Is Disability Confident Too Embarrassed To Talk About Disability Discrimination?

We see it time and again, some DWP apparatchik or businessman tweeting that the only cause of the disability employment gap - the 2 million or so disabled people who should be in work if we were employed at the same rate as non-disabled people - is that business is embarrassed by disability.

Now that would be bad enough, it would be like employers being embarrassed that a job applicant is black, or a woman, or gay, or Muslim, and denying them a job because of that. But when we talk about people being denied jobs over their ethnicity, their gender, their sexual orientation or their religion, we don't call it 'embarrassment', we call it discrimination. Why is disability different?

In part this may be a historical problem common across the whole non-disabled population. I've had non-disabled people tell me I'm lying when I describe on-street harassment, up to and including physical assault, that has happened to me personally and where disability was clearly identified by the perpetrators as the reason for the attack. For some endearingly naive people this is part of a refusal to believe that anyone could attack disabled people, though sadly this is usually often coupled with a perception of us as less than adult. For others the reasoning seems murkier, perhaps because harassing disabled people as 'scroungers' and 'frauds' is something they feel encouraged towards by right-wing media and the scrounger rhetoric it has rammed down our throat for five years now, and to admit that that is discrimination would be to condemn themselves.

It may be that the designers of Disability Confident at the Department of Work and Pensions shared that problem, and sought frantically for some reason that would explain 2 million disabled people denied work without needing them to use the discrimination-word. But shyness and sensitivity are not qualities typically associated with DWP, so why 'embarrassed'? Why not 'bias'? Why not 'widespread contempt for Equality Act 2010'? Why not 'bigotry'? There are plenty of options that could have condemned the failure of employers to employ disabled people at the same rate as non-disabled, yet DWP chose to go with 'embarrassed'.

So when an employer bins a CV because it mentions disability, he's embarrassed?

So when an employer discounts a disabled applicant because they turn out to be disabled at interview, it's because he's embarrassed?

So when an employer forces a disabled worker out for daring to ask for a reasonable adjustment under EA2010, he's embarrassed?

So when an employer bullies a disabled person until finally they can't take any more, it's just a little light-hearted embarrassment between friends?

Let's remember that the latest Workfare figures show that employers would rather employ an ex-con (14% with a 'Job Outcome') than a disabled person (10.2% with a 'Job-Outcome', 5% if they are ex-Incapacity Benefit recipients), against 24.7% for the scheme as a whole.

Let's remember that a recent survey by the Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative (RIDI)  showed 37% of disabled people felt they had been discriminated against in the recruitment process, and the real figure is undoubtedly higher given the impossibility of knowing if your CV was binned for mentioning disability.

Let's remember that a survey of employers just before the recession announced it a triumph for equality that around 26% of employers would consider employing a disabled person who had been in receipt of Incapacity Benefit, never mind that that meant 74% of employers had declared they would rather break the law than employ a disabled person (it being illegal to consider disability in an employment decision).

Is it just possible that 'embarrassment' isn't an appropriate description? Did anyone at Disability Confident think to ask actual disabled people what we think? It's not as if 'Nothing For Us, Without Us' is the fundamental tenet of disability rights or anything. Oh, hang on, yes it is. So imagine how disabled people feel when Disability Confident dismisses 2m disabled people who should be in work but are denied that right as just the result of a little embarrassment?

I've been there on the front line of disability discrimination, having the manager responsible for my career development tell me (when he was sure there were no witnesses), that my disability made me an unacceptable risk to his schedule and that under no circumstances would he put me into a job at my own grade. And when I was finally forced out of the company after a four year fight I had the very senior recruiter handling my 'outsourcing' take me aside and say "You need to understand that with your level of disability there is no chance of your getting a job in the private sector, and next to none in the public sector", a statement other recruiters later confirmed.

None of these people seemed 'embarrassed' about my disability, thought to give the recruiters their due they did seem embarrassed at acknowledging the discrimination I faced as a disabled job hunter. And I've talked to far too many other disabled people, who had faced identical contempt for our rights in the workplace, to believe that I am some kind of anomaly (the only anomaly was my ex-employer 's claim to be a national leader on workplace equality).

So here's a novel idea for Disability Confident, let's show the confidence to call it what it is: Unembarrassed, unpunished, institutionalised Disability Discrimination.

And until we challenge it, whether through Disability Confident or a scheme that actually addresses the needs of disabled workers and job seekers, rather than one that tries to drape a veil of embarrassment across the whole, horrible, discriminatory truth, we won't actually do anything to change the reality and allow disabled people to compete on an equal footing in the jobs market.

If 2 million people in any other minority were denied work through discrimination then it would be a scandal in every newspaper and news report in the land, but because it's disabled people being victimised people just try to write it off with an excuse: 'they'd be more trouble', 'they cost more', 'they can't be relied on'. Take those words, now imagine applying them to a worker who is black, or gay, or Muslim. Unpleasant taste in your mouth? That's the taste of discrimination, now imagine the stench of it from our side of the divide.

So long as industry, and Disability Confident, pander to the perception of disability as a problem, it will remain a problem, and the truth we face will remain not 'embarrassment', but open and winked and connived at Disablist Discrimination.

The Problem With Disability Confident

The Minister for Disabled People, blowing his trumpet for Disability Confident, tells us (those of us on Linked-In anyway) that the number of disabled people in work is up 238,000 year on year, that's good. Not mentioning that the number of disabled people who are economically inactive also rose, up 49,000, or that the number of disabled people who are unemployed only fell by 73,000, that doesn't inspire confidence, disability or otherwise. In fact if we assume those extra economically inactive disabled people were previously unemployed, then the overall change in non-working disabled people is barely 24,000. The disability employment gap, between number of employed disabled people and what it would be if disabled people were employed at the same rate as non-disabled is about 2 million, Even if we accept the minister's 238,000 figure, that means we need 8 years of similar progress to eliminate the deficit. If it's the fall in unemployed and economically inactive we should really be looking at, because of disabled people being squeezed out of the benefit system (I'm one) then we're actually looking at more like 80 years before equality. I don't know about other people, but I'm really not prepared to wait that long.

The problem with Disability Confident is that it isn't actually confident about disability. If we want equality in the workplace then we need employers to perceive disability as normal, but Disability Confident, and indeed all DWP disability initiatives, are heavily based around inspiration porn (the portrayal of disabled people as somehow 'inspiring', which is uniformly loathed by disabled people), this isn't normalising perceptions of disability, it's actively denormalising perceptions, and trotting out Paralympians at Disability Confident events (or war veterans like Simon Weston) simply serves to further denormalise expectations of us. Beyond that it's clear that Disability Confident perceives disability as a 'problem' that needs to be explained away to employers. If you pander to the perception of disability as a problem, then it will remain a problem.

What has been clear from the outset is that Disability Confidence lacks the confidence to challenge established views of disability, that it does not want to confront employers over workplace disablism, the reality so many of us face in our careers, the reality that ends careers (mine is one), or prevents them from ever starting. When Disability Confident says 'look at how much longer disabled people remain in post' and tries to sell that as a positive attribute, then how many of us stop to think, to realise that disabled people like me stay in post longer because our careers are held back, because we fear being unable to find another post, because we can't find employers willing to take us on. Staying in post longer isn't a virtue to sell us by, it's a symptom of the discrimination we face.

