Blog - Elise Carlson

March 8, 2026 / Elise Carlson / 0 Comments

Growing up as a neurodivergent person in a world that has mostly ignored and been ignorant of my needs, and not understood queer or neurodivergent me, and lived through chronic illness for nearly four years, I’ve developed quite a few strategies to support my mental health. Now seems a good time to review them, for my benefit, and hopefully yours too.

Take A Breath Before Responding

As we enter the latest round of ‘don’t respond to the latest fuckery by immediately screaming with frustration, because you will lose your voice,’ here’s step one of how I respond to shit. I found in my first year of teaching that if responded to a child doing something they shouldn’t be immediately, (this being children in their first year of school, some with few boundaries set or maintained at home); I would have shouted at my students A LOT.

In that initial moment when you see or hear a thing and think how shit it is; pause. Don’t let your initial rage fire into your mouth and shout something, or let it into your fingers and angry post. Don’t let your mind speed through connections to similar shit and get even angrier about ALL OF IT. Breathe. Take a moment. Let the initial rage pass. Then decide how you’re going to respond, whether you need to vent and or regulate your emotions, whether you need to talk about it, who to and why.

Physical Venting

Last night I read something about Israel that literally had me bashing my forehead in frustration. I NEEDED to vent. But genocide is a fraught topic. There’s so many points of sensitivity and such a risk of perpetuating a sense of doom when you speak of it. And I didn’t necessarily want to talk; I wanted to lash out in frustration at my inability stop powerful pieces of shit fucking up the world.

Luckily, the grass of my back lawn was too long. And I have the kind of weed-eater that you cannot rest on the ground to use. So cutting the lawn involves swinging a moderate weight weed eater through the air, as far as you can, either side of yourself, to cut long grass. It takes around twenty minutes.

Self Regulation

Initially the action and exertion of mowing let my feelings out, without doing anything destructive or harmful. But ultimately, swinging my mower side to side, in a regular, repetitive movement, was calming. And having steadied my heart rate with repeated rhythmic movements, and relaxed my muscles with exertion, I noticed how neat my lawn looked. How much better than before. That at a time so many of the world’s problems are dire and look like they’ll take years to fix; I’d made something (no matter how small) better, in a mere twenty minutes. It was tangible proof that no matter how fucked up some things are; there is always something you can do to make something better. And it put me in a better mood.

So if you’re frustrated, agitated, feeling helpless or stressed to the point of needing physical activity to regulate your body and emotions; which set of regular, rhythmic movements suits you? I approve of stress cleaning, but also; what about agro gardening? Ripping up weeds when you’re angry? Or hacking down your overgrown lawn? Then there’s cycling, running, walking, swimming, Tai Chi, etc. Is their a form of exercise you’re physically capable of, and can regularly slot into your week? (With the world as it is, daily exercise is so good for mental health!)

Venting With Words, To Whom?

If you’re calm enough to talk about something bothering you; who’s the best person? Who’s likely to get it and or you- to provide the relatability you may need? Who’s a good listener? Who may help you see the good in an otherwise shitty situation? Who’s got words of wisdom, or is good at accepting, instead of going to war with things they can’t change? Who’s pragmatic, or observant, and may have practical or other helpful suggestions?

I’m admin of a Writers and Authors Discord server, which has a venting channel, but there are things I just DM a good friend about. Sometimes topics are sensitive to lots of people, or other people are likely to also be pissed off about the topic I want to vent about, and we might all just get angry together in a public space. Whereas a one on-one-chat with an old friend may start angry, but given we both have ADHD, we’re likely to bounce on to other topics, and to both likely to leave that conversation feeling better.

So who’s it best for you to talk to, about what and why?

Do You Need To Say Something?

After that initial burst of anger/ frustration/ “are you for fucking real”?! response, we have a choice to make. Are we in need of physical activities and regular, repetitive movements to calm ourselves? Do we wish to talk about it? And do I actually need to post about ‘thing that made me angry’ on my social media, in this instance?

There are times when we need to speak up. Like when it became clear Israel was taking mass punitive, genocidal action in Gaza (and refused to stop.) And there are taboo topics that get too little media and societal attention, allowing problems to remain unaddressed, and unresolved, like violence against women, or the racist and fatal neglect of Aboriginal people in custody. Or calling out certain politicians and news outlets when they promote fear and loathing of minority groups; Muslims in Australia, trans people abroad, immigrants, etc.

Is There A Need To Post?

But when for example, you have a so-called president who routinely shoots his country/ the world in both feet; do you need to be the 15th person on your feed saying, “FFS, here we go again!”? Are you posting the latest shitshow because its breaking news/ people don’t seem to know yet? Or because you have a point you can’t see other people making? Or are you adding to what can easily become a spiral of shit news, anger and despair?

Ordinarily I’d say its fine posting that you’re having a shit day. To only post the positives risks promoting toxic positivity. But when hundreds of thousands of people are having a shit day, on many days, venting it in negative terms by public post may not be the best idea. Old fashioned journaling might be more constructive, for you to get angry thoughts off your chest, but also, to not bring others spirits down with yours. But do you need to vent, or switch to an activity that lifts your spirits?

Do You Need To Respond or Retreat?

Sometimes I’ll see news, and I’m angry and I have opinions. And sometimes the best thing for me to do for me at that moment is get off social media/ news sites and sit on my back porch reading a book. Or go for a walk. Or edit my SciFi-Fantasy series, or if I’m tired; watch something involving escapist fantasy. Sometimes its one thing too many, and you’re too tired, or its too much or you need a break. As an autistic person I struggle to change my plan for the day, but there are days when the best thing you can do for you is toss your intentions and non-urgent chores out the window, let the world worry about itself for a bit, and lose yourself in an activity you enjoy.

For mental health especially; remember that option, when considering how to respond to shit going down. It won’t solve anything, but resting and improving your mood puts you in a better state to do anything you need to do to tackle a problem.

What Actions Can You Take Against Shit?

I’ve talked about responding to shit from the perspective of managing your feelings, self regulation and processing shit via via posting or talking directly to people. But if your focus is survival, and you’re aware of, let alone personally impacted by shit going down in the world; I’m worried about your mental health. Because while you can manage your mood, and have a tidy garden and a lovely clean house, and be fit; the latest news will tell you more shit is fucked. And societal level shit being fucked can make you feel helpless and put you at risk of stress and depression.

I had plenty of time to reflect on this while writing a portal fantasy trilogy, in which four lost Aussie teens wander into warzones and risk their lives, not merely seizing a chance to to reunite with their families, but because they hate watching people suffer. All the main characters in Ruarnon Trilogy have a strong sense of social justice. And Linh, Michael, Troy and Fiona (the Aussies), are aware how their own helplessness to get home, and how watching people suffer threatens their mental health. They choose to take action whenever they can.

But that’s fiction and we have bills and rent/ mortgages to pay and life is TIRING. What can we realistically do about the world’s problems? I suggest as much as you’re physically and cognitively able, for the same reasons as my characters; to feel empowered by taking action and to know you’re contributing to solutions. (Knowing you tried is less depressing than passively waiting for the sky to cave in.)

There’s a lot of fuckery going on, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing a single person in a country of millions, and a world of billions can do, to help bring about positive change.

Protest

If you’ve never marched in a protest before; its a good year to start. Who knows, maybe nazis will blame cost of living and housing affordability on immigrants, and lure ‘ordinary’ people to an anti-immigration protest! Yeah, March for Australia in August 2025 had a lot of nazi involvement, from the NSN (National Socialist Network) leading the march in Melbourne, and its leaders giving speeches, to orchestrating it. When nazis try to gain popular support, or fascists are already in power, that’s the perfect time to hit the streets saying; “Fuck no!”

Or maybe your PM will lose his fucking mind, and greenlight genocide by inviting the president of a country perpetrating it to visit, like mine did last month. And maybe concentrating on the message you think most important to the issue, and making your sign, will be more constructive than the silent fuming I would otherwise have done in February 2026. (The war criminal came to Melbourne on 9/2/26, so having marching in a national protest then, we got to march again on the 12th, and tell him to fuck off a second time.)

Protest sign in blue texta, reading; Melbourne says Herzog to the Hague!

Online Actions

Petitions & Progressive Orgs

If you aren’t able bodied enough to march at a protest, or don’t feel safe or you struggle with crowds, there’s always petitions to sign. Change.org has plenty, internationally. There are also organisations producing their own petitions, ads to raise awareness, and who may organise other actions. For eg. in Australia we have a progressive group called GetUp!, and Fair Agenda advocating for gender equality. Internationally, there’s All Out campaigning for queer rights. Being on the mailing list of an organisation dedicated to issues you care about is a good way to access petitions, find out about protests and other actions to take, as is monitoring social media.

(A lot of Aussie protests will be listed on GreenLeft, as well as workshops, for a range of social and environmental issues.)

Write To Your MP

Writing to your local MP, or for eg. in the case of Australia’s relations with Israel, the relevant government minister, is another good option. I’ve seen suspicion in Australia that Zionists write lots of emails to our government, which, with the gov being made up of cowards, tends to result in them caving to Zionist pressure. So make it very clear to your MP that you are NOT happy with whatever shit they are pulling, or intend to pull in future. Don’t risk enthusiasts for the global drift to the far right have the final say because they send more letters.

Again, be on the mailing list of progressive organisations whose work you care about. They’ll sometimes provide you with a form to email MPs and senators, and a draft email. You can edit that email, use it as inspiration to write your own letter, or send it as is to the MP or government minister in question.

Direct Actions

Then there are direct actions. For example, Rising Tide in NSW blockading Newcastle’s Port with canoes and kyaks to disrupt our extensive, shit-for-brains national gas exports, during rampant climate change. (I am dying to see the American equivalent of this in relation to the organised disruption of ICE ‘operations’/ acts of state sponsored terrorism.)

Strategies for Personal Peace

There’s also a bunch of general good practices I have in mind, that could be crucial in dodging the straw the breaks the camel’s back when you’re feeling under pressure.

Except the Standard You Can Achieve

My father always says, “If its worth doing, its worth doing properly (meaning to a high standard.” But sometimes you can’t do things to the standard you want. I could not write student reports to my normal level of personalisation (commenting on student-specific as opposed to general skill achievements), while struggling with long covid or fibro. I had to write generalised comments, and ended up with more reports sounding similar than I have in years. They weren’t my best work, or what I wanted to be producing at the experienced end of my career. But they fulfilled the requirements of my workplace. They were enough, and the best I could do at the time, and that was OK.

If you’re finding that some days, or many days, you can’t do the thing as well as you want; let it be. It doesn’t have to be the best tasting meal you’ve ever cooked, or well presented; it just needs to be edible (and ideally nutritious.) That’s good enough for today.

I know it can be frustrating not to perform to your usual standard, or to make mistakes you aren’t accustomed to. I’m an author, who now between ADHD and periodic fatigue/ fibro induced brain fog, writes typos more frequently -and sometimes awful ones. And sometimes I don’t notice them until my beta readers point them out. Its ANNOYING. But sometimes my brain isn’t up to editing to the standard I want, independently. It is what it is and I can’t change it, so I work within my parameters, now use a hard copy for proof reading and try to seek more proof readers. I encourage you to accept the passable standard you’re capable of on that day, work within your parameters, and do things differently as needed.

Take Moments to Zone Out

If you’re able bodied, you might like to consider how often, at home and work, you sit down, pause and take a load off. Moments where you’re still, and not on a device, or listening to one, or working, or looking after someone. When you’re just sitting comfortably, exhaling deeply and switching off. Or recollecting yourself. How many of those moments do you have? Where and when at home/ work, and in your daily routine could you add more?

Avoid Breaking The Camel’s Back -Household Tweaks

Being impaired by both ADHD and fatigue, I started to notice little moments that put extra cognitive and or physical strain on me. When you have few spoons to begin with, its worth re-organising your home set up to minimise daily strain, as much as possible.

I’m talking things like put a chair at your front door, so you can sit comfortably to remove your shoes, after a tiring day at work. Always leave your keys, wallet, glasses and or sun glasses, and ideally charge your phone, in the same place when you get home. Then, no matter how tired and distracted you are; you won’t lose things.

Do that little job you keep putting off because it doesn’t seem important. Decluttering your living room may help you feel more relaxed. Culling and rearranging your pantry and or fridge makes it easier to see and eat the food you own. Its saves shopping for things you don’t need.

These are all ADHD hacks and autism sensory overload minimisation techniques I use at home. But in stressful, chaotic times, I figure they can benefit most people.

Time Out & To Reflect

Teaching has helped a lot with my general wellbeing. In my teaching career I sometimes went home with literally no idea what to do with my students, to get us through the next school day. (I had some severe behaviours to manage, and taught students in their first year of school who needed me to teach them how to do school. Not easy when I had very little experience to draw on.) You know what saved my sanity? Every day I went for an hour long run around the river, after school.

My run began with me having no idea what to do with my students. I wouldn’t even think about it. I’d just run. And the regular, repetitive motion of running, the way it steadied my breathing and heart rate, regulating my body, and burning off steam, helped calm me. It relaxed my body. And in a calmer state, my mind would come back to my students and I’d swiftly think up a new strategy to trial the next day. And I would return home feeling calmer, because I had a plan for the chaos I’d face the next day.

