SPEAKERS:

Andrea Martineau, Rachel Thompson

Rachel Thompson:

Welcome, Luminous Writers, to the **Write, Publish and Shine** podcast. I am your host, author, and literary magazine editor, Rachel Thompson. This podcast explores how to write and share your brilliant writing with the world. In each episode, we delve into specifics on how to polish and prepare your writing for publication and the journey from emerging writer to published author.

Welcome to the fourth installment of this string of episodes on the theme of writing with limitations and disabilities.

Before I introduce my wonderful guest for this episode, I have some reflection that I need to share with my listeners. I’ve been grateful to everyone willing to come on and share their experiences with me, and my promise was to handle this with as much care, gentleness, and grace I can muster. But recently, I failed big time in that arena and want to describe this for accountability on my part, and also perhaps illustrate a little of the disappointments that writers with limitations and disability are up against.

Defying any logic or reason in one of my episodes, I mislabeled a guest. I clearly didn’t listen and I used the wrong label. And while I corrected the mistake within the week of publication, I know that mislabeling is harmful and brings up often traumatic experiences of being misheard and unseen as writers with limitations and disability experience. I’m profoundly sorry about this. I’ve apologized privately. And there’s no excuse for this carelessness.

There are many advantages to being an indie podcast, beholden to nobody and doing it all. And this is not an excuse, but I guess an explanation for maybe how a bad mistake like that could happen. So getting into quick production mode, pushing forward always producing, producing, producing. I didn’t create the space and time to double-check, reflect, or go slowly so I didn’t do more harm than good.

So setting out on these conversations, I positioned myself as a non -expert on limitations and disabilities, and I expected to make mistakes along the way, but I didn’t expect that one. As you can imagine, this mess up made me question continuing the series. However, I have decided to continue interviewing folks for now and putting their thoughts and feelings forward with more thoughtful attention to processes, less pushing forward to deadlines.

I suspect this might mean we won’t always have a new episode each week, or certainly not in every single week coming up. And that too is part of writing with limitations and disabilities, isn’t it? Slowing down, listening to our bodies, taking time to create thoughtfully. Speaking of processes, I’ve also heard from writers about the transcripts, which can sometimes take a while on our end because a real human does them, and I completely accept the critique that if this is a series on disabilities that transcripts could come up more quickly. So as each episode comes out, I am going to post transcriptions right away that come from translation software.

So I will clearly label this and then post the human -made one that comes with a table of contents, usually a week or so after the episode drops once they’re ready. So with the goal of paying more attention, listening more deeply, and creating more thoughtfully, on to this episode with the fabulous Andrea Martineau.

Andrea Martineau’s bio reads, “Andrea Martineau is a writer, poet, bibliophile, and phytomaniac (I had to look that one up, a plant lover) with a penchant for heritage buildings and their paranormal tenants.” Her poetry has previously been published and shared in untethered magazine, Blank Spaces, [SPACE], Figroot Press, and The League of Canadian Poets’ Poetry Pause.

Andrea is a wonderful part of our membership community, has such clarity around her practice. She calls on us to believe writers with limitations and disabilities when they say what they need or need to pause or bow it from doing something during a flare up or when it doesn’t work for their health and wellness.

Here is my conversation with Andrea Martineau.

I just want to start by thanking you so much, Andrea, for agreeing to be on the podcast and just welcome to the **Write, Publish and Shine** podcast.

Andrea Martineau:

Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Rachel Thompson:

As you know, and as I’ve been, you know, telling all the lovely folks who’ve been joining us in these sessions and sending you the questions beforehand as well, this series is focused on writers who write with limitations and writers who write with disability and /or identify as disabled, a spoonie and neurodivergent. Other terms, neurospicy, has come up as well too, which I love and maybe adopting for myself soon. So how do you publicly identify yourself? What’s in your writing bio and how did you come to this identity or way of expressing yourself within your lived experience?

Andrea Martineau:

I feel like I need to steal neuro spicy at some point because that sounds a lot more fun than what I go by. I would say that I’m chronically ill is probably the term I feel most comfortable with. My chronic migraines anxiety and my polycystic ovarian syndrome impact my life a lot but I am lucky that I do have a great number of symptom -free days as well. So I’m not sure if disabled is necessarily a label that’s correct my situation. I figure I kind of fall somewhere between the spectrum of the pie charts or the Venn diagrams of disabled and neurodivergent, depending on where you pull your definition from.

