How can a blind guy write?

by Bruce Atchison
(Radway, Alberta, Canada)

Being the author of two memoirs and having written many magazine articles, I'm occasionally asked by friends and acquaintances how I could have managed that feat at all. Due to congenital cataracts and glaucoma in both eyes, I have always had very poor vision. The last thing everybody thought, including myself, was that I would become a writer.

I enjoyed making up stories when I was a child. My sister, Diane, often laughed uproariously and was lulled to sleep by my comical tales as we lay in the darkness of our basement bedroom. Because I couldn't see well enough to play sports at school, I often told my stories to the girls at recess. Those yarns became popular with them as well as with Diane.

Putting pen to paper proved to be a tedious task since I had to keep my nose an inch from the page. Though I had learned to touch type, I made frequent mistakes. Worse yet, I had no proper magnifying glass at first and had to rely upon a fully sighted helper to spot errors. Unlike a computer, typos couldn't easily be deleted. Though I did have a few articles published in the high school newspaper, the effort of composing any sort of literature became an increasingly strong deterrent.

As with obtaining vision aids, I was left behind again when writers started using personal computers and word processing software. The monochrome monitors during the eighties were difficult for me to read because I had to hold a magnifying glass and squint at the text on the screen. Whenever I submitted my recycling tips to the government department's newsletter and my electronic music album reviews to several "fanzines," I continued using pen and paper for the first few years of the nineties.

Thanks to the help of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, I was able to obtain a screen reader. This device converts the text on the monitor into synthetic speech so that I can hear what I've written. After I bought a second hand computer and WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, I discovered that writing was a pleasure. Revising became much easier and the spelling checker saved me from making many embarrassing mistakes. When I printed out articles and letters, my sighted correspondents could finally read them with ease.

When the Government of Canada laid me off in 1995, a work counsellor suggested I become a freelance writer. After taking a course at the University of Alberta, I diligently searched for writing opportunities. The public library had a Kurzweil reading machine and I used it often to hear the text of various publications which seemed to be likely customers for my work. After more than a year of receiving only rejection letters, I sold a short piece to an American magazine called New Age Journal. It was about a blind choir which had formed in my home city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Other sales followed, though I never earned enough to live on.

Throughout my life, I had always wanted to write a book. In fact, many of my government colleagues suggested I ought to do exactly that. In 2005, I enrolled in an online course on memoir writing. I wrote the rough draft of my autobiography but it soon became too long and unwieldy. I decided instead that it would be a good idea to self-publish the memoir of my life with house rabbits since I had many like-minded friends who might purchase it. When a Man Loves a Rabbit (Learning and Living With Bunnies) was published in June of 2006 after many problems with the cover design and a proof reader who failed to do what she promised. I also had a few misunderstandings with the printer, Blitzprint, delaying the launch past my publication goal of Easter. I made the same mistake with my next memoir, Deliverance From Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School), namely trying to meet a deadline. I figured that the first week of November would be a good time to release my book so that people could give it as a Christmas gift. Unfortunately, it wasn't in print until three weeks later. This caused confusion between Blitzprint and myself, a loss of holiday sales, as well as unnecessary stress for all concerned.

Other contributors to this site have pointed out the crucial lessons they learned so I'll summarize the ones I've gleaned throughout my writing career. The most important of these is to use whatever works best for you. I'm still using WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS and an old 486 machine because both continue to run faithfully. None of the screen-reading software packages and Windows-based word processing programs, that I know of or have tried, run even a tenth as well as my old system. I'll write with these tools until I can find an equal or superior substitute.

Secondly, never be in a hurry. Either start writing long before a deadline or edit the manuscript until you and your helpers can't spot any glaring errors. It also pays to employ professionals instead of well-meaning acquaintances. When I hired a woman to help me with my Jericho book, I was ashamed of the obvious mistakes which my ears heard but my brain missed altogether. The biggest problem in my manuscript was with homonyms, followed by punctuation and paragraph breaks. Since I only hear the text and a few punctuation inflections, I have often missed such visual mistakes. Since I paid for what I had learned, I saved all the corrections which my editor made so that I can refer to them when my upcoming manuscript is ready for editing.

I learned the hard way that not all advice from writers is guaranteed to work for everyone. A local author wrote an inspiring article for a certain guild newsletter, the main point being how book signings can be lucrative when a few inexpensive tactics are used. After I followed her advice, I discovered that she had left certain qualifying aspects out of her manuscript. I can't drive and I live in a tiny hamlet but this author recommended asking businesses for prizes. All my e-mails, facsimiles, and letters were ignored. Telephoning managers would have cost too much in long distance charges so I didn't attempt to call them. I eventually quit requesting promotional items and bought a few gifts for the signings. The next problem was reading the scribbles which people jotted down on the contest entry forms. I realized too late that I would have to either post or hand deliver the prizes to the winners, incurring more expenses. Just travelling to Edmonton by bus cost me $50.00 per trip and I often didn't sell enough copies to pay the fair. The article also downplayed the fact that bookstores, assuming they'll let you do a signing, take an average of 40% of the book price. Advertising in local papers and doing library signings proved to be a bad business decision too. Craft sales were the only events in which I actually earned money.

Tactfully promoting one's books online not only generates revenue but keeps one's friends happy. I became overenthusiastic during the Christmas season of 2006, enclosing an ad for my first book in every signature file of outgoing e-mail messages. That was a dreadful faux pas. Somebody on a newsgroup complained to the owner of the server and I was suspended until I convinced him that I would behave myself thereafter. Now my signature file only gives the names of my books, that I'm their author, and the links to where people can go for more information.

The majority of my book sales have occurred online. Blitzprint's Bookstream website only takes 12% of sales which is a much better deal than a brick and mortar store or Amazon.com's 55% commission. Many friends helped by buying my books and one even proofread the final draft of my second memoir to spot any mistakes which the editor and I may have missed. I'm currently writing a third memoir called How I Was Razed (and How I found Authentic Christianity). Now that I've learned from my mistakes, I hope to self-publish this third memoir with more ease and efficiency.

Read Bruce's Deliverance from Jericho: Six Years in a Blind School.