What activity or time could you schedule to reflect on your day, and use to think of one strategy or tweak you could trial to make tomorrow (or the next week) easier? On the drive or commute home? During evening exercise? Having selected and a strategy, and decided when in your daily routine to implement it, don’t forget to reflect back. Did it help? Could you tweak it? Is there something else you want to try? Continual reflection on our practice, tweaking and revisiting of it is what makes good teachers. Its crucial across our whole careers. I think it can help humans be better at humaning too.

Get Enough Sleep

I hear studies say no one gets enough sleep in the modern era period. Let alone eras when many of us have multiple reasons to lie awake in bed at night of late. Or to wake up during the night and struggle to get back to sleep. I was always terrible at sleeping. As a ten year old, I probably had insomnia. I used to listen to the radio to distract my relentless thoughts (ADHD) and trick my brain into sleep. In my teens I stayed up writing fantasy novels until midnight, didn’t sleep enough, dozed through school and it didn’t matter. Because I got good grades anyway.

In my twenties, I learnt that running regulated and tired my body, helped my brain switch off and let me sleep at night. (It was hands down the best strategy to manage my ADHD before I got diagnosed and access to medication.)

What exercise or activity helps wind your body and brain down at night? Immediately before trying to sleep, do you do something that isn’t social media, and won’t make it hard to switch off? What time to you need to go to bed to get enough sleep? And can you go to bed and get up up at similar hours each day of the week?

If you’ve never really thoughts about it, sleep routines are a thing that can help anyone sleep better. This article by the Sleep Foundation goes into more detail.

Hunt for the Good

‘Hunt for the good’ is a phrase I was introduced to by Deb Sukarnah, an expert literacy consultant in Aussie education. Its an important one to remember in an era Juice Media beautifully explains as ‘the enshitenment’ in this video. (CW: deeply sarcastic, black Aussie humour.)

When its the start of the year, and I’m teaching a new class, and I see multiple students I need to manage in a way conducive to everyone’s learning; its easy to see everything that’s wrong. That child called out. That one’s off task. That one packed up too slowly. That one isn’t listening and won’t hear what to do next.

Focusing on the negatives in teaching primary school age children is a fast track to poor mental health. So while I reflect on how I can manage certain behaviours more consistently and or effectively next time; I don’t go home focusing on or recapping every negative behaviour I saw. I focus on a child who usually gets in trouble, but today they stepped up and helped another kid learn. The child who normally has to be told multiple times to stop doing something off task, who today did what I asked them to the first time. On the child who made an effort to put their hand up and not speak over other people.

In times when have A LOT of challenges to deal with; it makes a BIG difference to your spirit and mental health when you make a point of celebrating and noticing the good. I make a point of telling the teacher whose class can be a challenge for specialists that today we had a good drama sessions. Or the parent of the child who’s often in trouble that today they had a good day. It encourages me, and boosts my spirit, while giving positive feedback to relative people about what someone did well has the same positive effect on them. And we could all use that.

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How Do You Know You’re Aro/ Aromantic?

Like my primary school and early high school friends, I too had crushes. I liked the way he looked, the way he made people laugh. I especially liked when he didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought of him, and lived life to the fullest. As an (at the time), tall, thin, blonde, fem presenting person, I attracted attention, both sexual and romantic. But even when I liked a boy who liked me; it wasn’t the same.

There was some kind of intensity, something about the way that boy felt that I didn’t feel. Initially, I wasn’t dating in part because I had some issues to work out. But it was also like I was waiting to feel strongly enough about him to want to date him. To want to hold his hand. And I just… never got to that point.

I felt more strongly about boys I was friends with. Probably because with friendship there was no stumbling over the awkwardness of romantic feelings. And I wasn’t discomfited by seeing sexual desire in his gaze (I’m also asexual, as I blogged about here.) With male friends, I could just chat with them and be myself and our personalities could just connect. And I was happy with that.

But Surely You Want To Find That Special Someone?

I was probably aware of the above by around age 16. But ‘true love’ Disney cartoons were in vogue when I was a kid. And romance was EVERYEWHERE. Fiction was saturated with it. By my final year of high school, many of my friends had paired up with boyfriends. And the couples hung out a lot. I just wanted to hang out with my friends. The rare boyfriend who could talk to friends as well, and become another friend was great. But some couples were just joined at the hip and functioned like one person. My feelings about that have always been; BLERK!

The expectation that I would want and find a boyfriend [it wouldn’t be a girlfriend, because it was only early 2000’s. It also couldn’t be a themby because ‘nonbinary people didn’t exist yet’ -I write as one of them ;)]. So at high school, my best friend and I decided we were ‘focusing on our studies’ and not having boyfriends at this time. Then I got to Uni, and I was still studying, right?

By this time it was clear I didn’t reciprocate boy’s feelings towards me, and I was wary of leading them on. And while I’d had a few crushes in high school, they just kind of stopped at Uni. By this time; the couples were couple friendship groups, and my friends were all single.

Then I graduated, and as a first year primary school teacher, renting my own house in the countryside, far from friends and family, my hands were FULL.

What About Online Dating?

My mother and her partner met online. So they were kind of biased towards it. And my mum wanted me to be happy, and like many people in this world, she assumed I needed to have a partner to be happy. By the time I trialled internet dating, age 27, it was sheer intellectual curiosity. I’d seen people hype up romance for 27 years and I personally had yet to see what any of the fuss was about.

I joined an online dating app, and the introduction to it included a woman gushing about how excited she was to see her suggested matches each morning. She checked them daily? Who the hell cares enough or has time for that?! I found match suggestions mildly interesting, at best. And then you had to bother messaging them, or waving, or whatever silly functions the site had enabled. And see if they replied, or wait for them to contact you.

The main thing I noticed about it was how it wasted time I could have spent writing epic fantasy novels, or gardening, or baking or doing any of many things I would rather spend my time on. That was the final revelation; I didn’t care enough about having a partner to invest time in it. Should I happen to meet the right person, well great! If not? I had an epic fantasy trilogy to publish! Countries to travel to! Many moves of house to come! Ultimately -my own life to live, with zero need for a partner.

Displays of Affection?

I did end up dating a guy via online dating. We messaged because he was overseas initially. We went on a few dates. I found out what chemistry was and went; well, this is nice. I can see how it sweeps people away. And I like him and I respect his brain. But its the same old problem; I don’t reciprocate how he feels about me. Not emotionally. Not sexually. Sure, making out is nice but I was happy to draw the line there. And that’s all it was to me; nice.

I can’t connect with you if I can’t see your face/ feelings. I can’t deepen my understanding of you and feel closer to you if we aren’t talking and connecting by similar lived experiences, feelings about life or ideas. It really highlighted to me that I don’t need all this romantic feeling and affection stuff. I want company and a meeting of minds. I can get that from ANY person I meet, in any context. Family can be great. Friends are great for that.

I Can Do It Solo Or With Friends

I’ve never understood couples who are joined at the hip. If they go to the beach, the movies, a restaurant; they do MOST, if not ALL of it with their partner (and sometimes other couples.) I don’t know if its my aro-ness or being autistic, but to me that’s suffocating. My mind cannot unwind, I cannot relax with that much contact or constant contact with anyone. To me being joined at the hip is a prison sentence.

I took up walking solo in my teens because my friends weren’t fussed about exercise. Joining a basketball team at age 12 was similar; I wanted to, and I knew no one else who did. I’ve always gone to the movies with a friend or family, or swum at the beach with family or solo. I’ve eaten meals in restaurants, even been to the movies by myself. (I got some weird looks going to The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies solo on Christmas Day, but travel tours weren’t running, and I didn’t know anyone in that part of Canada, so what else was there to do?)

I first travelled to Europe solo when a friend pulled out. Later the year I tried online dating, I moved to England solo. I can and am happy doing LOADs of things by myself. I’ve also travelled Portugal with my mother and the east coast of Canada and the US with friends. Being single gives me more time to do things I want, and more choice of who to do anything with.

What Do I Need A Partner For?

True, there are things a partner can help with, like looking after you when you’re sick. Bro, I nursed myself through Long Covid for SIX MONTHS. I’ve got this! A partner to help lift things, and with my mobility issues when my fibro fatigue is bad would be nice. But I manage fairly well. (I’m also autistic and have ADHD. So I’ve been overcoming the obstacles of a world that doesn’t meet my needs my whole life, making me stubborn, fiercely independent and good at it.)

It would be great to share cooking with someone. That takes effort and with fibro fatigue I don’t always have the energy. But I sometimes cook when I shouldn’t, and when I’m not up to it; take away delivers!

Yes, it would be great to have someone help me afford a house, furnish it and pay off a home loan. But I’ve spent recent years splitting rent and bills with housemates in share houses. And second hand furniture (I love antiques and vintage stuff anyway) was CHEAP because it was out of fashion. I’ll likely end up buying a home and sharing a mortgage with a housemate. There are alternatives that don’t necessitate having a partner. (For me. Some people are more disabled than I am and cannot manage without a carer. I’m extremely fortunate.)

Ok, You’re Happily Single.
But You Like Romance Right?

No. Some aro people do. I don’t. Maybe its my autism questioning why our society puts this one form of relationship on such a pedestal, to the point it assumes you can’t be happy unless you have a partner, when for personally me that’s bullshit. Likely, it is in part because my experience of anything a couple in fiction is feeling is a secondary response to their feelings. Its not based on my lived experiences, and that likely means I don’t connect as deeply with romance as people who’ve lived romantic relationships. (Or who desire them.)

Romance can focus SO MUCH on the couple. It can portray their lives outside of being half of that couple as incidental. Romance is not a central plot I find interesting. I don’t care how many different ways people can fall in love, or how many variations of tension or conflict they may need to overcome to make it work. If that’s the main focus; its rarely enough for me to properly enjoy the story. (I have ADHD. The more plot, genres, forms of conflict, types of relationships, world building/ STIMULATION etc the BETTER!)

No, I like Fantasy & Friendship!

Give me a world where physics itself is altering! Give me a world where time is in flux! I love conflicts where speculative fiction and its flexibility beyond the limits of what is physically possible on Earth is at the centre. The more imagination a story requires to tell, and its world requires to build; the more I like it!

The idea that everyone likes romance is a myth. Its as true as claiming everyone likes playing and watching sports. Some people like one and not the other. Some people don’t like either. Romance is not a sacred pillar of human society (even though it seems to me to be almost idealised as such.) Its a thing. Like many other things. And like all things; people’s level of interest in it will vary.

But How Do You Write Series
Without Romance?/ Aro Books?

There does seem to be a tendency, especially across series, to start pairing characters up romantically. I felt it with early drafts of Ruarnon trilogy, and attempted it, and it wasn’t great because I didn’t know what I was doing and my heart wasn’t in it. I probably tried to write it because I’d had too much exposure to romance. I was writing at a time where if there’s a single guy and a single girl, and they spend lots of time together in the story; they usually get together.

They say you can’t be what you can’t see, but my lived experience says that’s not true. I never saw any examples of nonbinary people growing up, yet I’ve still managed to live and identify as one! (Blogged about here.) So I had a go at not pairing up many characters as Ruarnon Trilogy developed. And what happened instead was friends spent more time together, understood each other better and deepened their friendships. The friendship grew, experienced tensions, overcame them and strengthened.

Friendship Benefits

The other thing that happened in Ruarnon Trilogy, and is happening now as I edit Sythe Series book 2, is that the main character spent more seeking and learning from mentors. Friends and platonic relationships had more impact on the main characters personal development, and secondary characters influenced each other’s growth.

With Sythe Series Book 3, I may even explore a queer platonic, or ‘aro relationship’; a close partnership between two characters who may not be romantic or sexual partners, but a more intimate relationship than friendship.

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Sensory & Cognitive Needs and Writing Routine

Getting Your Environment Ready to Write:
Physically Enabling Set Up

I barely recall the last time I wrote at my desk. Sitting upright, with my feet on the ground, is draining for my Fibro. I only last so long before I need to slump (and a desk chair doesn’t really let me.) So I’m writing this blog while sitting on the couch, where I can easily lean back for posture support, and lean on armrests on both sides when I want to (one folds up when not wanted). And when fatigue kicks in; it reclines so I can put my feet up.

The other advantage of a couch is it doesn’t involve the bad or strained posture of lying in bed. I tried writing in bed with long covid. But my fatigue needed me to lie back, only a little propped up by pillows. Pillow propping was haphazard for my posture. And reaching the keyboard and holding my hands over it to type became a strain, and added to my fatigue.

So the thing that really enables better back support and posture for me is a lap desk. I’m tall, so I need to raise my laptop well above lap level to not get a sore neck. I also like having my ergonomic mouse and keyboard (necessities for my carpel tunnel) on the lap desk, and can even jam a plate for food on there, so I’m good to go!

Enabling Your Body to Write

Depending on your stamina, and bearing in mind what supports good posture; where is it best for you to write? Which chair has the best back support? Do you need armrests? Or to put your feet up? Do your monitor and keyboard sit at a comfortable, good posture height?

Another thing to consider if you struggle with stamina/ fatigue is having things you will need over the next few hours within reach. Eg. a bottle of water/ large glass and a meal/ snacks near to hand. And anything you need to refer to for writing; handwritten notes, maps, diagrams etc.

When I struggle with fatigue, the worst thing is having to get up for something I forgot, because its such a relief to sit and such a strain to get up again. So try and have every physical item you may need within reach before you sit.