Then I listened to your more recent podcast with Shantelle where she described that, seeing people with more serious conditions and air quotes, I feel like I don’t have it bad enough to use certain terms sort of things. I’m still kind of navigating that. I don’t have it currently in my writing bio just ’cause I think my health conditions… are probably the least interesting thing about me. So that’s how I landed on that. –

Rachel Thompson:

There’s such resonance with ways ’cause I remember Shan saying a similar thing to you. It’s like, I don’t think that’s the most interesting thing about me, so I don’t put that in there. It’s also true that I feel like I’m discovering even though I knew there was a lot of people who have different conditions and pain days and all that kind of thing that they’re navigating through their writing within our community, I feel like the more the better. We’ve given voice to this is like an overt rather than kind of like a by the way conversation.

I’ve learned about more and more people, including yourself who are like, “Oh, yeah, actually, I have that too, and I’m struggling in this way as well.” So it’s been great just to seeing kind of people making community around, “Oh, this is the strategy that I use because, you know, I also have migraines, I think is one thing that you were sharing some information about.” So it’s just been beautiful to see. and I’m just so grateful for you for being here. I’m wondering how have limitations and disability and I guess the chronic illness impacted your writing both creatively and in practice?

Andrea Martineau:

I would say creatively. I get really vivid nightmares that are definitely influenced by my anxiety, my migraines, the medication that I have to take for both. And this has inspired some homes or influenced the way that I write spooky or creepy scenes of my psychological thriller novel and progress fiction. In practice, I do love technology and all that it can offer, but I just can’t do a screen some days, especially after eight hours on a computer for my day job.

So I do hand write a lot of my first drafts and brainstorming. And while this takes more time and is a lot less efficient than I would like, it’s ultimately the only way I can write some days. So I figure writing a little bit is better than writing none at all and feeling worse for it. So I make it work.

Rachel Thompson:

Yeah, I love that. Make it work. I want to talk about the dreams a little bit too, but maybe we’ll get into more of that in a second because that was a cool surprise that, oh, I have these interesting nightmares related to your medications and disability. But what pose challenges in your writing life related to your limitations and disability? And we’ll talk about the dreams in a minute.

Andrea Martineau:

I would say definitely the unpredictability of it. Some days you can sense a migraine coming on and you can kind of rearrange your schedule or take your medication earlier or whatever it might be so that you can get through that. Other times it’ll just come on quickly and out of the blue and when it does that and it’s quite severe pain, it’s not one of those things you can power through to make it to a workshop or an interview or a meeting or whatever it might be.

So that part is definitely challenging in both that It sucks that I have to miss those things and some of them can’t be rescheduled, but I also don’t want to feel, you know, my writing group or my book club or whoever it might be feel like I’m abandoning them or bailing for no reason at all. So that can be tough to juggle sometimes.

Rachel Thompson:

Yeah, I hear that. And I feel like the more we have this conversation to, I’m hoping that people have more flexibility and they’re thinking too, it’s like, okay, if you’re going to engage with writers who have these kind of challenges, you have to be able to kind of roll with it and trust and understand when someone says, this is not my day, I can’t do this today. And it’s not because of a lack of dedication to the craft or the group. What are some things that you have done to make the work of writing better fit your abilities and limitations?

Andrea Martineau:

Definitely giving myself grace when I need to take a day off. I used to beat myself up over it. And that just wasn’t productive. I ended up avoiding writing just because I felt bad about having to take time off. So now I just brush it aside and carry on once I’m feeling better. I’m definitely doing more paper writing when possible to give myself a break from screens and going about it in a slow way so that I am still writing. I’m still working towards it, but I’m not staying up late, burning myself out, or making my symptoms worse by trying to play catch up.

Rachel Thompson:

So I want to ask you about writing practices that excite you these days. but can you talk a bit more about the dreams and sort of what happens, like do they influence your writing and that you’re jotting them down in the middle of the night or tell me more about that?

Andrea Martineau:

I’ve always had vivid dreams and nightmares, but definitely when I’m having a migraine or I’m in pain or I’m feeling really anxious about something, they’re kind of like the volumes turned up or something like that. I would describe them as like speculative almost or kind of horror based. And so they can put a lot of really interesting images in terms of whether it’s a biographical topic or whether it’s just random crazy spooky garbage that comes out, it can definitely provide some inspiration.

So sometimes I do wake up and I jot it down or sometimes I wake up in the morning and it just kind of sits in the back of my brain haunting me all day. So eventually I jot it down, but either way, a lot of it does end up in my work at some point.