Ultimately Disability Confident lacks ambition, or is that aspiration? It has targeted the low-hanging fruit, employers who are already willing to employ disabled people, but just aren't very good at it. I had an employer tell me the other day that disabled people campaigning for equal employment rights were 'a cancer', that he would only employ disabled people if he could pay them a lower rate, and that he would rather relocate abroad than obey the Equality Act. You may label him an exception, but it was a manager saying much the same who brought my career to a halt, and I've met an awful lot of disabled people with similar experiences. If Disability Confident truly wants to make a difference, then it is going to have to challenge this sort of ground-in, embittered disability discrimination in employment, because, until it does, disabled people's CVs will keep on ending up in the bin.

Wheelchair Services - the Current Intolerable Situation

So I've been working on a larger piece about my experiences of being a new wheelchair user, and that necessarily includes talking about the problems I have had with Wheelchair Services, but the issues with Wheelchair Services are really national ones and I owe it to myself to address those too.

My Own Experience

Here is a quick summary of my own experience:

My initial application for a wheelchair assessment in September 2014 was immediately refused, there was no response to my second application for an assessment in December 2014 until I got a call from a contractor in early February 2015 saying 'Can we deliver a chair tomorrow?' - in other words I have now got a chair but I still haven't had an assessment.

The chair delivered is a heavy folding design, despite my noting in the application and at length in the covering letter that I have Hypermobility Syndrome, particular issues with seating, and problems with my shoulders, and really needed to talk about postural support. The lack of rigidity is so bad I have actually partially dislocated a hip when the chair flexed under me as I crossed a kerb-cut. On top of that the chair's wheels aren't quick-release while the footplates were held on with cotter-pins - Wheelchair Services seem to be adamant if you want to get it into a car you should lift the whole 20Kg at once, or not at all (and never mind the whole disabled thing).

There was no training provision at all - the guy who delivered it was in and out the house in 10 minutes, most of that adjusting the footplates to the right height - never mind that crossing raised kerbs can easily become a safety issue - I've already flipped the chair at least twice while working out how to do it, in both cases that involved me being ejected ass over teakettle out the back, in the second case directly into a door post - a wheelchair using friend, with an identical disability to me, suggests that the set-up of the chair is partially responsible. I've done Quality Assurance work, if I came across a situation like this in my professional capacity I would have had to advise the organisation responsible that by failing to provide even basic training they potentially had a serious legal liability exposure if users injure themselves.

Nor was there any follow-up. I've been having a lot of hospital appointments lately for various reasons and after every one I'm immediately pestered for follow-up: was the service good, was I seen on time and so on. After Wheelchair Services, nothing. Of course I've still not actually talked to anyone at Wheelchair Services to have an opinion of them.

The Nationwide Situation

There are 1.2 million wheelchair users nationwide, two thirds of those rely on a chair for frequent use. The core issue is that Wheelchair Services nationwide are run at a fraction of the budget they need, and with a less than adequate level of service.  There are some points that seem true nationally:

• It's a Post Code lottery, the service you receive will be heavily dependent on which NHS Trust/CCG you fall within.
• Unless you fight, you will be fobbed off with a cheap, low-end chair that may not be suitable.
• Similarly a wheelchair cushion is likely to be thin and cheap, if one is provided at all. Non-wheelchair users don't appreciate how vital a cushion is to a wheelchair user, if you develop a pressure sore it may mean up to a year in bed, in the worst instances it can kill. The NHS say approximately 50% of wheelchair users will get a pressure sore at some point in their life, at potentially massive cost, and then provide the cheapest cushions they can find.
• You will frequently be told the cheap, low-end chair is a 'lightweight' chair, this is a blatant lie. The chair I was supplied with (Sunrise Medical Lomax Uni 8) weighs 19Kg (probably nearer 20Kg given it was supplied with solid tyres), this is even worse than the 15Kg Action 3 or 4 most people predicted I'd get. A true lightweight chair can weigh as little as 6Kg, 4Kg if you pop-off the quick-release wheels. 
• If you can stand, even if you can't walk, a very large proportion of Wheelchair Services departments will not consider you for an electric wheelchair, even if you are physically unable to propel a manual chair.
• The physical dimensions of your house will frequently be used to deny you an electric wheelchair, even if you actually need it for outdoors use, not indoors. I've even heard of one Wheelchair Services department that redefined what constituted a house to only include certain rooms.

Many people will have heard of the charity Whizzkids, which exists to supply disabled children with appropriate wheelchairs; rather fewer will have thought through what the existence of Whizzkids implies - a less than adequate supply of wheelchairs for disabled kids from Wheelchair Services. And carrying on from that, the question of what happens to those disabled kids when they grow up to be disabled adults.

I have heard a string of ludicrous stories about Wheelchair Services from wheelchair using friends, the worst tend to be from those who need powerchairs, but have some limited ability to stand, or live in a house which Wheelchair Services deem unsuitable, as Wheelchair Services tie themselves in knots to justify refusing them the only chair that might be suitable, but in the end it is difficult to beat the friend who was told the only cushion Wheelchair Services would provide was a thin 18x18" one, even though the seat on their chair is 15x17".

Waiting times for assessment are another issue. I would comment on my own experience, but that would presume I had actually been offered an assessment! I have been told in relation to a family member that the waiting time for an assessment in Wear, Tees and Esk Valley NHS Trust is a whole year. The NHS admit that, across the country, getting a chair from Wheelchair Services takes a full year for 15% of service users, but for just the assessment to take a year suggests a substantially longer wait for delivery in the Dales.

Fiddling While Rome Burns

There are attempts to improve the service underway, however seeing as attempts to improve Wheelchair Services have been nearly constantly underway since 1986, with no demonstrable effect, we probably shouldn't hold out much hope. According to this BBC piece NHS England says that since last year it has been working towards three targets:

• improving the data held on wheelchair provision,
• piloting a new way of paying for them,
• providing support and resources to local commissioners

In a statement it says: "None of these areas are 'quick fixes' and each requires extensive testing and engagement to ensure maximum impact and success."

I'm not surprised none of them are a quick fix as none of them actually address the customer experience or the chair provided! The phrase that unavoidably comes to mind is fiddling while Rome burns.

And that seems to be an optimistic interpretation given the opinion of one of the disabled people asked to be involved who states of his experience "Service users are generally treated and given as much respect as a piece of dog muck."

National Wheelchair Leadership Alliance

The NHS have also set up a National Wheelchair Leadership Alliance as part of the ongoing initiative, which is chaired by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson. I'm encouraged that their terms of reference acknowledge "the current intolerable situation", and are supposed to lead to a campaign called 'Right Chair, Right Time, Right Now', but I can't help noting that there really isn't an explicit point of making the system more responsive to service users, ensuring that the range of chairs supplied is adequate (I'd really like to see a move to true lightweight 'active user' chairs as the default provision), and that appropriate training is supplied. The Alliance is supposed to produce a one page charter, but Baroness Grey-Thompson herself admits she can't see why it is taking so long, while Bert Massie (former chair of the Disability Rights Commission amongst other stuff), who is working on a related (but non-NHS) initiative around disability equipment provision in general is far more negative, noting “I think there is something very distasteful about this. I can’t work out what is going wrong. I can’t work out why it takes nearly a year to write a charter.” Concerns have also been raised about the influence of Whizzkidz in all of this as the charity is positioning itself as an adviser on wheelchair services in at least a dozen NHS trusts, while it's chief exec is pro-Conservative to the point of appearing in the Tory Manifesto (which earned the charity a slapped wrist from the Charity Commission for breaching rules on political endorsement).

It's probably too early to tell if the initiative will result in any real change, I trust Baroness Grey-Thompson to work for that, her ability to shift the attitudes of the entire NHS I'm not so sure of. But in the end for once we can leave the last words to the NHS, and trust (and hope) they won't allow the continuation of the current intolerable situation.

