Write every day. Write a thousand words each time you sit down to write. Write first drafts by hand and retype each page when you edit. Write in classrooms or coffee shops, designated office spaces or writing residencies. Write a book in a month or at least by the time you finish your graduate degree. Start working on your next book before your current book is finished. If you want to be a writer, make writing the priority of your life.
But what happens when a writer’s priority must be living? What happens when the workshop fails the writer and in doing so fails the writing?
For many years—first through an MFA program, then through a PhD program, later as I achieved tenure teaching creative writing—I followed the prescriptive advice offered in workshops. Disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent, I loved to write, and so I convinced myself I loved these practices even though they did not love me back.
Then all four of my limbs went numb and also pulsed with painful electric currents. I could not stand up straight or ease my body to sit. I could not hold a cup to my lips, let alone hold a book or use a computer. The pain was chronic and debilitating, and, I later learned, incurable. Doctors confirmed that my injuries and nerve damage were caused, in large part, by forcing my disabled body to follow ableist practices. Though undiagnosed at the time, a disability meant that I should not sit for long periods, should not bend my neck at certain angles, should not use my hands extensively. Nearly every traditional writing practice was detrimental to my disabled body, yet I knew no other way.
Losing the ability to write in the ways I was taught means I have had to remake my writing practice, but this disabled innovation serves me far better. My latest book, Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice, confronts educational ableism to offer disabled writers ways to unlearn ableist writing advice. With strategies for developing disabled writing practices, techniques for designing disabled writing spaces, methods to discover disabled forms and structures for creative work, practical tips for the business of being a writer, and various craft exercises, this text shares how I rediscovered the nerve to write.
Rediscovering my nerve began when I devoted myself to developing my disabled writing space as much as I did to developing my writing. After my injuries, I began investing the time, energy, and resources I used to reserve solely for writing to create a space that supports access as well as craft. Now my writing space is filled with the various tools I need to write without injuring myself. Since I can no longer use pens or type, I now use a microphone and speech recognition software. Since I can no longer hold physical or digital books, I now rely on audiobooks. My adjustable desk allows me to rotate between standing or moving around on deeply cushioned floor mats and sitting on physical therapy balls and cushions. My office is filled with heat pads, pain medications, braces and splints, massage guns and foam rollers, hands-free devices, and other assistive technologies. Noise-canceling headphones, white noise machines, dimmable lights, and blackout curtains allow me to reduce sensory overload. I shift between writing spaces to accommodate shifting symptoms, so I also write from bed, from the bathtub, or in my head as I complete several hours of daily physical therapy or wait in various medical offices. While designing the space has been costly, I have found it to be a far greater investment than many submission or conference fees, and with a much greater return. I cannot remember a time in my writing education where anyone taught me how to create a sustainable writing space, and yet focusing on the craft of developing my disabled space has been as instrumental to my writing as focusing on the work itself.
This understanding has also allowed me to shift the way I view productivity. Much of the time and energy of disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent writers is consumed by symptoms, treatment, navigating a broken health care system, and trying to survive in an ableist world. Because I operate with few functional moments in the day, I’ve learned to write in brief moments of time. Sometimes this is an hour, but more often it is fifteen- to twenty-minute intervals stretched over many days and spread across many weeks and months. Sometimes my ability to write is as brief as a few minutes and a single sentence, so I also no longer follow numerical output goals. Rather than admonishing myself for not writing every day or 1,000 words in a session, which only serves to distract me from the craft of creativity and the craft of care, my only goal is to write when I can with bodily ease and to stop when this is no longer possible.
Prior to my injuries, I might have viewed this as unproductive, but now I see it as a joyful triumph and a necessary precaution. Shifting from an external focus to an internal one that prioritizes my well-being means I’m able to focus on the pleasure of the work rather than the performance of productivity, and means I am less likely to push myself to the point of injury. Now a productive writing session for me can be both an extended stretch of writing on a low-pain day or a line I compose while waiting for a medical appointment. I am also more likely to write when I am only aiming for a few moments rather than a long stretch. This frees me from the burden of expectation, and I no longer berate myself for failing to achieve what is unreasonable for my body. More than that, I know that writing consistently in brief will likely result in the same amount of work as if I push myself to the point of injury and then am unable to write. It can be difficult to view this kind of slow, sustained work as productive when the writing world boasts reading a book in a day or writing a book in a month, but this essay, and Nerve, were both written this way—a few moments, a few sentences at a time.
Reframing productivity has also influenced the form and structure of my work, which now reflects the fact that I am no longer able to write at length. This has meant a shift away from longform prose and toward work that utilizes brevity to encapsulate not only my ability to write, but my ability to function in an ableist world. Now my work is often comprised of short segments or lines that can be written in brief moments of time. Now my work is increasingly hybrid in nature to reflect the blurred realities of the disability experience, which often forces people to straddle the line between disabled reality and ableist expectation. Now my work is more succinct, a concision that represents the urgency with which I must write so that I might focus most of my efforts on the task of survival. Even Nerve reflects this reality, a craft book far shorter than many conventional craft books, comprised of brief sections that replicate my abilities and the abilities of many disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent readers to navigate a book about building a writing life while also trying to live in an ableist world.
Finally, developing my disabled writing practice has also meant developing my understanding of the craft of radical rest. When the ableist writing workshop focuses solely on work, rather than the writer, it is no wonder that many writers learn to ignore the body and brain in favor of the page. But managing my energies is an essential part of my success as a disabled writer, and so I now incorporate frequent breaks into each writing session. Since being stationary is dangerous for my body, I frequently move while writing, bending and pacing, as well as stimming for my neurodivergence. I schedule stretch breaks every fifteen minutes, relying on timers to remind me when to move, as well as when to stop writing for the day. These predetermined times allow me to focus on my body’s ability rather than my writing progress, and by reframing rest as part of the process, I’ve been more easily able to integrate it into my writing life.
I also schedule sustained breaks into my overall writing schedule to help me manage my energies. While I used to feel frustrated that my hours of daily physical therapy and endless medical appointments and procedures took away from the time I had available to write, I now view these as essential to my work, for the necessary care of tending to my body and brain allows me to tend to my writing. Since I often forget my abilities, or mercilessly overestimate them, I also keep a list of circumstances and times of the day, week, month, and year that I struggle to write due to my various disabilities. The ableist world often denies rest to disabled people, insisting instead that we overcome our disabilities or push ourselves to the limits to prove our worth, so writing radical rest into the stories of our lives can be a powerful act of agency.
I have spent much of my life in the writing classroom, first as a student, now as a professor, and yet I no longer follow most of the conventional wisdom I encountered there. If anything, I have spent more time struggling to succeed using this detrimental advice, and more time learning to unlearn it. So much of what is taught about being a writer actively injures disabled writers and yet so many ableist workshops have the audacity to continue perpetuating dangerous practices. But to be a writer is to shape the world, and so we can shape the stories of our writing lives and the writing workshop if only we discover our nerve.
NONFICTION
Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice
By Sarah Fawn Montgomery
Sundress Publications
2025