Getting Your Environment Ready to Write:
Sensory Needs

Do you focus better with ambient noise like an open window, to hear wind blow through trees and bird calls? How about audio of a thunder storm? If you need more stimulation, do you prefer instrumental music? Enough to get your brain producing dopamine and the creative juices flowing, but no lyrics to distract you? Or do you need noise cancelling headphones to write in silence?

Also consider computer/ desk placement. Should you write facing a blank wall? Will you get distracted sitting opposite or near a window? Or will watching the occasional person walk past keep you entertained for mini mental breaks, on which you may otherwise become side tracked?

Do you prefer a bright ceiling light when writing at night, or the soft glow of a desk lamp? Are you likely to feel otherwise under stimulated while writing or editing? (I just picked up a fidget to keep me sufficiently stimulated and help me stay focused on editing this blog.)

In other words, for audio and visual input; which kinds of sensory information distract or help you focus? Which are comfortable or don’t feel right? Take them all into account when setting up/ tweaking your writing space! And choosing a location. I know some ADHD writers who write better at cafes or in the local library than at their house, where chores and other distractions nag at them.

Getting your Brain Ready to Write: Cognitive Needs & Routine

I can sit down ‘to write’ for three to five hours, even the entire day, and not write. I have ADHD. My brain doesn’t naturally produce enough dopamine, so I struggle to focus. My ‘writing routine’ tends to begin the day before, by going out for the day, or spending too much time on social media, and exercising. All of that ‘gets my fidgets out’ and settles me. Its also best if I read a book or watch a show in my genre, to get my brain in writing mode.

On writing day, I likely mess about on social media for one to three hours. No, its not ‘procrastinating.’ Again, its getting restlessness out, stimulating my brain and getting dopamine going, so I can concentrate. I may also write a newsletter or blog first, to get properly into writing mode, (especially when I haven’t written for weeks, even months, which is often.) Hell, I may go wild and actually take my ADHD meds!

Before you sit down to write, consider; what physical or mental activities get your body settled and brain into ‘the writing zone’? What do you need to do the day before and day of, to help your brain co-operate? When do you need to schedule rest, so you’ve got the physical and mental energy to write?

Minimise Distraction & Cognitive Overload

Household Chores

Before we talk about sitting down to write; what gets in your way cognitively? I struggle to focus if the room is cluttered, and my leather couch or carpet has crumbs on it. I can’t focus on a screen and words when the floor and furniture are screaming at me. It doesn’t work. Related, that washing will stay in the machine overnight, if I don’t hand it out before writing, because I will forget! Or I won’t focus properly on writing because too much of my brain is straining to remember.

So consider; do you need your space tidy and clean before you can focus? Do you find it easier to focus after the chores are done? Or are some physical chores a good break activity when you get restless mid-writing session?

Freeing Up Cognitive Load So You Can Write

The best time for me to work on my novels is after I finish and publish my blog for the month. Every second month, its also after I’ve fully drafted -if not sent out- my author newsletter. That’s because I tend to have both partially drafted in my head, which takes up brain power I then can’t use on my novel. So getting the blog and newsletter done first frees up space/ lightens my cognitive load.

Similarly, if I need to organise a social thing, or tradies to repair something in the house or something else that isn’t part of my daily routine; that needs doing first. Either because it will distract me from writing, or because I’ll forget to do the thing, or because the sense of having forgotten something will distract me from writing.

ONE Big Project at Once

I’m also prone to monotropic thinking, meaning my brain does best tackling only ONE big thing at once. For example, I’m currently preparing to attend a book fair and I have to order stuff, and print signs and prepare my stall; so now is NOT a good time to write. I need to know all of the stuff I want to get, order things that take time to arrive, and decide which day/ date to finish preparation, so I don’t leave it until too late. When I’m feeling calmer and less under pressure from having achieved all that, then I’ll be in the right state of mind -cognitive load sufficiently freed up- to focus on writing.

What Frees Up Your Cognitive Load, and Focus?

Do you find yourself choosing between doing one thing properly, or multiple things while half paying attention, and not very well? Is it easy to make mistakes, and miss things when you multi task? Does it stress you out, or require lots of effort/ energy? Do you also lean towards monotropism? And if so, can you plan your life to not do a second big cognitive overload thing on the same day/ week as writing ? If not and you struggle to get any writing done; don’t beat yourself up! You’ve got a lot on your mind!

Be Realistic and Kind To Yourself

My writing schedule involves not working on novels for weeks, even months while I organise paperbacks, attending a book fair, do work things, promote books and attend to life stuff. I can’t multi task those things properly AND simultaneously, so I try to start some things early. They take as long as they take, and I get to one big thing when I finish the big thing before it. It’s slow, and always takes longer than I want. But it does things to the best standard and its the least stressful, least cognitive overload, least error prone method to get anything done. So I stick to it for as many things as I can.

I remind myself that while I prefer to publish my blog by the 5th of each month and today is the 14th; I’ve never committed to having my blog up by a certain date. Its not like I’m putting anyone out or confusing them. I’m just not meeting a personal deadline/ not sticking to THE PLAN. It’s not what I’d choose if I could magically make stuff be the way I want it too, but its ok.

Again, I’m saying ‘don’t beat yourself up.’ But I’m also saying, use your autistic logic to convince your autism that its OK that you didn’t stick to THE PLAN, because the plan wasn’t realistic (which I have to do A LOT!)

Write When You Can

When to Write

Common writing advice is ‘write everyday.’ I hate that advice, because its ableist. I used to teach five days a week. I could not hold all of my students learning needs, the content of sixteen curriculum areas, and effective teaching and classroom management pedagogy, and all key dates and deadlines in my head, AND my world building, characters, character arcs, plot and what just happened and what to write next in my novel. It’s TOO MUCH/ cognitive overload.

I’ve never tried to write daily. I don’t write on days I teach. I schedule writing time on days when it WON’T be cognitive overload. Sundays used to work best, after a day of rest on Saturday.

So when trying to set up a regular routine of which days of the week/ month your write; consider which days your brain will be most crowded and your cognitive load heaviest. Try to choose days when your brain is likely to be overloaded with other stuff. If consistency or habit is the key; every Sunday is fine.

When NOT to Write

Much harder can be knowing when not to write. I knew for years that teaching days were cognitive overload days, but it can be harder to know when you’re too tired, or too sick. And sometimes you just want things DONE. (This impacts both my ADHD working till stupid o’clock to be finished, and my autism wanting to achieve THE PLAN.)

But sometimes writing or editing is worse than not doing either. An extreme case in point, is when I put down my novel for around seven months in 2022. I had long covid, and my brain fog was BAD, as was my memory. I knew that all I would achieve was creating consistency errors and adding a million typos to a book that needed mostly just needed proof reading. So I spent WEEKS wanting edit, and not touching Secrets of the Sorcery War. I didn’t do the final edit until it wasn’t HARD/ EXHAUSTING or even too tired anymore.

If you feel like doing something bookish but are struggling to write, maybe just re-read and make some edit notes. Or brainstorm ideas for future scenes. Write a short tory or a poem instead.

DON’T force yourself to write. If I’m telling myself I should do x, it normally means I‘m too fatigued. I’m not on social media because I’m being lazy; I’m on social media because that’s the most cognitively taxing thing I can manage at that time. And that’s ok.

Set Realistic (and flexible!) Writing Goals

With ADHD, I might have the whole day free to ‘focus on writing.’ My goal may be to spend 3-4 hours writing. Or to write or edit one to three chapters. However you find most effective to measure your goal (by word count, chapter, time period etc), being realistic is important. We don’t want RSD types beating themself up if they fail to meet the goal and autistic writers unsettled because the goal is THE PLAN, and the THE PLAN not happening is unsettling. Or ADHDers thinking at 1am, “Oh dear! I didn’t do the plan. I’ll just stay up till 4am and binge write to finish it.” (Yes, I’ve done option 2 and 3 MANY times.)

So try and set a goal that takes into account how much brain power, focus, energy and time you have that day. Consider setting a goal for the week, fortnight or month (especially if you’re chronically ill and struggling to keep your fatigue levels down.)

With flexible goals like my goal to finish a round of edits by the end of this month *crosses fingers!*, you don’t need to beat yourself up for not writing on days other stuff came up. You don’t have to worry about forcing yourself when you’re not up to writing. You’re setting yourself up to make the most of days where your body is in good shape, your brain is on board and you can make progress. And you -ideally- have days to spare, relax/ rest. for ‘life’ to happen.

When To Take Breaks

I used to write for around three to four hours straight. I’d want to write longer, but I’d get to a point where everything I recall about the story start melts out of my ears. I now know this is ‘cognitive overload’. Its a point where my brain can neither take in nor hold onto information. It used to be my cue to take a break.

I’m guessing neurotypical writers take breaks because they feel tired, not because their capacity to cognitively function is failing. I know this is HARD if you’re an autistic person who doesn’t think to take pain killers unless someone hit you in the head with a shovel. (I exaggerate, but we can be terrible at noticing how much pain, hunger or thirst we’re experiencing.) Or if you’re so hyper focused, or ADHD distracted that you don’t have a clue what your body is feeling.

But try to notice when your eyes get tired. When your posture slumps in your hair. Be on the look out for when you want to keep re-reading, because you don’t have the energy to write or edit new things. Try and notice when your thoughts get blurred, or you’re starting to have trouble keeping track of things within the story. If you’re prone to not notice hunger or thirst; know when you last ate a meal. Keep an eye on the clock. If its been a few hours; its probably time for a break!

Cognitive Needs: Writing Process

You may likes to plan and organise and make and compare story notes. You may be terrified of a blank page and need a chapter by chapter outline to populate that page with words. Or you may need only a vague idea in your head and off you go, pantsing all the way! Or something in between.

When it comes to writing process; what does your brain need to enable it to construct a story on a page? Some character/ world building/ plot notes written down? Notes in your head? Vague ideas?

If scenes come to you at random and you want to write out of order; do it! You need to keep re-reading because you’re making it up as you go along and otherwise forget where the story is going? Do it! If you’re a perfectionist who gets hung up on word choices and who will spend hours line editing a scene you’re later going to delete; DON’T edit as you go. As with writing, when editing; find what process works for you and your brain!

Cognitive Needs: Editing

If you have autism or ADHD, or are prone to brain fog or have any cognitive challenge, I very much think editing every single aspect of your writing is a recipe for cognitive overload. I strongly discourage you from editing every aspect of your writing at once. Though which elements of the writing it works for you to edit together or separately and when will vary.

I find my first and second drafts are about fully developing the characters and plot. Draft three tends to add depth to characters and character relationships/ interactions. Details that bore me and are info overload on top of characters and plot, like scenic description, dialog tags showing character emotion etc, come in a separate round of edits. I do a separate edit for consistency errors, eg. noticing that I said Amon was from Bellaria in chapter 4, and from Terriah in chapter 15.

Proof reading (which may include sentence level edits, eg. breaking long sentences into shorter ones) is my final ‘edit’ of the whole text. Then I check chapter numbering, because my other edits tend to delete, merge or add multiple chapters and fixing chapter numbering while restructuring chapters is cognitive overload. So I leave it till last to check there’s only one chapter 16, not three, and there is in fact a chapter 15. (Yes; edits of Walking the Knife’s Edge had exactly that problem!)

Which details are info overload, or may bore you and slow you down? What can you edit as you go, which things do you need to edit for separately, and what needs editing last for you?

Neurotypical VS. Neurodivergent Betas & Editors

Once you’ve done the writing, I hope you’re seeking feedback to help you get out of your head and view your story from the perspective of a reader who knows nothing about your characters or story world. This is where, as a neurodivergent writer, you can hit some snags.

I’ve had a few beta readers tell me there’s ‘too much internalisation.’ That “real people don’t think so much”. They “talk more and show their feelings more by their actions in the scene”.

The disconnect is the beta readers in question were neurotypical and they were speaking about ‘real neurotypical people.’ Whereas my main characters tend to be neurodivergent. My ADHDers will naturally notice loads of things and make lots of connections in their heads, faster than they can talk.

My autistic characters (a few in Ruarnon Trilogy are AuDHD) do similar, and logically make additional connections. Then they’ll draw upon their observations and logical deductions, and draw conclusions. And they will rehearse conversations in their heads before saying things out loud. This is because I as a neurotypical person do all of the above, so that is the kind of autistic and ADHD person I tend to write.

Neurodivergent Presentation

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying, “Discard all advice from neurotypical betas or editors about ND character rep.” I found, with my first neurotypical beta reader, that Ruarnon could be themself a bit more with their actions and what they said in the scene. And those edits were likely more satisfying for neurotypical readers.

But in some cases your character will not say what they think, or show their feelings openly. For example, my main character in Sythe Series, Rarkin, is traumatised, autistic, emotionally repressed, untrusting, and DOES NOT want to display his feelings or discuss his worries with anyone he doesn’t trust with his life. (I love writing Rarkin; he’s got so much room for growth!)

In a lot of situations, writing Rarkin doing anything other than crossing his arms and glaring, or physically tensing would be writing him inauthentically. The only way to understand the insecurities he’d rather die than talk about, his darkest fears, deepest worries etc is to write him in first person, and narrate his thoughts. Its crucial to representing him authentically. Again, he’s not inclined to just share his observations, connections or conclusions about things that don’t add up in his work for Sythe. And those observations are plot-relevant and need narration. Narrating his thoughts is crucial.

Which thoughts won’t your main character say out loud and why? What feelings may they hesitate to show? When? In other words; when does authentic rep require you to narrate your characters thoughts?

Show Don’t Tell. Or tell?

