Reaching other Pain People
The happy thing for me this month is that I am celebrating the release of my essay collection, Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System. University of Nebraska Press continues to be a fantastic home for books, and I'm so glad to get to work with them. And I am glad to get these essays out into the world because they are so strange, and departing from a larger coherent narrative nonfiction structure is such a welcome respite--especially on the topic of pain.
I gave a talk last week at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference on the reasons why writing about pain made me run screaming from a linear narrative. I have told the story of my onset and symptoms of rheumatoid disease and other conditions to so many doctors, and it's a mystery story that doesn't have a convenient resolution. The narrative gives me no answers. It tells of my ability to adapt, to contain pain, but that is not what doctors want to hear. I once went into doctors' offices furiously and desperately hoping for a cure, but I have slowly adapted to the idea that that is not in the cards for me. I have become a non-narrative, non-linear creature when it comes to pain. For that reason, I have let in all the weirdness, which was fantastic and fun.
Normally with a new book I would do a book tour, and I do have some dates scheduled over the next few months. However, with this topic--and with my body in general the way it is--I am thinking about how to reach people who don't travel much or for whom getting out of the house in the evening and out to a bookstore is either an ordeal or impossible.The question is: how can I do a reading for other people like me? Maybe I could do a reading in a mattress store where everyone could lie down. (That probably won't happen but it sounds amazing). Or maybe--and this I'm considering more seriously--I could do a reading on YouTube live so people could tune in?One cool thing I am participating in in April is an online workshop on Writing Chronic Pain through the "Survive and Thrive" conference on narrative medicine. I am excited to learn more about this as it seems like an awesome model for accessibility.Let me know what you think--especially if you are a Pain Person. I am also open to Skype or FaceTime meetings with chronic pain support groups. I know there has to be a way to use technology to connect and do a form of reading that is accessible to people like me.