Rachel Thompson:

I love that. I mean, it’s a terrible price to pay to have a migraine to have that happen, but also it’s at least nice you get some kind of benefit.

Right, yeah. Let’s talk about writing and writing practices that excite you these days. Are there methods and genres, forms and places where you feel momentum and excitement about your writing?

Andrea Martineau:

I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction lately, which isn’t like me. Everything from self -help to essays on motherhood and writing more autobiographical poetry. And I’ve started working on fiction for the first time. Seriously, it was something I did in high school, university, that sort of thing, but always just stuck to poetry ’cause that’s what I knew. So it’s been really helpful to switch between fiction and poetry, both in terms of just writing and in terms of craft learning. And I’ve started using poetry techniques in my fiction and fiction techniques in my poetry more. It’s been interesting to see how that turns out.

Rachel Thompson:

Who are some writers, artists and people in your life living, dead, related or not that taught you through their own writing with disability and limitations?

Andrea Martineau:

I’m going to copy everyone else for this first one and say Amanda Liduk’s spoke about fairy tales and disability was really helpful. I attended some of her readings during the festival of Words in Saskatchewan a few years ago and I still keep her book in my office at work. I hope this isn’t weird for me to say but there is another one. I guess, acquaintance, local writer and artist named Carla Harris, who I bumped into at events on online.

I loved her chapbook, Obtain No Proof from Frog Hollow Press and the events and projects she shares related to the disabled creative community here in Saskatchewan are really helpful. And probably, finally, and most importantly, I wanted to say my friend Sue, who goes by SJ Shalgaire, we’re in a writing group together and she has permanent disability from traumatic brain injury, primarily acquired severe attentional impairments, deals with cognitive fatigue, slower processing speed. I wanted to reach out to her first and make sure I had gotten that right.

She writes really insightful poetry about her disability and it also has this wonderful dream like or nightmarish like element to some of them, which I can really relate to. And so it’s been really neat to see her navigate that and to see the great work she comes up with.

Rachel Thompson:

One thing that I know of your work, because you just finished the intensive with us as well, is that you are writing a novel in verse in a way. Is that the right way to describe that project? I’m thinking about the length of it, if it’s like novella or novel at this point. But do you want to talk a little bit about the project?

Andrea Martineau:

It’s, I’d say maybe a chapbook and verse. It’s quite short still. But it’s a group of poems and it’s, I guess, kind of similar to, I think it’s Carolyn Smart’s “Coreen” is the title of it, where it’s a fictionalization of historical time periods taking place in like the 1920s and 1930s in Moustace Saskatchewan and is told from the point of view of three characters. One is a female character who’s kind of… of the lead, who runs a speakeasy in a cafe, one reluctant bootlegger whose his heart’s maybe in it a little more than it should be. And one of a cutthroat bootlegger and their interactions together and how that plays out.

Rachel Thompson:

I love it. And I’m not sure what you brought today, but I’m hoping we can hear from some of your writing as well. Did you bring a piece that you published that relates to your disability limitations indirectly or directly that you’d like to read from? –

Andrea Martineau:

It relates indirectly. This is something that just came out of a nightmare. And I can’t pronounce the French for the life of me, so please forgive me, but the title is La Cochamar de la Belmere, the stepmother’s nightmare. So the stepmother’s nightmare:

“Waste deep in amniotic waters, her wimple grows a serpent’s tail and scales. Her eyes replicate the soundless pool we both sit in. Muddy, tenebrous. I wash her daughter’s hair. Debris trickles off the slipped knotted tresses. My fingers snake. She ties knots faster than I can unwind them. Her serpent snarl, snap, snake bites ooze. The pool now copper red. A door opens of its own determination, but we cannot all make it through. I flail a trembling arm towards her crown, claw clamor at scales, shred through my plump finger pads to soften her grip. She loses interest in her child, our child, my child. Her mortal eyes now clocked on mine. Through the effervescent door, somewhere familiar, the child floats away. Free of us both at last, but not everyone floats down here. The silence ceases, broken by a shrill scream. My wrist seized, she pulls me under. Hush. Finges in circle, radio -carpel, though I am too stubborn to sink. I knob my left arm, swim after my child in lopsided lengths. I’ll play the she -villain if it means I see her again. There’s no one else to comb her hair. I leave the serpent siren to feast on destiny. The door slams shut, watertight. Blood is thicker than.”

Rachel Thompson:

Such vivid images. Oh my goodness. What do you wish people would sense or know about writing with disability and limitations?