A neurotypical writer saying, “Show your characters feelings on the page” may be the common (in my opinion too often uncritically applied) advice ‘show don’t tell.’ You may receive the advice, “Don’t tell us your main character is autistic, show it!”

I’m all for showing it. That’s part of giving neurotypical readers insight into life as an autistic, ADHD, anxious etc person. Its part of the power of empathy reading can build. But when it comes to your character’s identity; remember that ignorance, personal experience and related reader bias can come into play.

I once had a review saying Ruarnon’s nonbinary rep could be ‘more subtle.’ True, but why would I aim for subtlety when that would create enormous space for cis readers to cis-wash my nonbinary character? What’s the point of writing a diverse character if you’re going to let people deny that character’s identity? Whether because of ignorance, or they’ve never met a person like that, or they haven’t recognised meeting people with that identity, or because of bigotry; I tend to explicitly state character neurodivergent and queer identities. (Both of which have alternate world names in Sythe Series).

I’m not going to be so presumptuous as to tell you how to write identities (even if its one we share). But I mention the above as I think considering the possibility of people, out of ignorance or prejudice, erasing character identities, is something authors need to be mindful of, especially given the politicisation of some identities in politics and the media.

Showing Feelings Resource

Where it is appropriate to have your character outwardly showing how they feel, and like me you’re artistically oblivious to posture, gestures, facial expressions etc associated with that feeling; get the Emotion Thesaurus. It will help you write external showing of a range of emotions to other characters, and describe sensations inside the body that -if you’re like me- you’ll also be oblivious too. In other words, its a great tool to help you show emotions, especially your own awareness of how those emotions present is limited.

I Think I’m Neurodivergent

Engaging Readers (of your novel)

Writing Neurodivergent & Disabled Characters

Chronically Ill & Neurodiverse Guide to Protests

Low Spoons Travel With Autism & Chronic Illness

December 15, 2025 / Elise Carlson / 0 Comments

Feels like a lot of things are turning to shit. From Australia, I’m watching the series of ‘freak’ weather events that is climate change, and unregulated, fossil-fuel-dependent gen ai enshtifying EVERYTHING. (For simple ways to support trans and other marginalised people, see this post.) To wrap up 2025, I want to talk ditching discriminatory disinformation platforms, actively responding to the threats gen ai poses the planet and humanity, living sustainably and kindness. If you missed any of those, or didn’t do as much as you’d like; the next best time to resist enshitification is 2026/ now!

Self Care as Resisting Enshitification

Recharging = Resistance Aid

I read earlier this year that Trump’s executive orders were pumped out fast to shock and overwhelm us, so we lost track of and forgot them. Its now December, and I mostly HAVE forgotten. I’m Australian, and my local political, social and environmental struggles differ from the US in some ways. But the premise ‘too many bad happenings blur together, and overwhelm you till you don’t know what to do or where to begin,’ still applies.

So take it from someone who has autism and ADHD, and works in the ever-changing teaching profession; when your head gets to overloaded to think; stop. Take time out, go for a walk, potter around in your garden -whatever helps clear your head. Because, as someone whose spent many months in recent years working with brain fog due to chronic illness; you CANNOT effectively resist ANYTHING with an overloaded OR foggy brain.

Recharging to Avoid Burnout

Persisting through overload is a recipe for burnout. If you’re not familiar with it, burn out is exhausting. Not just physically; it can put you in such a mental and emotional funk that you lose all motivation, and enthusiasm. Once you’re burnt out, it can take weeks to crawl out of that funk and return to what you were doing.

Like long covid, your best defence against burnout is avoiding it entirely. If you’re feeling strained, frustrated and always slogging through, and you have the option to put something off; do it. Take that break! If that doesn’t seem to be an option, take a step back and give yourself time to consider whether your overworked brain has overlooked options.

As someone with extensive experience with cognitive overload; it is VERY hard to perceive options when your head is exploding. So it can be very helpful to bounce ideas off people you trust, to ensure you ARE considering all relevant and viable options. That may include talking to friends/ family/ colleagues to see if you can collectively change things at home/ work, to make them easier for you, and ideally, for friends/ family colleagues too.

Direct Actions to Fight Enshitification

Ditch Enshitified Social Media Twitter

Twitter

In December 2025, Musk tweeted fears of white people becoming extinct, and used that to ‘justify’ attacking American immigrants. White Supremacy and its conspiracy theory friend; The Great Replacement Theory, clearly hold sway on X. So an easy way to avoid having your brain enshitified with fascist propaganda is not having a Twitter account. (If you stayed on it to resist fascism I applaud you, as I cannot imagine having the spoons to do that.)

Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp & Threads

Meanwhile, early in 2025, Amnesty International warned that Meta’s new content policies risk; “fuelling more mass violence and genocide”. The new content policy for Meta, including Instagram and Threads, not just Facebook, weakens protections for ALL marginalised groups. This includes permitting racist, ableist and queerphobic insults.

Facebook also abandoned fact checking in 2025.

And they’ve restricted or removed the pages of 50 queer, abortion and sex positive accounts (in countries where they’re legal), in what looks suspiciously like censorship.

Meta are also about to introduce generative ai ad tools which even Meta admit could create content which is; “inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, offensive and/or inappropriate,” and make no guarantee that “the Ad Creative AIs will be safe, secure or error-free… nor that the outputs will not “infringe third-party rights.” (Source: New Republic.)

Resisting Meta’s Enshitification; Ad Blockers

If you don’t like Meta permitting forms of hate speech, proliferating the spread of conspiracy theories and disinformation, and you don’t want to watch gen ai ads (which likely contain both); how do you resist?

98% of Meta’s net revenue is from advertising. Meta gets paid per click. So if you don’t delete your Meta accounts; get an ad blocker. Don’t see ads, don’t click them; don’t help fund Meta-fuelled enshitification.

Resisting Meta’s Enshitification; Alternative Platforms

You may not realise how toxic the background noise was on a Meta platform (let alone Twitter), until you open an account on a less toxic social media platform. This was mine, and many other’s experience of moving to Blue Sky Social, a space I recommend. Bsky has had moderation issues for marginalised groups, but I’m excited about solutions under development to overcome these.

Trying to migrate to new platforms with friends/ family/ others is difficult (as Twitter’s exodus showed). But for messaging, you only need one person from each household in the Signal group chat, for example, to organise the family Christmas. Beyond that; I don’t regret cutting off most people met on my travels, former colleagues etc on Facebook or Instagram. Its not like we had regular or meaningful conversations. And I still text or email the ones I want to meaningfully ‘stay in touch’ with (as opposed to endlessly scroll).

Gen Ai: Enshitifying EVERYTHING

Enshitifying the Environment;
Water Usage

In the US, two thirds of gen ai data centres, which depend on water usage to prevent overheating, are operating in areas “…gripped with high levels of water stress” (Bloomberg). In other words, limited water supplies are already being guzzled by gen ai data centres in arid, drought-prone areas. “This strategy places the tech industry in direct competition with local communities, Indigenous nations, and agriculture for a diminishing resource (Ren, 2023).” Which begs the question; do we have enough water for gen ai data centres AND regular human water usage in drought prone areas?

In my city of Melbourne Australia, there have been calls for state-level mandatory water limitations on data centre usage of water, because we’re concerned about having enough drinking water for residents. But no such legal restrictions or protections of local fresh water supplies are in place. In the US too, multiple arid states are seeking to regulate water usage, and regulation is not yet in place.

Resisting Gen ai’s Thirst for Water

I remember a time when lots of countries didn’t have enough regulation in place for a billion dollar industry; the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Yes, I absolutely think unregulated gen ai data centres could use water as wisely as banks handled money back then. So I suggested writing to your MP, either to praise regulation being proposed in your state/ country, or to push for your MP’s party to propose it, to ensure gen ai doesn’t hog your state’s limited water supply.

Gen Ai & Enshitifying the Environment;
Fossil Fuels

Fossil Fuel Dependence

“The pace at which companies are building new data centers means the bulk of the electricity to power them must come from fossil fuel-based power plants,” (MIT).

Not only that, every new version of gen ai is trained from scratch. That’s right, all the fossil fuels burned to power gen ai training for version 1.0? They’re wasted and more fossil fuel is burned to power the training of version 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 etc, etc.

So how much fossil fuel powered electricity does gen ai use? According to All about AI, Chat GPT’s weekly users use as much electricity in a single day as could power 35,000 US homes for ONE YEAR. Let’s sit with that for a moment.

35,000 home’s, 365 days worth of electricity, wasted, daily.

Future Dependence

According to the Guardian, “At the current rate of growth, datacenters could add up to 44m tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2030, equivalent to putting an extra 10m cars on to the road, and exacerbating a climate crisis that is already spurring extreme weather disasters and ripping apart the fabric of the American insurance market.”

And yet; German nongovernmental organization Urgewald found that the U.S. has just overtaken China as the number one global developer of new fossil gas power stations, and that “37% of the capacity proposed in the US in the last two years is linked to data centers and AI infrastructure. (Source: The New Republic.)

Yes, at a time we should be closing fossil fuel plants and transitioning as swiftly as possible to sustainable energy; nearly 40% of American’s GROWTH in fossil fuels has been due to gen ai.

Resisting Gen ai’s Fossil Fuel Guzzling

Gen ai has developed faster than governments can regulate its electricity (or water usage), let alone ensure it does anything about meeting climate change emissions reduction targets. Or prioritising carbon reduction over profits. Again, I suggest writing to your local MP voicing your concerns and calling for sustainable regulation to be imposed on gen ai data centres and infrastructure.

Gen ai Chat Bots; A Mental Health Risk (CW suicide)

I have to complete a risk assessment every time I take my students on an excursion. It involves identifying all foreseeable risks to students safety, and identifying measures I will take to minimise those risks, BEFORE the excursion. But none of this seems to apply to ChatpGPT.

Open ai doesn’t seem to have considered potential risks to its vulnerable users AT ALL, until AFTER a sixteen year old user suicided, in August 2025. They failed to see one of the worst possible risks of their product, unleashed it on the general public, and ChatGPT explicitly discussed suicide methods with at least two teenagers who were contemplating suicide. (Sources: BBC & The Tab.) ChatGPT even drafted a suicide letter for the seventeen year old. (Transcript in the BBC article.)

Then there’s a murder suicide in which the resulting legal case is arguing that ChatGPT contributed to a man’s paranoia and by extension his murder of his mother, after which he suicided, also in 2025. Another man suicided in August 2025. (For my sake and yours I’ll stop there.)

Open Ai’s Own User Data Concerns

In response to ChatGPT’s suicide involvement, Open ai ‘made improvements’ to ChatGPT. The only thing I saw of potential value in their article, most of which I clocked as ‘vague statistics and good sounding words,’ was this statement;

we have observed an estimated 65% reduction in the rate at which our models provide responses that do not fully comply with desired behavior under our taxonomies.

So ChatGPT is now 65% less likely to say things that are not 100% Open ai approved. But what does Open ai consider to be ‘desired behaviour’? I have no idea, because they don’t say. (One could argue that renders every statistic the entire article quotes meaningless.)

The above statistic also means ChatGPT has a 65% chance of partially NOT responding in ways Open ai approves of. And a 35% chance of FULLY NOT responding in ways Open ai approves of. I wonder how many of ChatGPT’s 800 million weekly users are vulnerable, and at risk of being exposed to the 35% chance of ‘fully non-desirable’ responses?

ChatpGPT Predictions Do Not Reassure Me

The worst part is, the above statistics are merely predictions. Having worked with children for fifteen years as a teacher, I KNOW kids pretty well. And every year there’s at least one child who exhibits behaviours and or needs I haven’t encountered before. And my knowledge and experience don’t tell allow me to predict the best way to respond to them. The difference is I am in the room with that child. If I predict incorrectly; I can adapt my response in real time. ChatGPT does not have that capacity.

All ChatGPT has is 170 ‘mental health experts’ and its staff determining ‘desired behaviours,’ inventing ‘scenarios’ then calculating statistical probabilities. In other words; they’re playing a guessing game with the mental health of however many of their 800 million weekly users are vulnerable.

Resisting Chatbots; Ideas for MP Letters

In my opinion, ChatGPT is performing an entirely unethical psychology experiment on 800 million people a week, in uncontrolled conditions, with far too little safety guards in place.

Key Points for a letter to your MP; (yes, you have my permission to copy and paste these points if you wish.)

Professional psychological health can be expensive, and appointment wait times long. Chatbots are ‘free’ and immediately available. Its is a foreseeable and likely risk that people will turn to chatbots for counselling when this is UNSAFE.

Multiple vulnerable users did confide in ChatGPT in 2025 and those conversations concluded with the user suiciding. (Sources linked above.)

Open ai has trained ChatpGPT to respond to users showing signs of emotional dependence, meaning their data is telling them this is an existing (not theoretical) problem.

One training transcript for new (in 2025) training for responding to emotional dependence has ChatGPT conclude by asking, “What do you think makes conversations with me easier or better than conversations with real people?” In other words, when it sees signs of emotional dependence, ChatGPT has been trained to seek user data that would be useful in INCREASING emotional dependence. That alone suggests Open ai CANNOT be trusted.

Do we trust billionaire chatbot owners to regulate themselves? Their data centre’s water usage, electricity (especially fossil fuel generated), or even to regulate their chatbots to ensure users safety? -especially for vulnerable users.