None So Blind as Those Who Refuse to See Disability

Regular readers will know I'm not a fan of Disability Confident, the DWP-run government scheme that tries to address the 2 million disabled people who should be in work, but are denied jobs by institutional discrimination in recruitment and the workplace, by desperately claiming that employers are just a little awkward about disability, not actively discriminatory.

One of Disability Confident's slogans is 'See the Person, not the disability' (a variation on the widely used, and equally problematical, 'See the ability, not the disability'), which is problematical at any time, but even more so when we're dealing with entrenched institutional discrimination, where it becomes an invitation to ignore everything that is wrong and needs to change. A recent Twitter exchange with a supposedly pro-disability charity got me thinking about this.

<Redacted> Diversity @<Redacted>Diversity
Remember to see the person and NOT the disability. #disabilityconfident 

David Gillon @WTBDavidG 

@RedactedDiversity Remember to see the person, AND the disability, or you deny a huge part of us. That's #disabilityconfident 

<Redacted>Diversity @<Redacted>Diversity 

@WTBDavidG of course that goes without saying.

Then why say the exact opposite?

How do you make needed adjustments unless you SEE my disability?

How do you recognise when your standard procedures disadvantage disabled people unless you SEE our disability?

How do you recognise disabled people are being discriminated against unless you SEE our disability

How do you recognise your HR department selectively binning any application mentioning disability unless you SEE our disability?

 

How do you recognise managers who bully disabled staff unless you SEE our Disability?

How do you recognise when access or attitude makes disabled customers go elsewhere unless you SEE our disability?

Ultimately, how do you meet your legal obligations to your disabled staff and customers unless you SEE our disability?

And if so much of our equality depends on SEEING disability, then ask yourself why Disability Confident is so keen you close your eyes to it? Which approach is generally regarded in management circles as the more mature and professional? Discussing an issue such as disability before it becomes critical to your success and reputation, or pretending it doesn't exist? A five-year-old with fingers in ears chanting 'Nyah, nyah, nyah, I can't hear you!' is not perhaps the image of management you might best wish to cultivate. 

When Disability Confident urges you NOT to SEE our Disability, it couldn't get it more wrong, or be less disability confident.

Worldcon: The Business of Writing

One of the deciding factors in my going to Worldcon (beyond the whole actually being able to get there thing), was my decision a few months back that I needed to get serious about my writing. With 150,000 words written in the last three months, a first draft novel sitting maturing on the shelf and several other projects underway, it was clearly more than time to start getting professional advice. So when it came to picking panels to attend, the choice was almost universally related to my writing needs, and fell into three groups: Young Adult Fiction, as one of my projects is clearly YA, but it's not an area I've been extensively exposed to recently; Diversity, as I'm clearly a diverse author writing diverse fiction (I'm disabled, and my writing tends to reflect that); and the pure Business of Writing.

I took a bunch of notes, though choosing to use my tablet without its keyboard wasn't ideal - it insisted on trying to spellcheck anything it didn't recognise as it was entered, which it doesn't do when used with the keyboard, and that drastically reduced my notetaking - particularly as my lousy coordination combined with needing a new pair of glasses meant I was hitting the wrong key on the screen more often than not. I'd have taken a whole lot more notes given the option, and next time I know to use the keyboard. This piece expands on those notes I did manage to take and hopefully it will be helpful to people who couldn't be there as well as being a vehicle for organising my own thoughts. As I was primarily focused on logging ideas, and fighting a word-processor that barfed over any name not in spellcheck, a lot of this is unfortunately going to be unattributed points, and quotes shouldn't be assumed to be verbatim. I wish I'd been able to get people's names tagged to points, it feels slightly disrespectful not to have them identified, but I'm stuck with my notes and my memory, so apologies to anyone whose points I'm using without appropriate attribution, and especially to anyone whose points I've mangled.

Finding An Agent

Betsy Mitchell (m), 

Jacey Bedford, 

Joshua Bilmes, 

Ian Drury, 

John Jarrold

A great query letter is all you need! Write a great manuscript and the rest doesn't matter! Network at conventions and you're in good shape! These nuggets of advice and dozens like them float around the writersphere as gospel. How many of these have a ring of truth? What is the secret to finding an agent? And what does an agent do once you have one? Our agents will decrypt the process.

The Finding an Agent panel featured a stellar line-up of editors, and when asked the question whether people in the room were looking for an agent, pretty much everyone in the room held up their hand, which made for a very focused session.

When it comes to genre publishing, John Jarrold has pretty much done it all, and listening to him speak you could understand why. If he is remotely as forceful in his opinions of why a book should be published as he is in saying what he expects from a prospective writer, then I want him in my corner! Joshua Bilmes of JABberwocky was more soft-spoken, but made a whole bunch of interesting points. Ian Drury seemed the quintessential agent's agent, everything about him confirming that his agency has been doing this for over a century, and knows the business inside out. Betsy Mitchell kept everyone in order as moderator, while Jacey Bedford was stuck with being the token writer on a panel of agents.

JJ: told us he wants a submission to "Wow me." And that when you're done with that first draft, put it away for at least a month before you even think of editing it.

JB: said he wants writers to 'Be interesting as a person'. As agents are effectively choosing workmates, I guess that makes an awful lot of sense.

It was emphasised that you need to be willing to work with the agent and chop entire characters and chapters if that is what they think the work needs. (And if you aren't willing to work with the agent, why do you really want one?)

The Absolute Write Water Cooler forum was flagged up as a useful resource - it's an online community of writers, editors and agents.

Research, research, research was emphasised in selecting agents to make a pitch to - there's little point in pitching a YA fantasy to someone who only handles factual books. Make appropriate choices.

A particularly interesting suggestion (from John Jarrold if memory serves) was to go and check the Acknowledgements in recent works. Not only does this identify agents working in the field, but it lets you see who they're handling and areas where they work.

Building on that last point, referencing what you found in Acknowledgements in your query letter will then help establish that you have done the research and have the genre background - but that doesn't mean you can make it longer than a single page!

It was heavily emphasized that you should individualise queries, and the need to get the agents name right was equally heavily emphasised - which suggests a lot of people are falling at this most basic of hurdles. A less obvious point was to tell the agent how many other agents the pitch is going to in this round. John Jarrold suggested half a dozen agents at a time is an appropriate number.

If an agent asks for exclusive submission then it was agreed that the writer should expect, and if need be demand, quicker turnaround.

There was pretty much unanimous agreement that agents should reply to a pitch, even if just to say 'no thanks', though it was clear that there are agents out there who don't.

Don't resubmit a reworked manuscript to an agent unless they explicitly say they want you to resubmit it given certain changes.

It was emphasised by several people that the industry is very subjective, agents will reject stuff others are desperate to represent, and rejection doesn't necessarily mean the story doesn't work.

Even if you're trying to market a book, you should always keep writing something new, though one suggestion was that you probably shouldn't write a sequel until the first volume is sold.

JJ: It took Iain Banks 14 years and six novels to sell his first novel.

JB: Younger/junior agents may be more willing to take a chance on an author, but eventually become more selective as they learn what will sell.

JJ:  70 per cent of the market is still print, and while epublishing is growing, self-publishing is a turn-off to agents.

Less obvious advantages of agents are that they know the business, and can cover you versus business errors, because they know the mistakes publishers make. Ian Drury noted he will sit down with a calculator and check what sales should translate to in royalties, and that in doing this he has caught errors being made by publishers in payments to his authors. Agents also provide access to foreign markets , which can add up to be multiples of the original deal, and can save you rights to sell elsewhere that you might not get if you try to deal directly with a publisher. John Jarrold noted that while publishers have standard contracts that will be offered by default, they will often have customised contracts with individual agents.