Andrea Martineau:

I guess what I wish people would know is to just believe me when I say I can’t do something because I push myself so frequently and often so much farther than I should for my own help to keep up and not miss any commitments, you know, to do my day job and my writing with a hundred percent of my bandwidth. And it’s just not my fault that, you know, sometimes a hundred percent bandwidth is a lot smaller than another person’s. And if I’ve only got 10 percent to give, I’m still going to give you my all and that shouldn’t be discounted.

So I hear things like, oh, you’re sick a lot, a lot, and it doesn’t really help. It makes me feel like they’re implying that I’m not taking care of myself or that I’m not working hard enough. And even though I’m giving literally everything that’s in the tank just show up some days, I wish I could just pop a Tylenol and carry on. But that’s not always the case. So just understanding that even if it doesn’t feel like it on their end, I am doing my best to show up for them still.

Rachel Thompson:

I hear that. And actually the most recent episode that as of our conversation you haven’t heard will be with Olwen Wilson, who also kind of prefaced this with like, I also kind of wish people would stop asking what they need to do as well too. And so I recognize that I’m asking writers, because these are the standard questions that I’ve been, you know, I have kind of a set of questions that I’ve been using for this series.

So asking you to explain to others something that’s probably a bit tedious to have to do all the time. I guess I’m kind of sitting with that tension too, because it’s like, is that fair to ask. But at the same time, I really wish to amplify that idea specifically because that’s come up before as well. It’s like, no, just believe me when I say I can’t do something. And even just having the kind of the faith of, you know, that there’s an honest discourse in that, actually, this is a priority for me. I just can’t do it today versus people questioning motives and all that.

Andrea Martineau:

Exactly.

Rachel Thompson:

What helps you move, rest, heal, grieve, and celebrate your efforts, wins and losses.

Andrea Martineau:

I would definitely say the people in my life, I guess all facets of it. My parents, my teachers have always been wildly supportive of my writing and me as a person in general. So when I was in second grade, I remember my parents asking my teacher in a parent -teacher interview what they should do to foster my creative writing and my teacher Ms. Towers said something along the lines of just let her write. And so having that kind of support from the get -go has been super helpful because I know they’re always standing in my corner and they’re always going to be showing up to my virtual lip -make -launch readings, whatever it might be, and they’re always there.

I also think that commiserating and also celebrating with the writers in the writing group I’m part of, the canticollective of writerly women, that always helps. And I have a dear friend, Tanisha, from university who always puts things in perspective for me when I may be focusing a little bit too much on the losses. And then also to, I think, my daughter, she’s eight, she plays a huge role in this, ’cause seeing the world through a child’s eyes often gives you different approaches to problems and kind of sparks this renewed joy to be found and celebrated in the everyday.

So reminding you to celebrate those small efforts and to see things as a positive. I also follow her cues to be active and exercise and run around and play, play is important, I think. And… And to invest my heart in the activities that bring me joy and then also take time out to rest without any sort of guilt.

Rachel Thompson:

I’m reading a book right now, How to Do Nothing. I think that’s what it’s called. I’ll put that in my

Andrea Martineau:

I have that in my cupboard right now. I’m only halfway done, though.

Rachel Thompson:

I’ll put the information because I’m forgetting the author’s note. I’ve only just started it and it’s at the recommendation of Meli Walker. Meli was reading it anyway. She said, I’m not recommending it because I have read it yet, but I knew it was on her shelf, so then I grabbed it too.” But I think if anything, I feel like there’s more and more discussion about learning just how to rest. That’s what I wanted to pick up on, what you said about, you know, it’s learning to rest. I’m looking at children too and just how naturally they’re like, “Okay, I’m taking a break now and there’s no guilt and need for productivity or all that, and I’m working on that myself this year. It’s just how to rest.”

Andrea Martineau:

It’s a tough one.

Rachel Thompson:

Yeah, but I feel like the more that we encourage each other and take the shame out of that kind of thing, because I guess it’s like this idea of shame and, I don’t know, puritanical aspects of our culture, I guess, that makes us want to feel like we can’t rest and that we have to keep going and pushing through. But sometimes we can’t. Many times we can’t.

What advice do you have for all writers, but especially writers who identify with this? maybe having chronic illness, challenges, or neurospicy, the term that we’re both going to adopt now as well, on handling good and bad feedback about writing?

Andrea Martineau:

I would say balance is important. So on one hand, no one knows the experience of your writing, your health, more than you do. And while I think you shouldn’t show qualified and kind feedback that could improve your writing, you’re doing the right thing not obligated in any way to accept every piece of feedback you receive. I look at it as more of a buffet table. So take what will feed you and give you energy to move forward with your writing. Leave anything behind that will be miserable for you to eat or give you to learn your reaction or something awful like that.