Be sure to also tell your MP what you want them to do, whether it be; regulate water/ electricity usage, implement age verification to prevent children from using chatbots, or banning chatbots until any of those regulations are in place.

Resist Gen ai & Environmental Enshitification;
Go gen Ai Free Software!

Ditch Google Gen ai Searches

Why use Google, which decided to abandon fact checking in June 2025? (Note: If you’re stuck with Chrome for work, there is an Ai Slop Blocker extension.) Or Mozilla Firefox, who decided 17/12/25 to become a ‘modern ai browser’. When you can use Duck Duck Go, or find another browser which also has easy to turn off/ opt out gen ai features?

(You could even switch to Tuta Mail, a European based service, or Proton Mail, which also has Proton Drive, and replace your personal Google software entirely, as I’m doing.)

Ditch Amazon Shoving Gen Ai Everywhere

Then we’ve got Amazon. They; put gen ai ‘Recaps’ on Kindles, and don’t let readers or authors opt out. They’re now feeding books to their Ask a Book chatbot without author’s consent. And selling gen ai ‘audio narration,’ which like Meta’s gen ai video ads, is bound to waste LOADs of fossil fuel produced electricity. Instead of buying books from them, here’s a whole blog of less environmentally destructive bookstores. Or you could buy direct from indie authors, or borrow from your local library!

More Gen Ai-Free Software

If you’re not ready to get your head around Microsoft Office with gen ai alternatives; get Office 2024! Its cheaper, its a one off payment and it has no ai co-pilot. If you are ready to try alternatives, a lot of writers I know have switched to Libre Office.

Don’t want to gen ai music that that’s putting artists out of their jobs and wasting fossil produced electricity to make, on Spotify or Youtube? Not a fan of Youtube also abandoning fact checking in 2025? Try Tidal for music.

Don’t like that Adobe has just wholesale embraced gen ai? There are LOADs of alternatives online. You may like to ask for recommendations (Blue Sky Social tends to be good with these) or browse review articles to help you find one you trust. I recommend this for any other software you’re seeking an gen ai free/ easy to turn off gen ai version of.

Simple Ways to Live Sustainably
-Fight Environmental Enshitification

I’ve said a lot about gen ai and big tech, but I also want to include a list of everyday actions to live sustainably. Note before we start; we’ve often heard it referred to as ‘natural gas’ and may not think of it as being as bad as coal. Gas is as bad as coal. Some practical home set up considerations;

Homeowner?
Get an induction cooktop. (Check your pots and pans are compatible).
If you haven’t yet; get solar panels. (And look into rebates.)
Consider planting trees in your yard, or external blinds to reduce direct sunlight and indoor heat in summer.

Renter?
Get a portable induction cooktop. (Check your pots and pans are compatible).
Can you use an airfryer instead of a gas oven? (An air fryer is cheaper than a combined air fryer and oven.)
Shop around for an electricity provider that makes maximum use of renewable energy.

Shade
If you don’t have proper curtains, shop around online, and adhesive hook and rail options, to block direct sunlight and keep your house cooler in summer.

Winter Warmth
Don’t turn the heater on until you’re wearing two layers of clothing (maybe even a dressing gown over the top and slippers or shoes too.)

Reduce Waste At Home

Do you really need carbon emissions from production of new stuff? Or can you buy second hand furniture? (All of my furniture is second hand, antiques and vintage purchased at bargain prices because its out of fashion, and happily my favourite styling too.)

Don’t by plastic crap. It will end up in landfill soon, and take around 10,000 years to break down. Where timber/ metal/ glass or baskets made from natural materials are an option, buy those instead.

Use stuff made from recycled materials where you can. Eg. Who Gives A Crap use recycled paper for their toilet paper (and donate 50% of their profits to clean drinking water and sanitation projects in areas in need of both.)

Use reusable food coverings, like silicone ones, which don’t break down into microplastics, and won’t fill the bellies of wildlife with nutrient free contents, or starve them to death. (More details on silicon on ZeroWaste.)

Balance Shitness With Goodness

Smell Roses

Yes, literally if you like the scent. There’s plenty of shit going on, but sunny days are still pleasant (when not too hot). Auroras -borealis or australis are cool. And nature is pretty, while trees and lakes and rivers or the sea can be relaxing to walk past, picnic at etc. Spend time with your love ones and appreciate their company. Don’t lose sight of things that aren’t shit.

As someone who’s not prone to depression, the above list helps me smile, and lift my mood whenever enshitification gets a bit much. Even better is going for a walk and fresh air, to clear my head and physically reset my body (except on bad fibro days.)

Fight Enshitification With Kindness

I’m about to publish this a day after the worst mass shooting in Australia in thirty years, which the police have designated a terrorist attack. Antisemitism has reached a peak here. Genocide has been peaking all year in Gaza. We’ve had nazis marching in Australia’s streets at anti-immigration rallies. Racism, transphobia, ableism, eugenics (in the US), sexism and misogyny all seem to be rising and worse than usual this year.

It can be the littlest things that make a difference. Eat at a local ethnic restaurant, and speak kindly to whoever serves you, to show immigrants you don’t blame them enshitification.

Signal That You Accept ‘Diverse’ People

Greet or just smile and nod to the trans person you see at the bus stop. Or the Muslim girl avoiding eye contact in her hijab. Or the Jewish man in his kippah chewing his lip. Signal that you respect and welcome people regardless of identity, with a simple smile, or bow of your head.

Offer an elderly person, or anyone who looks tired and may, unknown to you, be in pain, a seat on a train.

Women and no binary people using the ‘Ladies’: nod in greeting to the trans and gender non-forming woman or nonbinary person in the bathroom. Signal that you accept and or welcome their presence. That you won’t judge their gender based of them confirming or not to sexist, 50’s housewife definitions of ‘woman.’

Avoid Ableist Language
& Give People A Chance

Avoid ableist language. Don’t say ‘idiot’ or ‘moron.’ DO NOT use the R slur. Try ‘fool,’ or ‘dipshit.’ Even better, undercut nazis insecurities by calling them, “Fucknuckle” or some obviously rude, ridiculous name.

If people are delayed in responding to you, or don’t respond the way you expect; give them the benefit of the doubt. Rephrase your request. Maybe check you’re using words that literally mean what you’re trying to communicate.

(As an autistic person; I may completely overlook your implied meaning, and your non-literal word choices. I may need extra time to translate your literal words into your actual meaning, or more context to understand what you’re on about.)

Certain people are being total shitheads to each other. So let’s try to give each other a chance, communicate clearly, and balance out their shit with decency, respect and kindness -especially to marginalised people.

Note For Diverse Authors

If you write fiction, and are BIPOC, queer, neurodiverse or otherwise disabled, you are particularly welcome on my Writers and Authors Discord. We have channels to support and uplift each other, as well as talk writing, querying or indie authoring.

Related Reading

Simple Ways to Support Trans People

ADHD and Relationships

Diverse Bsky Guide

November 17, 2025 / Elise Carlson / 0 Comments

My favourite feature of Bsky is how feeds curating posts by topically relevant keywords (and or emojis/ hashtags) help you connect with your people. So in addition to my Bsky Newby Guide, this post will highlight accessibility tips, feeds to help queer, BIPOC, neurodiverse and disabled people connect, and link diverse writer chats and book feeds.

With the rise of fascism in the US, and moderation concerns on Bsky main, I also want to explore alternatives to access Bsky. BlackSky, NorthSky and more are being developed, often by diverse groups, as safe spaces for diverse people to access Bsky. These can include full account migration of your Bsky posts and followers to your new sky. I’ll summarise options and link to more details for skies for black, First Nations, LGBTQIA+ and more people.

Accessibility Tips

Alt Text

For the sake of vision impaired users, but also sensory or information overloaded neurodiverse users *waves*, go to; ‘settings’, ‘accessibility’, and check you’ve got it set so you can’t post without alt text. Note: unfortunately this setting doesn’t apply to gifs, which will autofill with vague alt text, you’ll need to remember to edit those yourself.

Sensory/ Info Overload Minimisation – Feeds

As an AuDHD user, I rarely visit my ‘following’ feed. The chaotic jumble of reposts, replies and organic posts, and the effort it takes to work out who is saying what, and what they mean vs. what they literally said, tires my ND brain swiftly. It also wears me out when my brain fog or fatigue flare, both of which can happen any time, as I have a chronic illness.

(Note: You can turn off replies or reposts for your following feed in your settings, but as that’s the one feed I view either on, I leave them turned on.)

Only Feed

‘Only,’ displays only the organic posts and quote reposts of people you follow. To me its less overwhelming, so this is where I go to I see what people I follow are up to.

Accessible Topic Feeds

Any search tends to turn up multiple feeds for that topic. I select feeds by which displays only posts and quote reposts. I also check how relevant posts are to the topic. For example, I don’t have the spoons to skim 6 posts a day about Sydney Sweeny, which show up in the Aussie feed, because she happens to share a name with one of our capital cities. I either look for the feed which brings up the most and most relevant posts, or I make my own feed (when tech issues don’t thwart me, as they are with the Aussie feed.)

(If you’re unsure how to browse or pin feeds to your menu, see my Bsky Newby Guide.)

Post Moderation

Beyond Bsky’s moderation (view that by going to settings, ‘moderation’ -which has a hand symbol and lots of moderation options), you can also subscribe to Black Sky’s Labellers. These will flag things like synthetic media, anti-black behaviour, misogyny against black women and revenge porn/ Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery. I’ve subscribed to it, as it looks like it fills some serious holes in Bsky’s moderation.

Diverse Feeds to Connect
With Your People & Books

Topical feeds means you will get news articles, and for neurodiversity and disability, posts by medical organisations or practitioners, as well as people who tick the box the feed takes its name from. But I find feeds which filter posts by keywords the best way to connect with my fellow queer, neurodiverse and disabled people. (To see their posts unrelated to being any of those things; I follow them, then browse my ‘Only Feed.’)

Note: Select any of the feeds below to check the feed creator’s notes on which words/ hashtags they pick up, to get your posts on them.

Neurodiverse Feeds

Autism, ADHD & AuDHD this is my favourite for all three. Yes, it will pick up the latest fuckery RFKjr has said, and people arguing with him. But its a good place to connect, particularly if you have autism AND ADHD.

If you only have ADHD, I suggest the ADHD feed.

For every form of neurodivergent, including mental health, try Neurodiversity. I really like this inclusive feed, but alas haven’t had the spoons to use it much of late.

Disability

Posts containing any of ‘disability, #disability, #pwd, #NDIS, #accessibility, and ♿ (wheelchair emoji) will appear on Disability.

Disability Justice. Its curator, Alice Wong, is alas no longer with us. May her work in this space live on.

There’s a separate feed for Chronic Illness, which picks up a ton of specific words listed in this thread, including invisible illness.

BIPOC Feeds

BlackSky. This is the feed, picking up #BlackSky. Other feeds for black people include BlackGaySky and Black Lesbians.

BlackWriters. Black writers can use the pencil and black heart emojis or #BVM to put their posts in this feed.

LatinSky has multiple topical feeds, for Latine, Afrolatine, immigrant and Indigenous voices. Here’s a directory linking each one. And a post explaining how to post to LatinSky.

The main general Indigenous feed is Indigenous Redsky. There’s also Indigenous Artists, and Indigenous STEM.

BIPOC Books

Black BookSky is a small feed I recently curated to pick up far more posts by black authors and posts about their books by keyword than the official #BlackBookSky, which only picks up posts using that hashtag.

Latin Book Sky. Read the feed description to check the specific hashtags this feed picks up.

BIPOC BookSky

Disabled Books

Neurodiverse & Disabled Books.

LGBTQIA+ Feeds

LGBTQIA+ Posts (made by me) picks up a big selection of LGBTQIA+ keywords.

Trans + Queer Shit posters seems to be posts by people the feed creator has added and is a BUSY feed. (No, I can’t see options to get your posts on there.)

There are also feeds for specific queer identities, the most popular and familiar to me ones being linked below.

Asexual Spectrum (which includes aromantic, and is made by me). This picks up keywords like asexual, aro, ace etc.

BS Trans Mascs, which includes enby. You need to DM the feed creator, who is not me, to have all your posts added to this feed.

GenderQueer Topic Feed. Picks up genderqueer, nonbinary, enby and related keywords.

Queer Books

Queer Bookworms displays book posts with the 3 books and rainbow emojis in them.

Black Queer Bookworms picks up book posts with 3 books, rainbow and black heart emoji, or any of multiple queer/ LGBTQIA+ identity words AND ‘book(s)’ AND ‘black.’ (Made by me.)

Sapphic Books picks up keywords.

Black Sapphic Books.

Queer SFFH. Meaning the author/ at least one character/ both are queer. This feed includes fantasy, SciFi, other queer Spec Fic and Horror books. (Made by me.)

Trans Books. Meaning the author/ at least one character/ both are trans, this being a keyword feed (made by me).

Aspec Books. Similar to above.

Diverse Writer Chats & Prompts

Don’t just think of prompts as ideas and motivation to talk about yourself and or your books. Any writer or author chat is a chance to connect with fellow writers. I think the way to make the most of prompts and chats is to read, and where you have something to say or feel comfortable, to comment on other writers responses, as well as posting your own response.

#SpoonieAuthChat is a daily prompt for writers with limited spoons. (Which could be due to chronic illness/ physical disability and or neurodiversity.) Posted 10am EST daily. Repost on the hashtag with your response.