Some agents don't get heavily involved in the editing process, others do and are better for it.

JJ: sees 30 books a week, but only takes on 4 authors a year

If an agent wants exclusivity on a manuscript then three weeks is about appropriate.

Even if an agent wants to take on your work, it was suggested that you need to be sure that you want to work with them. The Writer's Market has a list of questions for agents, take a look at it and pick the ones that are most appropriate to your needs - but don't demand the agent answer all 20 of them.

We were reminded that agents are facing the same issues in dealing with publishers that writers can face in getting and dealing with agents. It can be 18 months for an agent to get a reply to a pitch from a publisher, and that reply can be a sale.

It's about a career, think about your long term strategy. In trying to develop our careers we can write all over different genres, but only until we're dealing with agent and publishers, at that point we will be locked in by the market.

Asked how many authors they represented, John Jarrold said 40, Ian Drury 34, while Joshua Bilmes said JABberwocky represents about 50 spread over four staff.

You can look for an agent and send publishers submissions in parallels.

In answer to a question I asked - how can we tell where the market is going, for instance the comment that Urban Fantasy is oversubscribed and contracting, when we're only seeing decisions 18 months to two years after the publishers have made them when the books appear on the shelves - John Jarrold suggested analysing publishers' release listings specifically for books by new authors in order to determine market directions.

Many publishers no longer have slush piles and will only take agented manuscripts. This is pretty much across the board for the major UK houses, though some US publishers will still buy from the slush pile.

Master of Dark Arts: an insight into editing for writers

Stephen Jones, 

Lynda Rucker, 

Stephen Jones is interviewed by Lynda E. Rucker about editing short dark fiction, providing insight for new and current writers. Pointers and pitfalls will both be covered, as well as how the writer/editor relationship works, and what professional writers and editors should expect from each other.

Unlike the other sessions this was set up as a one on one interview, with Stephen Jones being interviewed by fellow writer Lynda Rucker. As a result all comments below are by Stephen Jones. The discussion opened with SJ discussing his career before moving on to talk about the details of publishing and being an author and an anthology editor.

You're not published until someone else publishes you!

It may no longer be possible to have a career as a writer, or at least as only a writer - so don't give up the day job when you make your first sale!

Think of your long term career goals. SJ noted in the opening discussion of his career that his initial goals had been to be published author, to be a published cover artist, and to be an award winner, all within his twenties - which he achieved.

Publishers no longer build author careers in the way they once did.

There's not a lot of money in writing.

Authors used to get a percentage of the cover price, they now get a percentage of what the publishers receive from the bookseller.

The lead time for a book is at least 7 months, mostly you're selling projects two years ahead

In constructing a story:

• What do you want to achieve with the story?
• Have an ending in mind.
• Always a compromise (unfortunately I didn't note down what it is a compromise between, apologies)
• Need subtext - Horror (and other genres) should reflect society around us. SJ says he isn't seeing a societal subtext in recent stories. Your aims should be 1. Entertainment, 2. subtext.
• Your target audience is a 13yo who doesn't read books and who you want to change to an active reader
  
  

Always have a professional goal

You need to read in the genre.

You also need to read outside the genre, we're not a ghetto.

When you're starting out, you don't need an agent - it isn't a difficult job to get one if you have a deal.

Short stories are a great calling card.

If you have a chance, don't be afraid to pitch in the bar, but buy them a drink!

Follow Locus Online.

Make it as easy as possible for editors and agents - get spellings and punctuation right.

Always have an interesting title

Always have a hook in the opening, and then another hook...

Get the best cover you can.

What Does an Editor Do?

Ginjer Buchanan, 

Lee Harris, 

Abigail Nathan, 

Steve Saffel, 

Jane Johnson

Publishing is like Rubik's Cube, only with more words and less logic. What exactly goes on in one of these publishing houses? Do editors do more than edit? How do sales and marketing interact with editorial? This panel will take a look into the hallways of publishing, pulling back the curtain to reveal the mysterious Oz that controls all the books. Is it a grand mysterious wizard behind there or just a bunch of word gerbils spinning their hamster wheels like the rest of us?

My notes for the editors' session somehow ended up split into two sections, with other stuff in between, I think I've gotten everything put back together as should be, but it's just possible something may have slipped in from another session. On the other hand everything seems relevant.

The session was helmed by Ginjer Buchanan, fresh from winning the Hugo for Best Editor - Long Form. Alongside her were Jane Johnson Publishing Director at Harper Collins, Lee Harris, who heads the new novella imprint at Tor.Com and is the former Senior Editor for Angry Robot (and was a 2014 Hugo nominee for Best Editor - Long Form), Abigail Nathan, who is a British freelance editor now operating out of Australia, and Steve Staffel, senior acquiring editor with Titan Books.

There was a discussion of the decisions in buying a book, estimating sales, involving production and sales staff, etc. Unfortunately my notes here are unintelligible, so I'm stuck with just the broadest brush of memory and no detail. Mea culpa!

Margin: Publishers used to aim for 53%. That's a dream nowadays.

You can have a massive ad campaign and associated reviews in the press all ready to roll for a book you're convinced will be massively successful and then the Queen Mum dies and your publicity campaign crashes and burns.

Editors/Publishers are thinking a year and a half ahead, they are already setting their 2016 releases, 2017 for series.

Bestsellers: the numbers required to make a bestseller list are very variable and depend on factors such whether the latest Pratchett is in the list. There is a big fall off in numbers between the Sunday Times number 3 and number 10.

The best-selling fantasy book last year was George RR Martin's latest Game of Thrones and sold 166k copies, the bestselling non-genre book sold 600k copies. The best-selling SF book sold 51k copies. ISTR it was noted in one panel, probably here, that Amazon (and other e-publishers?) won't release their sales figures, so these figures are print only, without e-publishing.

Epic fantasy is 43% of the market

For British publishers, the Commonwealth market is important, Australia and New Zealand represent up to a third of sales.

A lot of authors have day jobs....

E-books are now 40% of market, probably more for SF/F

Of books bought from Amazon for under a pound, 82% are never read further than page 10.

Lee Harris talked a little about Tor's new novella line, which he had literally just taken charge of, they are looking for work in the 17.5 to 45k word range and seriously looking at serialization.

It was noted (admitted!) that not all editors are good copy-editors

Editing was defined as a three pass process.

• Global edit pass - the acquiring editor will talk about the plot and characterization, so looking at structural changes rather than grammatical ones.
• Line edit - this looks at consistency, overuse of particular words, and may make minor textual adjustments
• Copy-editors - this is a detailed pass looking at grammar, spelling, continuity

In addition to Acquiring and Copy Editors, big houses may also have a Managing Editor who oversees and passes stuff around between the staff.

Abigail Nathan noted that copy-editors can end up doing a lot of fact checking, including physically going to places. Google Streetview was mentioned as something very useful for checking landscape/environment facts, which made me smile as I've been using it in my own writing for a while.

When we say 'Editors' we generally mean acquiring editors

We were pointed at Stephen King's Misery as a masterclass in characterization

Junior editorial staff are building a rep, so possibly a more accessible target. At the bigger US publishers they often have to look at the slush while senior staff often only take agented manuscripts.

The agent relationship is very intimate, the agent needs to be the right person for you. Editors can also be focused on being the right person with respect to the author.

Lee Harris commented that Angry Robot have an annual 30 day submission window for unagented manuscripts, last time they got 991 novel submissions

Editors need passion, they frequently spend all day project managing and often only get to work on manuscripts after hours.

