, I sold books through readings and postcards, but I sold the most copies through my blog and Facebook/Twitter announcements. If the world is really getting more technology oriented – working from home, virtual meetings – then maybe the way you sell poetry books has changed, too. I think about Instagram poets, who have a million followers and sell a million books – all without even making a personal appearance.

I also think how writers in the past – like Emily Dickinson or Flannery O’Conner – coped without doing big book tours or personal appearances. Flannery and Dickinson both had copious letters – I’ve read a lot of them – as did writers like Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf – to keep them connected to the larger world of the arts. Flannery might have gotten sicker faster because she travelled to do speaking engagements for money. Plath definitely pushed herself in order to be seen as successful. “Self-care” wasn’t a big priority for them, or even a word used or even a concept that was popular in their lifetimes, although it probably ought to have been. It could make the difference, for some writers, between, quite literally, life and death. Good health care is not a given here in America. The difference between “success” and “failure” for any writer might be a whisper thin margin – an award, a grant, a paid opportunity.

I think we’re pretty far from having equitable opportunities right now for chronically ill and/or disabled writers. But maybe with the energy and work of disability activists and people in the arts world making the effort to think about how they reach out to disabled artists and audiences – things will change for the better.