So you don’t need to take everything, but you also don’t necessarily need to complain to the chef because you disagree or dislike what was offered unless genuinely harmful feedback is given, where there’s definitely an opportunity to call someone in. Feedback doesn’t need to be a debate and you just need to be able to put a healthy buffer between yourself and your work when it comes to feedback, even though it’s tough and even when it comes to work about your lived experience, it can get a bit tricky, but I think that’s important for both the benefit of your work and for your own wellbeing.

Rachel Thompson:

Do you have any practices or things that you don’t know about? you do when you’re sitting with kind of uncomfortable feedback or even making that discernment like, oh, should I complain to the chef or just move on to the next buffet table?

Andrea Martineau:

I shelf it for a little bit. And I think if there’s any emotionality related to it, that shelf life will take care of that and I’ll be able to come back to it and either see it for what it is if it is genuinely harmful or when I might need to reach out to somebody or clarify something or have a chat. Or if it is genuinely good advice or good feedback that I should actually implement, but I was just too tied up in that emotional tie or making sure that the work is true to my experience to honor that feedback at that time.

Rachel Thompson:

I think getting that space is really good. So I want to ask you some, or these aren’t really quick. They’re still in the blanks, so they’re a quick lit round. So let’s complete the following sentences.

The first one is being a writer is?

Andrea Martineau:

Crucial.

Rachel Thompson:

Literary magazines are?

Andrea Martineau:

Delightful collaborations.

Rachel Thompson:

Editing requires?

Andrea Martineau:

Time, distance, and continuous learning.

Rachel Thompson:

And rejection for a writer means?

Andrea Martineau:

You’re doing the work and it’s necessary for you to grow.

Rachel Thompson:

And then finally writing community is?

Andrea Martineau:

Where I can be my best and most vulnerable self.

Rachel Thompson:

Yeah I feel the same. It’s like finally I can just put my bags down and just sort of say how I’m feeling about things so that’s great.

Andrea Martineau:

It’s nice it’s like you open up slack and it’s like a little hug and it’s yeah it’s nice.

Rachel Thompson:

I’m so glad to hear that and I’m so glad that you’re part of our writing community Andrea.

So that was Andrea Martineau. Andrea wrote me after the episode to share links to her friend S .J. Shalgaire’s writing and socials, which you’ll find in the show notes for this episode up at rachelthompson.co/94. And when she wrote me, she added that seeing team tortoise in S .J. Shalgaire’s bio reminded her of some of the chats we had in our course community about being a thorough writer, not a slow writer. And it seemed to be a theme for so many with disability and chronic illness.

So watch this podcast feed for more episodes coming up with more intentionality and thoroughness, so perhaps at a tortoise pace, dropping when they are ready.

The **Write, Publish and Shine** podcast is brought to you by me, Rachel Thompson, sound editing by Adam Linder, transcripts by Dia Jaffrey.

You can learn more about the work I do to help writers, write, publish, and shine at rachelthompson.co. When you’re there, sign up for my Writerly Love letters, sent every week and filled with support for your writing practice.⁠

If this episode encouraged you to accept unpredictability I would love to hear all about it. You can always email me at hello@rachelthompson.co.

And tell other luminous writers about this episode. You can do this by sending them to the podcast at rachelthompson.co/podcast or searching for Write, Publish, and Shine wherever they get their podcasts.

Thank you for listening—I encourage you to do things on your own terms.

My guest Andrea Martineau spoke to me from the Treaty 4 Territory, a Treaty signed with 35 First Nations across Southern Saskatchewan and parts of Alberta and Manitoba, and the original lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Nakota, Lakota, and the homeland of the Métis.

And I am recording this on the lands historically and presently inhabited by the el Muzzina Bedouin. This is in the South Sinai region and what is happening just beside the North Sinai is unconscionable. We need a ceasefire now, not a short -term one, a long -term permanent ceasefire, and we also need Western countries to stop arming this genocide.

Transcript Outline

00:01	Introduction to this episode.
03:11	Andrea’s introduction
04:08	Public Identity and Writing Journey
10:56	Learning from Writers with Disabilities
15:06	Exciting Writing Practices: Finding Momentum and Inspiration
17:04	Navigating Movement, Rest, Healing, and Celebration
19:35	Handling Feedback
21:51	Quick Lit Round