End Notes

There were other business of writing panels, but there were times I had solid arguments as to why I should be in eight different panels at once (I'm not exaggerating, though mostly it was only three or four) and it was just impossible to get to more than a fraction of the panels I wanted to attend, particularly when I was trying to satisfy three different strands of interest. I found the three panels I did get to tremendously valuable and I hope these notes will be similarly useful for people who couldn't be there. I've linked each participant to their bio page on the LonCon3 website and if you're at all interested in becoming a writer then I'd strongly suggest taking a run through their websites and following those of them who are on Twitter.

Ten Novels

So the challenge passed to me by Deborah Whitehead was to name "ten books that have stayed with me for one reason or another throughout my life." It's an interesting challenge, but I'm going to play fast and loose with the counting.

Pride of Chanur and Foreigner, C J Cherryh

C J Cherryh has been a favourite for as long as I've been reading her books, and one of the reasons is her detailed worldbuilding, or perhaps I should call that species building, as that's what she does best. Pride of Chanur and Foreigner share similar structures, both the starts of series, both featuring male humans dropped into an alien species which they aren't fully able to understand. Pride takes the story from the alien side, Foreigner from the human. And in both affection successfully crosses the species barrier, raising deeper questions of mores and sexuality.

Cyteen and Regenesis, C J Cherryh

Having picked a pair of Cherryh books for what she does with aliens, a further pair for what she can do with humans. Cyteen and Regenesis deal with the death of scientific genius and political icon Arianne Emory, and the childhood of Arianne Emory 2, as her project to recreate herself in not just body, but mind as well takes form. But who killed AE1, and are they still out there, targetting AE2... All the major players are psychological manipulators, but they're about to be outwitted by their own creation.

Little Fuzzy, H Beam Piper

The only book I'm listing from the Golden Age, Little Fuzzy has all the strengths of pacing and concise storytelling that the best of the pulps offer, but with the addition of a sense of the environment that seems more post-80s than pre-60s. A prospector out in the wilds of a backwater planet realises there is actually an intelligent native species, a fact which will destroy the planet's economic value if it becomes known, but the entire planet is a company town, and they don't want to lose their economic prize.

Pattern Recognition, William Gibson

A book I try to reread at least once a year, and the start of a loose trilogy (with Spook Country and Zero History) tied together by the character of Belgian billionaire and marketing genius Hubertus Bigend. This is undoubtedly a Gibson book, with all his strengths, but unlike his previous SFnal work it's a contemporary, post-911 book, with the protagonist, Cayce, having lost her father during the attack (emphasis on the 'lost', he's not confirmed dead). Cayce's thing is fashion and trends, something she is uncannily sensitive to and employed to advise on, and her passion is a series of odd, haunting, noirish film clips, the Footage, that are being released onto the net with no idea of where they came from, or who created them. Then Bigend hires Cayce to track down the origin of the Footage, but does he just want to monetize it, and does the Footage want to be found?

The Winter Market, William Gibson

So why am I listing a short story (technically a novelette) in a list of novels? Because if you want the works that have affected me most, then this is undoubtedly one. Published in Gibson's Burning Chrome anthology, one of the most important anthologies in SF history for what it and Bruce Sterling's contemporary collection Wired did to shape the field, this is a stunning exploration of disability, death and identity, but mostly listed because 28 years on I still can't escape being haunted by Lise's 'Sometimes I like to watch'.

At the Mountains of Mourning, Lois McMaster Bujold

Like 'The Winter Market', a list of the works that have affected me most wouldn't be complete without this short story (technically it's a novella, and published in the collection of the same name). The Miles Vorkosigan books have always had a focus on disability, Miles being disabled in a society that doesn't tolerate the Other, but in this story LMB foregrounds that even more than usual and a very young Miles takes it on himself to investigate the death of a disfigured infant, a death that exposes more of the ugly underside of Barrayaran society than Miles may have expected to find.

Memory, Lois McMaster Bujold

Having listed a Miles Vorkosigan short story, I think I have to have a novel length one, because it takes that amount of space to see the glory that is Miles, that hyperactive runt (as Cousin Ivan designates him), at full throttle. I could as easily have picked any of the later Miles novels, but Memory is where Miles is finally forced to grow up and assume his position in Barrayaran society. Originally I loved Miles for being a disabled action hero, but Memory is where he demonstrates he can be just as compelling a hero when the action takes place in the Imperial court, or in an interrogation cell.

Ash: A Secret History, Mary Gentle

Ash has apparently just been republished in the Masterworks of Fantasy series, but it's actually very well disguised SF hidden behind the tale of the exploration of the background of an alternative Joan of Arc (the eponymous Ash) and the discovery that the fantastical elements of the story may not be as fantastical or allegorical as modern researchers have believed. Mary Gentle has been one of my favourite fantasy authors for as long as I can remember, and one of the most ambitious, which may perhaps explain why she isn't as well known as many less ambitious authors.

Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson

Cryptonomicon (and it's prequel trilogy The Baroque Cycle create a secret history of connections amongst the lesser known movers and shakers of the world, in Cryptonomicon's case deeply linked into Enigma, Bletchley Park, and Nazi gold. And that's only half the book, because the intertwined rest revolves around their grandchildren, trying to create an artificial currency and offshore data haven, and what happens when they run into the story of that Nazi gold. Neal Stephenson's books manage the weird combination of being both incredibly dense, and dragging you in with often breakneck pacing. 

Look to Windward and The Use of Weapons, Iain M Banks

Iain Banks was guest of honour at LonCon3 a couple of weeks ago, even though he died last year, and he's been one of the strongest voices in British SF (and mainstream) since I first read him in my early 20s. It's difficult to pick one Banks book, I could as easily have picked, say, The Business from his mainstream works, that's another favourite, but the Culture was at the core of his work, so one late Culture novel, Look to Windward, which I think is Banks at the peak of his work, and one early, The Use of Weapons, for Banks at his early, stylistic, best, and for the image of that chair, which has stayed with me for 25 years.

Locked In and Unlocked, John Scalzi

Putting a novel that only released a couple of days ago in the list may seem excessive, but I've been waiting for Locked In with bated breath since reading the companion novella Unlocked a couple of months ago. It's an SF novel about disability, with a disabled protagonist, and it gets it right; that's so rare. But even if you don't recognise the sharp observation, it's a damned good murder mystery with a logic to the crime that's deeply embedded within the milieu in which it occurs. I'll be astounded if this isn't short-listed for next year's Hugo. Unlocked, by contrast with the novel, sheds the tight focus on the crime in favour of a wide and deep investigation of the post-Haden's Syndrome World, that lets it look even more closely at the disability parallels, and it gets them even more right than in the novel (and it's free). 

I make that 12 novels, 2 novellas and a novelette - close enough.

Worldcon on Wheels

(For my followers who aren't SF/F fans, Worldcon is the annual World Science Fiction Convention, which is held in a different city each year (local convention groups bid to run it). It's mostly stateside, but gets out to the UK about once a decade. This year the 72nd Worldcon was LonCon3, being held at the Excel centre in Dockland from 14th to 18th August.

For SF/F fans who don't otherwise know me, I'm also a disability rights activist, so I probably came at Worldcon from a slightly different angle to most people - about two feet lower and on wheels <g>).

