Ten years ago today, my first article was published online. It was a short piece for GUTS, a Canadian feminist magazine and blog, called “Autistic Futures”, since “Futures” was the theme of the magazine’s sixth issue. While the initial pitch was not accepted for the magazine, the editors still enjoyed my idea and suggested hosting it on the website, which was how my first article was published online.
I have a lot of thoughts, both about this first article and my writing career overall. While I am still fond of my article, I can also tell that it was still very rough and my vocabulary rigid. I assume this is partially because I had recently finished my graduate studies, and was still attempting to replicate the language of academia. After all, I worked hard to complete my education, so why wouldn’t I want to show everyone what I had learned and accomplished? Though, I also suspect that this is also a result of experiencing ableism in my life for being an autistic woman, so by sounding more “academic” I would be seen as a “better” writer. So, in a way, I was overcompensating to try to protect myself from scrutiny from those who might judge my writing harshly due to my disability.
Since then, my writing style has relaxed, as I want to make my words more accessible to as many people as possible. I know how frustrating it can be to want to learn something new, but encounter barriers to entry or needlessly convoluted jargon. Plus, I feel my current writing voice is more authentic to who I am and how I want to articulate my thoughts and feelings to others. I still write formally, but that is simply because that is how I prefer to converse with people (outside of close friendships and awkward attempts to joke), rather than trying to prove myself to others.
Aside from this, I look back on my article fondly, as I can see the simultaneous optimism and frustration of my past self when she wrote “Autistic Futures”. Having experienced ableism in both the workplace and in my social life before, and after, this article was written, I can still empathize with the undercurrent of anger present in my writing piece. This is of course extrapolated through learning about the myriad of ways my autistic peers experience ableism and abuse, and how we are still the scapegoats of anti-science conservatives and anti-vaxxers. In many ways, my past self would be deeply disappointed in how the world has still failed my community, and I also share this disappointment.
But, thankfully, the hope that I had in my heart ten years ago has been proven to be true as well. Since writing this article, I have encountered several works, both fictional and non-fictional, either written by neurodivergent people or neurotypicals who empathize with our experiences. Not to mention, the language of neurodiversity has become increasingly accessible in those ten years, which has led to people being willing to learn about the myriad of ways neurodivergent people experience the world, ask important questions about themselves, and develop tools to best accommodate us. This has been extremely heartening for me to see, and gives me hope that this will continue to develop and grow in the coming years.
Since writing this article, I have written various different types of articles and reviews for a myriad of different websites, but no matter the circumstance I have retained my core: that I always talked about the things that I feel passionate about. As I’ve written about in the past, one of the ways that autistic people experience bullying is having our passions and interests mocked, typically those that are perceived as “childish” by the general population. My favourite artforms, which are animation, comics and video games, are all subject to this scrutiny in Canadian culture, despite how much cultural capital they have over the modern media landscape both nationally and globally. By refusing to back down on my passions, I have grown as both a writer and a person, and while I know I always have room to grow, I am happy to be the person I am now.
Some of my writing has been about discussing the positive ways media can help people empathize and connect, while other pieces have been critiques and criticisms of the ways they can depict marginalized communities. Some works were about the history of video games, and others were about how there are multiple different ways to adapt a story from prose to animation. I’ve been reviewing sapphic media on Okazu for the past four years and highlighting small independent comics and video games for three years. It’s been very heartening to see people learn about new comics and video games thanks to my writing, and I hope that it’s something that I can continue to do moving forward.
I look forward to continuing to work on and develop my writing, as it is one of my favourite passions and brings me an immense amount of joy. I hope I continue to write as my true, authentic self and never feel ashamed for writing about the things that I love. And I also hope that I can try new things with my writing, whether it’s dipping my toe into prose or some other form of creative writing. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for reading my writing in general, it means so much to me.
A picture of a black and white longhaired cat, sitting on a white and beige ottoman.