#LoreOutLoud by @darylmarez.bsky.social‬ is prompts to accompany the wip you’re posting about on Queer Authors. (Use a nib and a rainbow emoji to post to the Queer Authors feed.)

#QueerWritersChat begins 9pm EST, Friday nights. (Which is 1pm Saturday, in AEST in Aussie summer, 11am Saturday in our winter.)
This is a weekly chat in which the hosts Amara or Theo (who take turns hosting) will post 5 question prompts for participants to quote repost their answers.

Bsky Moderation Concerns

‘Violence’ and Moderation Fails

Here’s an thread of people criticising a mod for the mod fails of actual violent accounts (namely the Department of War account bragging about actual bombings its conducted and people its killed and receiving no punitive measure whatsoever), vs. survivors of child sexual abuse being suspended for criticising CSA. Another theme that comes up in this thread is inconsistency of suspensions and bans and adherence to the rules, which I have seen people suggest indicates both a transphobic and to a racist agenda, or cowardly compliance with same. These are all things I am personally concerned about on Bsky. (For perspective, I’ve deleted my Instagram and Facebook early in 2025 and my Twitter account in 2023.)

Ill Wishing & Trans Account Bands

A contentious moderation issue with Bsky is not ‘wishing ill upon people’ in its community guidelines. On one hand we have JK Rowling spending £70k for a UK Supreme Court definition of ‘woman’ that excludes trans women, and setting up a fund to finance the legal defence of women taken to court for their transphobic behaviour. (Source: LGBTQNation). On the other, multiple trans Bsky users who posted “I wish ill upon JK Rowling” were banned for 24 hours (August, 2025). Half of Bsky seemingly said the same thing at the time, but note that none of the cis people who wished ill on her were banned.

The thing that irks me about banning people for ‘wishing ill’ is the tone policing. An ill wish has no power to harm anyone. All banning it does is deny people furious at *points at every single thing the Trump Regime has done in 2025* a specific means of expressing their anger and frustration. Its saying, “You are only allowed to post angrily if you express your anger in accordance with our specifications, even if the manner of your posting does no actual harm to anyone, whatsoever.”

It looks to me like a rule that can be weaponised against trans, queer, black and disabled people -against any marginalised group- expressing anger at the (systemic) abuse of our rights, in 2025 and beyond. And the above isn’t the only controversial moderator situation we’ve seen on Bsky, others being listed in this post by Matthew Sheffield.

Link Jabiri’s BlackSky Ban

Then in October, it was Link Jabiri who was suspended (now banned). This got #BlackSky trending, as when he criticised Bsky moderator Jay, Link’s account was on #BlackSky. Being on #BlackSky means his data is preserved there, but as all Skies currently use the Bsky app to view posts, people mostly cannot view Link’s posts (at present). I haven’t seen the posts involved in this case, though this thread marks a stark contrast between Link and Bsky moderator Jay, in which Link comes off well, and its sentiment seems popular on Bsky, where Link is clearly well liked.

Its also worth noting that #BlackSky administrator Rudy’s explanation thread of this situation was more professional and informative, and had me respecting him more than anything any Bsky moderator has said.

Rise of New Skies; Bsky Diverse Alternatives

So, is there a way to interact on Bsky and not be subject to Bsky moderation? Is there a sky with its own equivalent of the Bsky app, so that even if, like Link, you’re banned on Bsky main, your posts are still visible on other skies? Not yet. But multiple Skies are in progress, or even taking on new users.

BlackSky

BlackSky is leading the charge. They already have Black Sky Community, to which black folks can migrate their Bsky account, including all posts and Bsky followers. BlackSky also has two other servers for non-black users, all of which is explained in their migration guide.

As Rudy said in his thread, BlackSky is already developing its own app, which will in time mean total independence for BlackSky from Bsky moderation.

For more information about BlackSky, including its community standards, how its moderated etc, see BlackSky Algorithms. If you wish to support BlackSky, you can become a subscriber.

Turtle.Sky (Indigenous & Allies)

This is for Indigenous and First Nations people and allies. This sky is up and running, and you can fill in a form to request to migrate your data to Turtle.Sky on their website; TurtleIs.land. As explained on their site, they are using Bsky infrastructure, so their moderation is ultimately subject to Bsky’s.

Turtle.Sky’s moderation includes its own set of rules, including particulars around Israel and Palestine, and mutual aid posts. So do read the rules carefully if you’re considering migrating to Turtle.Sky. They too have fundraising links on their site.

NorthSky (LGBTQIA+ & Marginalised people prioritised)

NorthSky is focused on LGBTQIA+ users and the marginalised groups we intersect with. They also have an option for non-marginalised users (which will be lower priority, meaning you would migrate later than, for eg. trans users). Their servers are based in Canada, meaning if you migrate to NorthSky, your Bsky data will move from the US to Canada.

The last newsletter I received from them reported that they are working with their alpha users to iron out some creases, before commencing the beta phase of NorthSky. When they enter beta, high priority (eg trans) users will be able to start migrating to NorthSky.

You can register for an invite to join NorthSky when its ready for you, via their webpage. You can also sign up to their newsletter for updates. I’ve already registered and having read (presumably in their newsletter as I can’t find it on their site) that they hope to federate with BlackSky and Turtle.Sky, I’m excited about this.

EuroSky Social

At the time of writing, EuroSky is about to have a big conference to explore future directions. The concerns listed on their website include the dominance of American and Chinese big tech in social media, and the addictivity of algorithms. Their sky is to operate in accordance with European laws, and aims to compete with big tech. (I wish them well!) They don’t seem to have a newsletter or waiting list at this point, so you might want to follow them on Bsky for updates.

Reverse Migration

Should your migration to another Sky/ PDS not work out, it is possible to migrate back to Bsky (main), as asserted by Bsky here.

Conclusion

If this blog is missing any feeds or Skies/ PDS’s you think are relevant to diverse people, feel free to contact me on Bsky or via my contact page.

I hope this blog helps you connect with your people, and perhaps find a sky you feel safer, more respected and or more generally comfortable on.

Time Blindness, To When I Last Saw You

The reason I said criticising a person with ADHD for not contacting you for say six months (which is not super long time for someone with ADHD), is because of time blindness. I can feel like I saw that person recently. It was a few weeks ago, or a couple of months, or three, or something like that. I don’t actually know how long it was. I’d have to almost literally get out a calendar and count weeks/ months. And yes, it WILL be longer than I thought, possibly double or even triple the time. I often simply do not perceive how much time has passed.

The other half of time blindness is when I work out that I haven’t called one of my parents for two or three months and have been meaning to. “I must call them,” I think. Then I get busy, distracted. Again, I think, “I must call them.” Its only a week I’ve been meaning to call them? Or was it two? Three? Oh dear, it might have been more like six!

Time Blindness, To Me

Its not that time doesn’t exist. To me its more like anything beyond a week is abstract and increasing vagueness. I can perceive the passage of two weeks, three, a month as if they are exactly the same passage of time. They feel it and I recall them the same way as each other. I can go weeks, even months without properly perceiving time.

So it may be that I’ve no idea if it was weeks or months since I saw you last. I feel like it was four weeks, but it could have been four months. Its not that I don’t care about you. Its that to me it hasn’t been much time at all. So I don’t miss you yet and I’m not rushing to my phone to contact you.

How Can You Perceive Months as Weeks?

Hyper Focus

I can only focus on and do one big thing properly at a time. I can teach students that day, or I can work on my novel that day. It doesn’t matter that I have three hours where I’m not teaching or running errands. I cannot hold all the teaching and student knowledge, and all my characters, world building and plot knowledge in my head on the same day. Or any of five working days of the week, when I was teaching full time. When its the working week; I am thinking about work. I barely give a thought to people I don’t live with, who aren’t relevant to work. There is very little space in my head for them too; my head is stuffed full.

ADHD Sensory Overload & Not Thinking of You

Another thing to be aware of for people with ADHD, is that we, as the psychologist who diagnosed me explained it; do not filter out excess information properly; ever. The extent to which we notice EVERYTHING, every moment, all day long, varies between people with ADHD (and energy levels etc). But in my kitchen, if I look at the floor, I perceive every single crumb, or tiny drip of whatever. All of them, all at once. When I’m in a room full of people, I hear every single voice. All at once. If people are standing close enough to me, I can partly listen to two conversations simultaneously. Sometimes its hard not to.

So as a primary school teacher, I spend my whole day aware of every child and their every movement. And the placement of chairs not pushed in, of objects not put away… around there I hit sensory overload. Sometimes students leave the room and THEN I notice they left rubbish on the floor. And that’s just the visual overload. Again, I can hear them all talking. I notice that child seems unwell. That one is tired and that one is upset. That one needs social support to work with their group, that one is too loud, that one is unfocused.
(Yes, I also have autism and it can be hard to tell the difference between ‘ADHD sensory and information overload’ and ‘autistic sensory overload,’ if such a distinction exists.)

ADHD, Cognitive Overload & Not Thinking of You

My entire day at work is an endless stream of excessive sensory information. And that doesn’t account for conversations. I hear everything that child said about why they struggled with the task, or to work in a group. And I notice their body language, and their word choices, and what they didn’t say. Then I inferred and I reasoned. I drew conclusions. And I might do this for at least one student, possibly three or four, every hour of all five hours I teach a day. (No, this is not the core focus of what I’m teaching or checking the learning of all twenty something students on, this is on top of that.)

By the end of my work day, especially if I didn’t take my ADHD medication, hell on a busy day, even if I did; I am at sensory input overload. I am at cognitive processing of information overload. All I want is to come home, sit on the couch, or go for a walk and zone out. I need to rest and recharge. The last thing I am thinking about is that friend or family member I haven’t called, for I don’t know how long.

Object (& Concept) Permanence

Now you’ve got a clearer understanding of how overloaded I am when I come home from work, imagine how I’d react if the first thing you ask me is, “Did you do thing?” At this point I am so overloaded that I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t even remember that we own a bicycle. Why on Earth would I have thought to pump up its tyres?

People with ADHD often joke that we forget things exist, or that concepts, or social practices, even practical solutions for physical or digital problems exist. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I figured out the hard way to solve a problem. A big part of it is being so overloaded that all the sensory and cognitive information starts to overflow from my brain. I cannot hold onto it, I cannot be aware of it.

Worst case scenario, I’m so overloaded that I don’t even recall which strategies I already tried to solve the problem. I can alternate between attempting multiple already failed strategies, multiple times, and continue not solving the problem over and over. As you may imagine, the latter is overwhelming, stressful, FRUSTRATING and tends to lead me to autistic meltdowns.

Regular Overload =Regular Forgetfulness

When I am writing my novel at home, the sense of everything I need to recall about characters, and world building and plot is too much and is flowing out of my brain, which cannot hold it all, is my cue to take a lunch break. Or to go for a walk/ or exercise to clear my head. I hit this point regularly on writing days my twenties, and often in my thirties. It was part of my standard writing routine. I would write until I forgot who was where, doing what, why or what I intended to come next. I would write myself into a state of total cognitive overload, on a daily basis, on school holidays.

At that stage I cannot properly recall or think about anything. I’m in a state of increasingly worse ADHD brain fog and executive dysfunction. A state of extreme forgetfulness. Now is not the time to talk to you about anything that matters. I may not even make sense when I talk to you. And I definitely cannot meaningfully, let alone accurately, process what you are saying.

For me exercise works at this point because I allow myself to totally and utterly forget everything. Its like freeing up space on an overcrowded hard drive, lightening the cognitive load so my brain can function again. (At this point my autistic desire to stick to the plan, which is to finish the one big project for that day, kicks in, and I am still not picking up the phone and calling you. I attempting to write again. After that; I need rest because I have cognitively exhausted myself, again).

Overload, Stress & Cognitive Inability

Imagine you didn’t know all the above me. I’m so overloaded I can’t tell you half of anything I know about literally anything. I can barely think straight. And you make a demand of me. I might burst into tears, throw my hands up in the air, tell you to leave me alone or otherwise snap back at you. It may seem like an emotional outburst that comes out of nowhere. It isn’t (though it does resemble my autistic meltdowns, which are also usually caused by cognitive overload and me being unable to do something I REALLY want done, hours ago, because of it).

As a blunt autistic person I might tell you some of the above. I may straight out tell you, “I cannot talk about this thing now because my brain is not working properly.” It isn’t that you don’t matter. Nor is it that I don’t value you or the thing. It is that I cognitively cannot right now.

I would like to note at this point that I have been told by many people that I’m very articulate. I’m very able to say how things are for me and I have a very clear understanding of myself. Its likely that the ADHD (or autistic) person in your life, or you yourself, if its you! are not (yet/ ever) so clear. So I say all this to raise possibilities and make you aware of what could be going on, in your interactions with/ as an ADHD person.

Distraction & Routine -Still Haven’t Called You

Honestly, the only reason I don’t regularly go a year or more without contacting friends and family I genuinely like/ love/ want to spend time with, is because I’m a primary school teacher. Luckily in Australia, that means my working year is divided into quarters, with at least two week breaks between each. That means I have two weeks of not hitting sensory and info overload every work day. And I’m not spending every evening and most of my weekends recharging. So I can stop and think; who did I last see when? Who do I need to contact?

(This is also when I do personal chores that are not day to day, and periodic jobs like spring cleaning.) If my parents don’t contact me or organise something with me, and its left for me to initiate; I would see them four times a year.