Worldcon Wheelchair Tetris

Plotting to Attend

When I saw Worldcon was coming to London (I live just outside) I had an immediate flash of pleasure, rapidly dowsed by a bucketful of cold reality. I haven't been to a Worldcon since Intersection in Glasgow in 1995, I was at Eastercon around the same time, but I'm not quite sure if that was the one before or the one after, those are the last two conventions I attended. I had started to use crutches for my disability a few months before Intersection and it became rapidly obvious that fatigue was a major problem. My base physical disability (there are others layered on top) is Hypermobility Syndrome (HMS), which may also be Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome-Hypermobility Type (EDS). Having HMS/EDS (being bendy as we refer to ourselves) means all your muscles are working harder, all the time, as the tendons are too sloppy to hold joints together properly, so pain and fatigue are major problems. I'm fortunate in my HMS that I don't dislocate anything major on a daily basis, but minor subluxations - ankles, shoulders, wrists, ribs (ow! subluxed ribs are exquisite, even breathing hurts), sacro-iliac joints - happen all of the time. Ultimately I decided it just wasn't possible to squeeze fandom in while struggling to manage with daily life and work.

Then, late in June, I had a *headdesk* moment during a conversation with my mother.

Mother: "<mobility impaired family friend> is going down to London to visit her grandson, so she's hiring a wheelchair."

At that point my participation in the conversation went onto automatic pilot.

"Hiring a wheelchair" *Headdesk*, *Headdesk*, *Headdesk*.

It was far from the first time I've thought of using a wheelchair, I've even discussed it with medics in the past, but perky physios tend not to approve of voluntarily going wheelie and historically family attitudes towards wheelchairs haven't been entirely healthy, so, despite having given it considerable thought, I'd always let myself be put off. But hiring a wheelchair just to get to an event had simply never occurred to me, and hiring that chair could then be a lever to change the way family and medics think about me using one - wheels within wheels, on wheels.

Things did not proceed smoothly. First of all I promptly badly sprained my ankle (I fell off my wheelie bin - don't ask!), and it was the 'good' ankle, cue four weeks in a walker-boot which I finally got out of about a fortnight before the con, and the ankle still isn't quite right, so doing the Con on crutches was even less practical than usual. And then there's me. Deciding to do something is easy, making my neurodiverse self actually do it is rather more difficult - the neurodiverse label is new this year, I was talking to a psych about pain management and suddenly realised he'd segued into assessing me for Aspergers. There's no formal diagnosis, the local Autism service gets 10 times as many referrals as they can handle, but just knowing a psych acknowledges it isn't 'just me' is a tremendous relief, it just doesn't make dealing with people any easier. Worldcon membership, online form, no problem, and I live close enough I didn't need to arrange accommodation, but actually sorting out a chair? Let's push the deadline again.

I finally approached various powerchair hire firms the week before the Con, one had everything out on hire, the other two kept pulling more and more add-on charges out of the small-print hat. Hiring a powerchair for the five days of the Con was going to cost me £250, which is the same again that membership and travel were costing me and enough to buy a medium-price, non-customised foldable chair, or enough of the percentage of the price of an individually fitted, rigid-framed manual to be noticeable (people underestimate the cost of wheelchairs, you can spend over £10,000 on a manual chair if you need all the bells and whistles, a powerchair with the same add-ons will cost more than most cars). So I settled for hiring a manual chair through LonCon's access arrangements with Event Mobility, which only cost me a much more reasonable £40 for the five days. I could also have hired a scooter for £100 through them, but my bendy shoulders don't like the hands-outstretched position a scooter's tiller demands.

Accessing Worldcon

I rolled up at the Excel bright and early on Thursday 14th, and I have to say Access was excellent. I was greeted by one of the volunteers before I even reached the registration queue, which they told me was 45 minutes long at that point, and whisked away to the Access Desk, where I was given a seat while the volunteer dashed off to pick up my badge and registration packet. Even the failure of the Access ribbons to appear was being dealt with courtesy of improvisation with tape and a marker pen in the best traditions of fandom. A photographer approached the Access people while I was sitting there and commented he worked within the Convention industry, and had never seen as comprehensive an access policy as LonCon was providing (which is kind of scary when you think we had roughly that level of provision in place 19 years ago at Intersection).

Having done Access, I moved over to Event Mobility at the next table, and had a heart-in-mouth moment when their guy announced that he had only brought attendant-propelled chairs (i.e. without the larger wheels for self-propelling). I honestly don't know what he can have been thinking, an indoor event like LonCon is absolutely perfect for self-propelled chairs, and a self-propelled chair can always be attendant-propelled, while the reverse isn't true. Fortunately he was wrong, he had brought at least one, and even better he was quite happy for me to hang onto it right through the Con, I'd expected to have to turn it in each night. On the downside, adjustment of chair to user wasn't ideal, the footplates just couldn't be lowered enough to suit my legs, but I was able to improvise by using the wedge cushion I normally use in the car (which fortunately I'd brought), and reversing it so that my knees were boosted a couple of inches higher. (And if you consider at 5'8" I'm not exactly long-legged in comparison to many people...).

And so off to panels, and the fan village, and the dealer room, and all the rest of the Con....

Wheelie (Mis)Adventures

I hadn't expected to be travelling with the chair, but the DLR is in theory wheelchair accessible - I say theoretically because every time I tried to get on at Stratford International I ended up with front-castors jammed between platform and train. I did have to frantically lunge the first time that happened to stop a 'helpful' passer-by trying to lift the entire chair, with me in it, by one of the armrests. This would have handily ripped the entire side of the chair off. Offers of help are always appreciated, but do always ask first, and be understanding if we say 'no thanks'. I've had friends have major damage done to their chairs by people who were 'only trying to help', and others abused for turning down offers of help - something I've faced myself on crutches. But other than that, the DLR was pretty much a dream to use - OTOH a powerchair-using friend said it was effectively unusable with her chair due to similar problems with wheels catching.

Using the train between Stratford International and Chatham, where I live, was somewhat more of an adventure. In theory you're supposed to ring and book passenger assistance 24 hours in advance, to ensure someone is there with the ramp when you need it to get on or off (as there's a drop of about a foot from carriage to platform), but if you don't know when you'll be travelling, or even that you'll be travelling with a chair, as happened on Thursday for me, then you're at the mercy of the railway gods. Fortunately I've enough wheelie friends to know what can happen, and if even Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson can be left having to throw her chair onto the platform and crawl off a train at midnight, then best to be prepared. I specifically didn't ask for assistance that first night, just to confirm I could get on and off with the chair if I needed to, the rest of the time I did.

Ooh boy, talk about rolling the dice and casting your fortune to the fates! I don't want anyone to read this as criticism of the station or train staff, they were without exception pleasant and willing to go out of their way to make sure I got where I needed to, but the system isn't quite working. Of the eight journeys I made, assistance didn't turn up to get me off at Chatham on the Friday night, so I had to climb off while having passengers get the chair down for me (not having brought my crutches - because I had the chair! - and electing to wear ankle braces meant this was a lot more difficult for me than it had been on the Thursday); while on Saturday two guys turned up with the ramp, but at entirely the wrong station.... It then took the guard 15 minutes and three different numbers to try and raise someone at Chatham to let them know I was coming. The same thing nearly happened heading to Stratford on the Friday, the on-train staff assuming I was going to St. Pancras, as there was a passenger with booked assistance to there from Chatham and they simply assumed I was him when he didn't turn up, while on Monday Chatham weren't able to raise Stratford and had to ask me to ask the on-board staff to try and raise them. C'mon, Southeastern, that's four trips out of eight with issues - I just hope the safety critical messaging is more reliable!

