Howdy, howdy!  I hope everyone is having a wonderful week.  Today, I want to talk a little about some of my struggles with deciding how much to reveal about myself when submitting to publishers and/or agents.  I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things, especially with Garnets and Guardians, because being cripple is the best asset one can have when writing cripple characters, right?  But, honestly, it’s really difficult to know how much to reveal about yourself and how that information is going to influence the people who are ultimately judging your talent (or lack thereof).

When it comes to submitting short stories to various magazines, I don’t bother mentioning my disability.  Mostly, I keep it to myself because it has no bearing on the stories I submit.  There aren’t any cripple characters in my short stories, so there’s no point in mentioning it.  But, I also keep it to myself because I fear the concept of a pity pub (getting published because they feel sorry for me).  I understand that these are professionals who are supposed to be above such actions, but years of “cripple perks” (earning awards in high school for simply doing the work I was assigned, being called “inspirational” at college just because I preferred classes on campus instead of online, etc.) have made me wary of succeeding in subjective areas.  It’s just something I will always be worried about.

However, when I began submitting Garnets and Guardians to agents, I was forced to reevaluate the choice to keep my disability out of things.  On the one hand, I don’t want to take the chance of people judging my writing less harshly just because I’m cripple.  I also don’t want agents to become intrigued by me even if they aren’t enthusiastic about my writing.  I’m not interested in being anyone’s token cripple.  On the other hand, the protagonist of my novel has a disability, so my own crippleness gives me a unique perspective into her development as a realistic character.

In the end, I chose simply to mention my disability in passing in my query letter.  I don’t know if it’s the correct decision or not.  Sometimes, I wonder if I should go into more detail, but then I worry it will seem like I’m hoping for special treatment, which I also want to avoid.  I was raised to never expect or ask for special treatment beyond the accommodations I need (but not to turn it down in certain cases either).  But ultimately, a brief mention of it to establish that I have knowledge about cripple experiences feels necessary.  Besides, if my query letter intrigues an agent and they decide to look at my website or blog, they’re going to find out about my crippleness anyway, so it’s not as if I’m hiding it.

So yeah, while I don’t technically hide my disability from people, I remain wary about announcing it in a professional (virtually anonymous) setting just in case it will cause people to think differently about me.  What about you?  Is there anything you refrain from mentioning because of similar reasons?  What about completely different reasons?  Feel free to share here or on my social media sites!

Until next time!