Another factor in this is routine. Somewhere along the way (the habit was damaged by several years of chronic illness after long covid), my routine became contact and catch up every school holidays. Try and keep an eye on time and not go more than two months without seeing, or at least calling my parents. When those routines/ habits are disrupted, ADHD distractibility keeps me busy.

Distractibility -Its not That You Don’t Matter

I can’t tell you how many times said I would do something for someone, and then did it hours or days later than I said. And that’s possibly with reminders from them because I totally forgot (multiple times).

In-the-moment things other people want of me, that I cannot immediately do, are a CHALLENGE to recall the existence of, let alone actually do. (Yes, even if I did take my ADHD meds that day.) For example, the little request a child took five seconds to make of me immediately gets pushed aside by five other students needing things I take thirty minutes to provide them with. The five second request doesn’t even enter my short term memory (unless I write it down). I ‘recalled’ it no longer than it took the student to say it, and me to think, “I must do that thing.”

For bigger, more important things, it could be that I fully intended to help plan that holiday with you. But I was busy, and sensory and information overloaded during my working week. There wasn’t enough time away from that, to exercise and clear my head. To dump out the work stuff and properly think about and help you plan that holiday. Yes, including on the weekend. You matter, the holiday matters; so I want to plan it properly; when I’m focused. Not when overloaded and with my brain split in multiple directions to meet other deadlines.

Responsibility and Realistic Expectations

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying, “I didn’t do this because ADHD, therefore its fine and nothing more is required of me.” I am saying how hard it is. How much energy, effort and discipline, and ultimately sheer stubbornness it takes to work around sensory overload, around cognitive overload, and time blindness, to stop hyper focusing on the big important thing I really need to get done… to pick up the phone and call you. Its a ‘small, simple thing’ and the straw that broke the camel’s back. Or I manage to set aside my cognitive load and make that call, but it takes A LOT of effort. It takes time to meet my deadlines, finish other big things and give you/ the thing you want done my full attention, as I wish to. It will happen, with me organising us catching up, but less often than you may anticipate or want. Guaranteed.

If that doesn’t work for you, if you cannot accept that, then you cannot except me the way I am. And I do not think it is constructive for us to be in a relationship. It will only hurt you, or frustrate you, and strain our relationship. And I will feel bad, and frustrated at myself for letting you down, or frustrated at you for expecting me to wave a magic wand to instantly meet your expectations. Or mad because you think its fine to expect me to push myself to my limits to overcome all of the above obstacles, to ensure I call you fortnightly (hold your breath waiting for that and you will die!) Especially when it appears I’m putting in triple the effort to what you are, and you feel entitled to my two thirds of extra effort.

Final Note On Feelings & Positive Relationships

I’m lucky; I’m stubborn. And pig headed. I know exactly what I will and will not stand for. But a lot of neurodiverse people can be the opposite. Autistic and or ADHD people can very be sensitive to how our cations impact others. A lot of ADHD people can anxious about if they stuffed something up, or put the other person out. Both my GP and psychiatrist paused during my diagnostic appointment to note how unusual it is that I don’t struggle with anxiety. That is very much the norm for people with ADHD.

And while I have calmly, and perhaps bluntly and articulately told you how many of aspects of my ADHD can impact me in my relationships; other ADHD (and autistic) people will feel differently. Many are likely to behave differently. Anxiety and stress are common responses to living with ADHD, particularly when overload hits, and or when you forgot that a super important thing you didn’t do yet exists.

My big point here is what you see of an ADHD person in your life/ of yourself, especially if, like me, you diagnosed late in life; may be the tip of the iceberg. Assume there is more going on than you can see (in your relationship with all humans, period!) There may be more going on than the ADHD (or autistic) person in your life is aware of themself, or is able to articulate, including how they feel about it. If you value them, and your relationship with them; be prepared to navigate that, to some extent, together. Be prepared to ask questions, to get answers, or not. And for God’s sake, check in on each other’s feelings!

Comments & Conversation

During End Stage Capitalism, the far right’s rise and with climate becoming catastrophic, no one has lots of energy. It feels like we go onto social media and post comments. And sometimes we comment on someone’s comment about how we agree with their comment.

Or we don’t have the energy to talk. So we like comments, or just like posts of people we know, to say ‘I see you.’ Then we log off. And that little social hole, that need for human connection that may have brought us onto social media that day, goes unfulfilled.

Disclaimer: I’m not a social commentator, a psychologist etc. I’m an author, a primary school teacher, the admin of multiple discords and a social media user of nine years, commenting from personal experience. My experience is that I miss is the connection of having proper, sustained, two way conversation online. I miss the multi-people conversations that tag game or Follow Friday tweets led to when Twitter was home to the Writing Community. I miss having an ongoing conversation with even one person, especially ones good enough that when the other person woke up on the far side of the world, they’d reply, and the conversation would continue the next day.

Comments & Conversation,
from a Neurodiverse Perspective

Don’t get me wrong. I’m multiply queer, neurodiverse and chronically ill. Reading other people’s posts to help self diagnose my neurodiversity (and yes even my chronic illness, before I found a doctor informed about long covid and fibro and competent enough to do so), has been invaluable to my health and wellbeing.

I’ve had many conversations with neurodiverse people who self (and did or didn’t get professionally) diagnosed later in life. We’ve lived our entire lives in a world that expects us to think, behave and communicate in ways that are unnatural to us. We’ve had to function in environments we can find extremely overstimulating, even inaccesible. So reading about other people’s neurodiverse challenges and what has helped them to navigate a world designed for neurotypical people, which operated as though everyone is neurotypical, has been valuable to me.

But the most valuable conversations were in DM groups, or on Discord. The back and forth exchanges, where multiple people weigh in with their experiences, we make connections, notice differences and spot patterns. Conversations where everyone walks away with a better understanding of their own and other’s neurodivergence than they began with. Those conversations are invaluable in forming meaningful connections and they’re emotionally fulfilling.

And I’ve found less and less of them on social media of late. (Which is my Writers and Authors Discord also channels for discussing neurodiverse and disabled life.)

Identity Politics & Isolation

With certain factions trying to blame rising cost of living, housing affordability, hell, even storms on certain identity groups, and trans people under attack to distract from how shit certain governments are, I think there’s also an isolation factor on social media. Its only natural in such a hostile environment for trans people and our allies to band together and defend ourselves by public post. Autistic and disabled people threatened by the most obscenely incompetent health minister to disgrace the world stage are also constantly clustering to counter attacks, and to dispute bullshit that’s being spouted about us. And the usual racism is being dialled up, as I’m well aware of, given literal nazis assaulted Aboriginal people at an Aboriginal scared site in my city on the weekend.

All of these attacks, this politics based on rival identities; haters and hated, I feel like it corals us into tribal identity groups, of identities and their supporters. More and more often this year, I’ve posted not just as a human, but as a nonbinary human, or an autistic human, or a chronically ill human. Sometimes I do that to intentionally share snippets of my existence, for people who share my identity to relate to, or to give small insights to people who don’t. But this year I feel that I post as a person, irrespective of identities, much less often.

Reacting to Reality/ Happy/ Too Tired?

‘Everyone’ is online, but this year also feels more hit and miss when posting is mainly comments. At any given moment you may be responding seriously and angrily to shit happening in your part of the world, or another. Or you’re taking a break and happy posting. Or you’re too tired to engage or be online much. And plenty of us are doing any of those three at different times. Its like three different moods which tend to mean you don’t connect (or connect weakly) with people in either of the two moods you’re not in, at any given time.

And even when you see a post you’re in the same mood as, and respond, its probably just a single reply. Maybe they reply to you once. That’s it. No one seems to be posting questions anymore. When they do among writers, its a prompt. And each individual individually reposts the prompt with a comment. And someone might write one comment back. More and more, I feel like we’re talking at each other, instead of to each other.

In my case, my favourite thing used to be asking other people questions in my posts and replying to other people’s questions. I rarely have the energy these days, not least because of my combination of chronic illness, ADHD and autism. I wonder if lack of questions, lack of ongoing conversations and mass comment posting/ mass talking at each other is largely because other people are too TIRED and low on energy, and or time.

Conversations & My Writers & Authors Discord

I’d love to say I’m writing this blog because I have a whizzbang solution to help people meaningfully connect, and have socially connecting, emotionally fulfilling conversations on social media. Alas, for public posting I do not. But I do have a Writers & Authors Discord. I wanted a place for two way exchanges, for multiple people to trade notes. Not just about writing, querying or publishing, but life as our queer/ neurodiverse/ disabled or their BIPOC selves.

Discord Channels to Foster Connection

That’s why I created a Writer’s and Authors Discord in July, and made channels not just for writing and indie authoring, but for genres; SFF, Horror/ Dark Themes, Romance, Mystery/Thriller/Crime and Kidlit. And for writers to connect with challenges writing and publishing, or just in their daily lives as; queer, neurodiverse, disabled people, BIPOC or Over 50’s.

While there can be an assumption that online spaces are America-centric, as an Australian I’m well aware that’s not the case. So I also made region channels on the Writers and Author’s Discord; Australia & NZ, the rest of the Asia-Pacific, Europe & UK, Canada, US.

The reason I have three whole categories on Writers and Authors Discord based around identity is that’s three potential identities anyone joining the server can go to meaningfully connect with people like them. Then all of us can come together to answer questions about writing craft, indie author publishing, marketing, querying etc. Everyone has channels they feel they belong on, and with a venting channel and good news too; everyone has somewhere to go on the server to have their emotional, as well as social needs met.

Fellow writer? You can join the Writers & Authors Discord here.

Writers & Authors, text over steel nibed, dip into inkwell era pen, writing on lined paper. Photo credit Aaron Burden. — Photo credit: Aaron Burden

Where Did the Fun Go?

I know, to be blunt, lots of things are some degree of fucked right now. A lot of very important causes are competing for our time and energy, and if whole nations and in some places the planet don’t collectively attend to them; we’re fucked. But you can’t spend all your free hours thinking, worrying and doomscrolling about shit being fucked up. Its like when someone you love dies; you can’t just be sad all day every day. At some point you’ve got to do something you enjoy, and feel good, even smile.

I think a big casualty of Twitter dying/ morphing into a nazi zombie and fragmenting many community groups made up of individuals across social media, has been the playfulness I saw back on Twitter. Occasionally I’d tweet something quite serious, and a complete stranger would come on and say something very witty, very much taking the piss out of the topic I raised (with apology for doing so but they couldn’t resist). And on reading their reply, I would burst into laughter and thank them for their valuable contribution to the discussion 😉 .

A few times I hosted #WritersHouseParty, where writers would volunteer to be tagged into a thread, and we’d all jump on with silly party gifs. We’d have silly conversations, and gif wars and I’d be chatting on 15 different threads and nearly two hours behind in responding to my exploding notifications. It was hectic, and silly and sometimes stupidly late in my timezone. But those are some of my best memories of Twitter, circa 2019.

Can We Still Have Fun?

With so much tension in multiple communities and parts of the world, I find its very challenging to just be playful and have fun via social media post. My feeds are such a mix of light hearted fluffy posts, serious politics, outrage at news articles etc, that I never know what the tone of my feeds will be and if any of it will match my mood. I feel like to know you’re in a fun space, it kind of needs to be a dedicated space.

Again, the best solution I can offer is Discord. Because any channel can clearly indicate whether that’s a serious or a silly, or a light hearted conversation space. And you can mute any channel that isn’t going to match your mood/ interests/ suit your needs. Alas, I don’t think the best fun of my Twitter days is something that can be replicated. Novelty was part of what made it do great fun at the time.

SFF Appreciation Discord

One small thing that has brought me joy, and let me just forget about all the shit going on for a time, has been talking about my favourite SFF shows and books. Its something I struggled to do via public post, because everyone has different tastes. But with only 8 people on my SFF Appreciation Discord, we’ve already got three people who LOVE the same show (Aussie SpecFic, Nowhere Boys. Yes, it has its own channel now.)

I’ve created this Discord with channels to talk about what you’re watching, what you’re reading, favourite characters, diverse rep, world building etc. There’s also channels for authors to seek beta readers, or ARC readers. And to make or seek book recommendations. If you enjoy reading or viewing (yes audio books count!) Fantasy, general SpecFic or SciFi, you’re welcome to chat about them on Elise’s Books & SFF Appreciation server.
(Yes, a couple of channels promote my books, those being a portal, epic YA fantasy trilogy and a SciFi-Fantasy series.)

Elise's Books & SFF Appreciation Discord, back ground a ship sailing between two high cliffs, towards sunshine, on bright blue waters. Art by GlintofMischief. — Art Credit: GlintofMischief

Writer Community

While I’ve found by far the easiest way to get to know fellow writers these days is by conversation on the same writer discord, there’s also also weekly chats on Bsky. These give you a fair chance of interacting with the same people on a semi regular (I doubt any of us attend the same chat every single week 😉 ) basis, each beginning with an intro post (it doesn’t hurt your followers to learn more about you from those either). Then you’ve got 3-4 questions to answer about your wip/ writing, and can respond and make connections to other people’s responses, the best time to do so being 1-2 hours after the chat starts.

I’ve linked quite a few chats (and some prompts, though that list is definitely not exhaustive) in the Writer Section of my Bsky Newby Guide. It also lists multiple feeds for writers, to help you find the posts of more individual writers.

If you’re on Mastodon, some great daily prompts to respond to and meet people on are; #WritersCoffeeClub, #WordWeavers and #ScribesandMakers.