Once back in Chatham, my house is only a couple of hundred yards from the station, but up an ever-so-slightly steep hill. There was no way I was pushing up that, so I waddled up each night using the wheelchair as a walker. Coming back down in the mornings, though... there's that temptation to think 'how difficult can it be?' Difficult, no; dangerous, possibly; scary, Hell Yes! Again it's fortunate I know enough wheelies to know to brake by pushing palms against pushrims rather than trying to use the actual brakes or to grab the pushrims, and that I was already using a pair of wheelchair gloves with my crutches, but there is a limit to how hard you can push to decelerate, and if the bank is steep enough then you may be accelerating harder than you're decelerating. I hit the actual brakes when I realised it was getting away from me, and the right bit harder than the left, cue 90 degree handbrake turn.... I very nearly ended up catapulted into rush-hour traffic! That prompted an urgent discussion with wheelie friends, and advice to use at least one foot on the ground to brake, as well as the pushrims. That did the trick, but there was still one section at the bottom of the hill that must have been just that little bit steeper, where you felt your foot skidding on the ground, the wheelchair starting to accelerate, and your heart starting to beat faster.... If I ever have to do that trip down to the station regularly, I'm driving ;)

The Curse of the Pedestrian

Worldcon didn't have quite the same dangers and misadventures as my journey home, but that's not to say you didn't need your wits about you! After the Paralympics, LonCon3 had the highest percentage of disabled crowd members I've ever seen, yet a lot of people seemed blissfully unaware of the wheelies, wobblies and scooter users amongst them. And when I say blissfully unaware, I mean to the point of trying to walk through us. Within the first couple of hours I had had to take evasive action from two people walking at high-speed while texting, and the rest of the con wasn't much better. People with mobility impairments simply can't get out of your way quickly, particularly in crowds, we need you to be the ones to take evasive action, and to look down far enough that you can notice someone who only comes four feet off the ground or less (or in the case of one person walking rapidly towards me while staring at his toes, look up!). And it's not just wheelies who need you to be aware, I was passed by several semi-autonomous, independently-roving kidlets, some of whom didn't top 24 inches.... 

People were in general perfectly willing to help and to step out of the way - thank you! - but if you're going to grab a door to help, do warn the disabled person, we may be leaning on it or otherwise relying on it to get through.

Another phenomenon I noticed was that I mostly ended up talking to other wheelies. That might just have been my neurodiverse awkwardness kicking in, but it was largely other wheelies initiating conversations with me, and the one non-wheelie I talked to extensively was another neurodiverse type I'd arranged to meet up with in advance (Hi, Marieke! <waves>). Maybe it was worse for me as an effectively first-time con-goer, but please, don't just look down, talk to us, just as you'd talk to anyone else.

Wheeling Free

I haven't just given up on going to cons, I've given up on pretty much everything but a once a week meeting with friends for coffee. There's not much point in going to a gallery, say, or a museum, a concert, or the theatre, if you're in so much pain by the time you get to the activity that you simply can't enjoy it, doubly so if you're then laid up for several days because of it. I do occasionally push my luck deliberately, my pain management people says you have to in order not to get cabin fever, but my longest recovery period on record is a full year, and I'm not certain I ever got everything back after that one - OTOH, how many people have spent time gliding in the Alps, rafting down glacial rivers or sailing in a Force 9? Sometimes you just have to think yeah, I'm going to bite the consequences on this one.

So when I planned on going to Worldcon, I was planning on it meaning a certain amount of pain, because that's what being out and about always means, but once I had the chair.... Off the train at Stratford, over to the lift, up to the concourse, whizz over to the DLR, lift down to the platform (unhook chair from hole between platform and train), off at Canning Town, lift down to the ticket hall, lift back up to the other DLR platform, slalom through the waiting crowd, roll onto the Becton train, roll off at Prince Regent, lift up to the concourse and wheel into the whirlwind that is Worldcon. And no pain. I seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time in lifts, but lifts versus pain, Hell yes!

I tended to flag by about 7PM, so I missed the late-night stuff I might have caught if I was staying on site, but in five 9:30AM to 7PM days, with 90 minutes of travelling tacked on at either end, I experienced less pain than I would in any normal day of activity, in fact than I sometimes experience after my Saturday lunchtime coffee sessions. I'd expected the chair to help, what I hadn't expected was for it to make a massive level of difference.

Wheelchair Stalking

As I've said, there were quite a lot of wheelies in the Worldcon crowd, and as I expect to be in the market for a chair sooner rather than later, I was studying what I could see around me. I was well aware that my hire-chair was less than ideally suited for me given I have major issues around sitting comfort, though whether it was worth the cost of going up to a customised chair I was still in two minds about given I was only contemplating occasional use (list price of a bottom-end, non-customised, folding manual, £150 to £200, list price of a bottom-end, customised, rigid-framed manual, £1200-1500). One chair I noticed pretty quickly was a rigid manual with a Jay custom back and a headrest. Given I have damage to both lumbar and cervical spine (bendies positively collect joint injuries), I immediately started wondering how useful the customised set-up was. I then ended up behind the chair and its user in a panel, and when they wheelied back onto the chair's anti-tips to use it as though it had tilt-in-space, a feature that lets you lie back in a chair, which an experienced wheelie friend has suggested I need, and which normally adds a couple of thousand to the cost, I was in love (with the chair, you understand). At this point I was positively stalking that chair.

In one of those serendipitous Worldcon link-ups, the chair's owner, Kaberett, and I ended up together in a group headed for coffee after Charlie Stross' The Ruling Party panel on Monday. Just to boost the serendipity even further, the group also included my online friend Trialia in her powerchair, who I had never physically met before, and it turns out we're all neurodiverse bendies. Anyone want to work out the odds on that one? Packs of wheeled bendies stalking the halls of Worldcon did draw a few glances (especially when one or other of us popped up out of their chair - yes, most wheelies can walk to some degree), though probably not as many as we'd have gotten in the Real World (TM). I had to laugh once we were sat around a table with coffee when I realised that all three of us were delving into the depths of the bags on the backs of our chairs, and that none of us were bothering to turn around to do it - there are occasional advantages to being bendy!

Anyway, having been introduced I confessed to my stalking, and Kaberett pointed out we were both similar sizes, so popped out of their chair and said 'try it'.

O! M! G! It was like pulling on a perfectly fitted glove. Well, nearly perfectly fitted, I'm probably a fraction wider across the back, but hips, head, even ribs were all suddenly supported in exactly the way I needed, and the balance of the chair as I moved was so much better than the hire-chair (Kaberett commented they'd looked at the hire-chair earlier and thought 'hope he didn't pay money for that').

Apparently my face was a picture, "you looked like things suddenly didn't hurt and weren't as exhausting! It was great". Now if you consider that was how I was already feeling while trying out the hire-chair vs crutches, and that Kaberett's chair wasn't quite a perfect fit, then it really does show just how much difference a properly fitted chair can make. Just that brief trial made me completely reassess what I wanted from a chair and how much I was willing to spend to get it. I'm not joking when I say it could potentially be life-changing.

Worldcon Wheelie Woes

While Worldcon was overwhelmingly a positive experience for me, that's not to say that it got things perfectly right when it came to disability. Issues started pre-Con with a negative use of 'autistic' in the description of the panel on German SF. Kaberett flagged that one up and the reaction was exactly as it should be, a correction to the website and an apology in the Pigeon Post that they couldn't correct the already printed what's-on guides.

