I plan on doing more with Daeg later, though, and hope I can do it convincingly. Eeps. Now that I know Cearbhaill is reading…

I don’t really count Malo as handicapped in my mind, but I guess he is. He is quite good at communicating through gestures by now after a thousand years working at it, but he can still only truly make himself understood for abstract or complicated things through writing. And most people don’t know how to read in the 11th century, so he’s perhaps more handicapped than a mute man would be nowadays.

I will be doing more with Malo soon, and I would bet that finding myself confronted with the practical difficulties of writing a chapter about a man who can’t talk will quickly change my perception of him into his being somewhat handicapped indeed.

The character I meant is not entirely new, but close…

Sorry for filling your blog with comments about my own story…

I guess I end up sticking to what I know in the end though because I constantly am worrying that my characters start to converge into one person that is probably me So I am always trying to think about who different people react to various situation and not do my reaction or an extremely cliched stereotypical reaction.

I am wondering if this somewhat-handicapped character is one we have already met Lothere… or is it a completely new character. Malo? or maybe Estrid and Brede’s son, ack I can’t remember his name. I wonder how things are going with them actually. Those kids must be almost teenagers now.

And I’ll check out that book Cearbhaill, it sounds interesting.

I think part of the problem for corporations is that while the technology is there to make most jobs accessible to people who are visually impaired it is extremely expensive. It is therefore much easier (read: cheaper) to hire someone who is not. My mother’s reaction when she first heard that the BF was blind was not very kind. She basically thought I’d end up being the main breadwinner and housekeeper. It’s not true though. My BF cooks, I don’t. He cleans, does his own laundry, is gainfully employed. I’m the one without a real full time job. I love how you handle Gena. She has her insecurities, which everyone does, but she is very capable and works very hard.

Lothere, I can definitely understand your reluctance to write about disabilities. The one thing I think writers have in their favor is that in general, no two people with the same disability have the same experience. I’ve worked with people who are visually impaired, hearing impaired, autistic, physically impaired, emotionally impaired and on down the list. Each person is different, and each handle life in a different way. But ultimately, when you’re writing you need to stick to what you’re comfortable with.

Oh and Verity, if you’re interested in Helen Keller, there’s this awesome new book called Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller by Sarah Miller. It is about Annie Sullivan, who was also visually impaired.

I do have another somewhat-handicapped character coming up, but once again….

I think you are very right about people just seeing someone’s disability and not thinking about the actual person. I can’t believe that 70% of visually impaired people in the US are unemployed! That is terrible! I don’t understand why it should be like that, there is no reason they can’t do lots of jobs perfectly well if the companies would just be more accommodating. This has been something I have been trying to explore with Gena, the fact that people assume that she can’t do anything and she is just a burden. When really she works just as hard and can handle most things just as well as everyone else.

I love your comments so don’t feel like a comment whore. There is nothing better than to open up my website and see a whole lot of new comments

(And now that I feel like a total comment whore I’m going to go catch up on what I’ve missed over in Lothere.)

I’m really glad Gena has Noah. She is really lucky in that time (well I guess not so lucky since I made her and I can decide whether she has a nice husband or not). But back in those days she would just be seen as a burden on society. Poor girl.