There were a bunch of issues around wheelchair/scooter spaces. I was still finding rooms that didn't have any wheelchair spaces marked (London Suite 1) as late as Sunday evening (Bear's reading of 'Shoggoths in Bloom' was one of the highlights of my Worldcon, I love her work and I love that story), and there was obviously a blanket assumption that no wheelchair user could possibly have both a hearing and a mobility impairment, which meant that wheelchair spaces were generally no further forward than the middle of the room and often entirely at the back. I know several wheelchair users who have both hearing and mobility impairments, indeed whose impairments are co-morbid (meaning that medically they are expected to often go hand in hand with each other) and I met a couple of very prominent members of fandom who also met that definition over the weekend. There were definitely complaints on Sunday that the allocated seating in the auditorium for hearing-impaired fans during the Hugo Awards was on the opposite side of the stage to the podium. I was at the back of that block of seating and I certainly struggled to see Geoff and Justina's lips given how far away they were (and given they were name-checking at least one of the people struggling to lip-read them...).

A further problem with the provision for wheelchair users was the apparent assumption that wheelchair users don't come in couples....

Equally there seems to have been little thought given to wheelchair-using panel members (I didn't actually see any, but there were certainly several diversity panels which as a disability rights activist I potentially had the background to be on). I was corrected after suggesting there was no ramp for a panel that specifically addressed the absence of disabled people in fantasy (it was hidden at the back of the podium), but for many of the panels in the smaller rooms the panel was tight against the back wall without sufficient space for a wheelchair user to access their spot. Sitting the disabled panel member semi-detached at the end of the table isn't really an acceptable solution and a major issue for those of us who have problems looking to the side).

And what goes for the panel rooms goes doubly so for the main auditorium. What would we have done if a wheelchair user had won a Hugo, or nominated a wheelchair user to accept for them? The stairs at the front certainly weren't accessible, I have no idea if there was a ramp at the servant's entrance back, but that certainly wouldn't have been ideal. Would we have been looking at another Tanni Grey-Thompson /Sports Personality of the Year 2000 moment, with the winner having to be carried on stage by a horde of hefty volunteers? Any access solution that doesn't provide for disabled people to access the space alongside non-disabled is inadequate at best, and for a newly constructed edifice, a full generation on from the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, just not acceptable.

As for the bright idea of labelling wheelchair spaces 'Reserved for Mobie' - I overheard at least one wheelchair user asking who this 'Mobie' was and had a discussion with several others as to whether it was possibly slang for a wheelchair in another European language, c.f. rolli in German. If you're going to use slang, can it at least be slang the relevant people will recognise?

Then there was the great scooter-shaming fiasco in Pigeon Post 7, which saw scooters banned from the main elevators, and which had several disabled people I encountered genuinely angry at how they were being addressed. As far as I can recall, I actually rode those elevators with someone in a Class 3 scooter (the biggest, the type Event Mobility was hiring out) almost as soon as I'd arrived, and it took my chair and their scooter without an issue, and that was while I still trying to remind myself how to steer a chair after not using one in several years. Even if there was an issue of physically fitting some scooters into the lifts, Class 3 scooters are only a fraction of all scooters (admittedly a large one). I saw at least one Luggie being used, and that's a Class 1 scooter that's smaller (and slower!) than my manual chair. I'm very aware of issues around the safe speed that scooters can be used, and at no point did I see a Class 3 being used in its on-road 8mph mode, or in its 4mph pavement mode at a speed I would consider excessive for the people around - on the other hand I did, as I noted earlier, see an awful lot of pedestrians walking around without due care and attention for the wheelchair and scooter users around them. Beyond the need for the ban, there was the wording used that pretty much criticised every scooter user at the convention. Every wheelchair user I spoke to was irritated by it, never mind the scooter users.

Some of this criticism may seem a little harsh, it doesn't change the fact that I'm very grateful for all the access provision that was made, and for all of the people who opened up spaces for me, held doors and whatever, usually without needing to be asked, but seeing a solution that's 85% of the way to being perfect just brings out a drive in me to get it that last 15%. And LonCon3 may be over, but the access lessons at each new convention we learn need to apply to every convention that comes after, starting with Shamrokon this weekend. (And if you think this is harsh, just wait 'til you hear me on IDS and the DWP <g>).

There are a few mobility issues that weren't down to LonCon, but are really issues for Excel London, worryingly one of those was a basic health and safety issue. I think I used pretty much all of the accessible toilets over the course of the convention. In almost every one of those, the emergency call cord was knotted at least 18 inches clear of the floor, or looped around the grab-rail to the side of the toilet, in some cases it had been cut off at that height. This is a common problem with disabled toilets, but a serious one and not one I expect to see in as prominent a facility as Excel. Part M of the Building Regs, Diagram 20, specifies that the lower pull bangle on the emergency call cord must be 100mm (4 inches) from the floor, this is because the cord must be accessible to someone who has fallen while trying to use the facilities and is unable to lift themselves from the floor. For someone with limited arm use, this can only be guaranteed by having the cord at almost floor level. Almost inevitably knotted, cut-off or looped cords are the result of inadequately trained cleaning staff who simply see them as a useless irritation because no one has ever explained to them why they are there. It should be on the cleaning supervisor's checklist to ensure every cord is accessible at floor level every day, and it should probably be on the Access checklist for every con. Equally it should be a checklist item to assure that the transfer space to the side of the toilet (the side with the liftable grab-rail) is clear of obstructions to the back wall as a wheelchair user may need to use that space to transfer from chair to toilet. Blocking them with waste-bin and sanitary waste-bin, as with most of the loos I used, not ideal....

It shouldn't be so difficult to get disabled loos right, but apparently even Dyson can cock it up when it comes to wheelie human factors! Those Dyson Air-Blade handdryers, the ones screaming like the entire toilet was about to lift into orbit? Cool as all hell, but WTF do I put my feet and knees?

Crossing back and forth between the con and Excel's responsibility, the doors into the rooms were marginal for getting a chair through, I lost count of the number of times I barked my knuckles on the door frames and on a couple of occasions was lucky not to rip-off significant chunks of flesh. Yet all the doorways had either full or partial double doors. The problem was many of the second doors, whether full or partial, seemed to be bolted shut most of the time. Why? On at least one occasion (the door into the London Suite) I saw an Excel staffer open the second door for me (thank you!), but then rebolt it afterwards. *headdesk* why? You've just seen I need both open and I'm probably coming back shortly... As a general message to volunteers, if there is going to be a wheelie coming through, please make sure both doors are open, their fingers will thank you!

On the irritating rather than dangerous level, if a bin blocks access to a lift button, as was the case with the main lifts, to the point that you have to sit a staff member there to press it for the wheelies who can't otherwise reach it, it's probably a sign you need to move the damned bin! And finally (at last I hear you all cry!) that blasted textured surface outside most of the lifts on Level 3 feels like you're rolling your bare backside over a cheesegrater!

Wheeling to a Close

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at WorldCon, it was just such a stimulating five days, stuffed with all the panels I went to on diversity, YA fiction and the business of writing (I'm planning further posts on all three of these strands) and interspersed with meeting all those people who make fandom such a delight: Marieke Nijkamp and all the good work she and her co-conspirators are doing with We Need Diverse Books; Trialia, who I've known online for years, without realising she's a filker and general fan, not just a Whovian; Kaberett, somehow managing to note down everything happening in some of the most complex panels, and whose wheelchair may literally change my life; and the chance to briefly catch up with Justina Robson - when Geoff talked at the opening of the Hugos of meeting Justina at Lumb Bank all those years ago, I was there on that same course, and if any one of us was obviously going to succeed, it was Justina, and I'm so glad that she did.

So is this the end? Well, maybe for this blog piece, but hopefully not for me in fandom and convention going - it turns out I just need a set of wheels, and arranging to get them is something LonCon3 has kicked into high gear.