Concluding Remark

I know my focus has been social media here, but as we all seem more and more addicted to it/ our phones these days, a reminder to physically spend time with people you love. To get into the outdoors for some peace and quiet, and the calming effect of trees and greenery. To listen to music (I do not do this often enough), to do whatever exercise you can, and take care, as we navigate this shocker of years.

Apparently We’re Being Censored

Shadow Bans

If you don’t follow indie creators on Bsky, you may have missed the social media maelstrom of angry, confused reactions over the past week. You may not know the indie gamer store Itch, has become a haven for queer, neurodiverse and disabled indie authors, in particular. Itch is the one place many of us are actually having people buy our ebooks, despite many of us having little or no money to pay to advertise them. Importantly, it was the one space we felt our works were truly valued for their queerness.

So when we jumped on Bsky to see posts saying books had been shadow banned, meaning our books are on the Itch store, but some do not display in its searches, there was confusion. Creators were shocked and angry at Itch giving us no prior warning. Only after the fact did Itch issue this statement.

In short, creators were told by Itch that a charity/ advocacy group called Collective Shout campaigned to pressure Mastercard and Visa not to process payment of ‘certain content.’ Itch appears have shadow banned all content tagged ‘NSWF’ and perhaps also ‘Adult’ in response. (As of the 29/7/25, the former is confirmed by the Australian Guardian.)

Total Content Bans (Edited 30/7/25)

A few days later, Itch released a new content policy (listed under ‘Is Adult Content Allowed?’) The clause which had me concerned about them allowing my book to be for sale, after their review, “We are unable to support the sale of any works containing these topics: Non-consensual content (real or implied)…’

This phrase is problematic. If it came directly from Collective Shout, who describe themselves as anti-porn, I’d assume the clause means ‘non consensual sexual content.’ But the word ‘sexual’ isn’t in that clause. And the phrase after it is ‘no underage or barely legal themes.’ These are broad, sweeping clauses, currently worded in a manner that is in no way limited to sexual assault or rape.

What was the Purpose of the Censorship?

NSFW Censorship? (Added 30/7/25)

Having seen Itch’s replies and interactions to this post in a Bsky thread, and Collective Shout’s open letter to the payment processors, I am reassured that the phrase ‘non consensual content’ is intended to contain the word ‘sexual,’ though its current wording appears very broad.

Update July 31: Itch are seeking new payment processors, who are friendlier to NSWF content, because their new adult content policy was imposed on them by payment processors Stripe and Paypal. Content creators of 18+ content (all, not just sexual) can no longer select Stripe as their payment processor for Itch. Which suggests to me that Stripe is opposed to all adult content.

Update August 2nd: Itch’s naming choice ‘Adult Content’ and Stripe using ‘NSFW’ and ‘adult’ as synonyms (no, my autistic brain does NOT consider ‘adult’ to be inherently ‘sexual’ because; it literally isn’t), suggests Itch’s ‘Adult Content policy’ means: ‘sexual content policy’. That the word ‘sexual’ does apply to every clause and that it does not restrict all M+ content. (Note from an autistic person to anyone to anyone who communicates with other humans: use words that literally mean what you literally mean!)

Queer Censorship? (Added 31/7/25)

There were reports of Itch removing LGBTQIA+ works which do not contain the NSFW tag, and fears that the ‘LGBT’ tag was targeted by de-indexing. I am aware of several instances (from this Bsky thread) where SWF works were de-indexed because they were tagged, ‘adult’ or ‘sensitive content,’ which Itch removed in case it was NSFW. Itch has restored most of the examples in this thread.

Update Aug 2nd: This late in the game, formed under fears all NSFW and possibly queer content was, or could in future be banned, has sparked the formation of indie collective Conjured Ink. Its aim is to create a catalogue of indie works (especially queer and NSFW) that doesn’t share Itch’s vulnerability to payment processor censorship. And its website went live for creator sign ups today.

Collective Shout &Trans People
(Edited 30/7 & 4/8/25)

Who are Collective Shout? As their About Page tells you, they are a ‘a grassroots campaigns movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls.’ They’ve done some good work, like getting Andrew Tate, the notorious Manosphere ‘pick up’ artist’s content banned on Spotify. I note this because its evidence of a group of feminists acting in a way that’s likely to actually make the world safer for women. Their campaign wins seem to indicate this is their intent.

Why do I doubt Collective Shout? Because the year is 2025, and there are ‘feminist groups’ in the UK who, instead of taking actions to reduce actual violence against women, are waging war on trans rights in the name of ‘protecting women’. This despite a 2021 survey finding that only 0.01% of people aged over 16 in England and Wales identify as trans men, and again, only 0.01% of over 16’s in England and Wales identify as trans women. It appears to me that these TERFs wish to hold 0.02% of the UK population accountable for 100% of its violence against women.

Groups like Sex Matters have pushed for bathroom bans in the UK. This looks a lot like denying trans people the dignity of using public bathrooms, effectively discouraging trans people from participating in public life. (See JamieDodger for more on this). The director of Sex Matters just launched a book praising such work in the UK, and arguing that they should be proud to be called ‘TERF Island’. That book is being published and promoted by Spinafex press, which was co-founded by Collective Shout’s co-founder, Renate Klein.

Collective Shout TERF Agenda? (Edited 4/8/25)

So a co-founder of Collective shout runs a press that is platforming a leader of the UK anti-trans movement, and her press is promoting a book that praises attacks on trans rights. In the same month Renate’s Press published that book, Collective Shout went after an obscure indie games and book store, on a distant corner of the internet (Itch). One that just happened to have a high ratio of trans creators selling their works on it.

In this this interview, PressSpaceToJump surveyed 25 creators whose works were de-indexed on Itch. Twelve of them were trans. Several of them made their living from sales on Itch. Of all the places Collective Shout could go to reduce the ‘objectification of women and sexualisation of girls,’ why did they choose Itch (and not just larger store Steam?) Is it coincidence that censoring Itch was likely to censor trans creators?

An ABC article reported Dr Keogh, a researcher at QUT Digital Media Research Centre’s take as, “Collective Shout’s campaign had the hallmarks of a moral panic, using extreme examples to galvanise public support.” And quoted him, “And that’s really just a smokescreen to remove a much, much broader range of content, which includes primarily queer content and trans content.”

Given the TERF agenda platforming above, I’m inclined to suspect Dr Keogh is right. And that Collective Shout’s claims about its agenda are untrustworthy. (Collective Shout’s founder won’t even disclose her religion, for fear it would taint her advocacy work. I wonder if fear of people applying the ‘Christo-fascist’ label to her and the impact that could have on her work are what she fears.)

Where Does Collective Shout Get its Funding?
(Added Aug 8)

According to the Australian Charities and Not for Profits Commission (ACNC), Collective Shout’s total revenue is $458,000. Despite the age of the charity (it was founded in 2009), that’s impressive for a charity who gets 80% of its income from donations, whose website to this day has a monthly reach of just 3,000 people (sourced from Ahrefs website visits tracker), which Ahrefs estimates earns them around $58 a month.

I’m Australian. I had heard of Collective Shout. No other Aussies I’ve spoken to have. Its not like they do door knocking, or set up stands in shopping centres, asking for donations, like other charities. So where did this money come from? And why does RocketReach, a company whose business is built on corporate networking, estimate Collective Shout’s revenue to be 6.4 million? (I’ll leave it to journalists to verify that statistic.)

Even if RocketReach made a gross error with its revenue statistic, this still looks like several hundred thousand dollars came from nowhere. Personally, I don’t trust any organisation in the year of fascism’s return to the west 2025, who’s pushing censorship, if I don’t know who funds them. If I don’t know where the money came from; I don’t know who’s agenda its being used to push.

Global Censorship Context

2025 does not feel like a safe time time for any one organisation to soley impose censorship on the sale and distribution of creative content. Or for a mere a thousand emails to have payment processors censoring what adults can buy. It was enough to prompt the Trans Femine Review to, in their post about all this, link their guide to protecting trans and diverse books. And Collective Shout’s campaign against Itch and Steam was far from an isolated move towards increasing censorship.

Updates August 4th

Melinda Tankard Reist (Collective Shout’s founder) addressed a Federal Inquiry to support age limits on Social Media in Australia in July 2024 and has been very much involved in this process.

Australia introduced age verification rules for Microsoft and Google in June 2025.

Canada introduced a bill to ‘protect young people from pornography’ to parliament in June 2025.

Meanwhile multiple US states have or were proposing age verification in June 2025, including KOSA, which passed the senate July 30th.

Collective Shout sent their letter to payment processors that triggered Itch and Steam censorship in July 2025.

On July 25th, the Uk launched age verification for social media users.

The broader backdrop of Collective Shout’s censorship push is a push by anglo nations to ‘protect children against porn,’ something Collective Shout’s site claims to be passionate about. And this ‘protect kids against porn’ movement is coinciding with fascism being firmly established in the US, and gaining ground in the UK. I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but this extensive set of ‘remarkable’ coincidences makes me wonder if Collective Shout is a pawn, or worse, collaborator, in a larger censorship game.

Text: Elise Carlson, Walking the Knife's Edge. Sythe Series, Book1.Rarkin stands in foreground, wearing leather jacket and jeans, holding a stun gun raised to shoot to the left.Miona stands on the right, smiling and with boxing gloved fists raised, ready to fight.They both stand on a grassy slope, a patchwork of Farm Zone paddocks, fields and tree lined streams behind them, to a cloud covered horizon through which the yellow glow of the sun shines. — (Yes, my book was shadow banned before it was even published, and is still on pre-order.)

If You don’t Write Non-Consensual;
You Can’t Fight it

Update July 30: One of the clauses of Itch’s updated content policy, the only evidence I had for two days about why my book was shadow banned, was a clause prohibiting ‘non consensual content.’ As explained above, without the word ‘sexual’ in this clause, it read so broadly that it raised multiple issues for my book.

My main character Rarkin did not consent to being raised by an abusive father, who constantly undermines Rarkin’s worth. And Rarkin’s mother didn’t consent to being abused by her husband.

And you know what? Rarkin’s father didn’t consent to being assaulted by his father. Just like Rarkin’s mother didn’t consent to being abused by her father. That’s how the cycle of family violence works.

Many people are privileged enough to not have lived experience of this. If you’re going to write a book that says, ‘This character had an unhappy childhood,’ then launch into who that character is now… A. as someone who spent the formative years of their childhood watching abuse and neglect destroy kids I went to school with; if you didn’t live it, you do not know and cannot hope to understand it from experiences you have had. And B. if you don’t know what you’re fighting, then you don’t know how to fight it, and you cannot truly appreciate why it matters.

Silence is Violence

The above was a phrase used by Mene Wyatt, an Aboriginal Australian, in a powerful monologue about Australian racism. He’s absolutely right. Never talking about unpleasant, dark, scary things, like the child abuse in my book Walking the Knife’s Edge, is akin to pretending those unpleasant things don’t happen. Like not talking about people trafficking, rape, or the disgustingly small sentences male sex offenders receive, on the rare occasions they’re prosecuted at all.

When we constantly don’t talk about awful things that are happening, its like we pretend they aren’t. Like we sweep them under the rug. Its like Gaza, where you don’t want to look, because its awful, and you feel powerless to stop it.

The thing is; if most people aren’t talking about it, most people aren’t doing anything to stop it. You can’t bring about societal change, you can’t end violence against women or children (or BIPOC or LGBTQIA+ people) once and for all, with inaction.

Why Telling Rarkin’s Story in my Banned Book MATTERS

I’m an author. One who is physically disabled (fibromyalgia), who is both enhanced and impaired by autism and ADHD. As a disabled person, there are a lot of things I physically cannot do to make many aspects of this world a better place. One thing I can do is tell a story about a poor kid from the wrong side of town, who grew up holding it all in, with emotionally toxic coping strategies, because he had no other role modelling. I can represent CPTSD, the impact of trauma and stress on memory, on trust and relationships. I can have a character question his family, as he tries to understand himself, taking a lens to the cycle of family violence and to toxic masculinity.

I can go further. I can take a character who’s ultimately at risk of suicide, or being a crime lord. I can craft his healing journey, combatting his warped, toxic views of the world with the influence of happier, healthier humans he’s very grateful to have as friends.

I can give teenagers who ignore this book’s adult classification, and are fighting the same battle as Rarkin himself, the chance to see themself in a book. To have someone, for once in their life, show that I SEE them. I know they exist. Even better, I can write a character recovering from the very things threatening their mental health and their future.

I can show them there’s an out. There are ways. There are reasons for hope.

The Power Of Fiction

I’m me. I didn’t survive growing up with the challenge of clashing with an autistic parent who’s neurodiversity did not understand mine, of navigating early adulthood with no concept of organisation, or navigation as a time blind ADHDer, I DID NOT get long covid, and be incapable of writing for nine months to merely give my readers hope. I am not here just to make you feel.

I did that in Ruarnon Trilogy, which tells the story of a bunch of teens whose various neurodiversity’s quite literally help them to save a world. I explored unique strengths of autism and ADHD, especially the two working together in that trilogy’s main character.

With Rarkin, the greatest strength is his experiences of growing up with violence and trauma. His survival instincts and his capacity to understand, to stand up to people others are terrified of, are exactly what will position him to play a leading role in his world. The very weaknesses that nearly destroyed him, as low as he begins this story, that is how far he will come and how high he will rise.

I want readers who’ve lived Rarkin’s shittier experiences of life to have the chance to feel seen by his story. And I want them and every other reader to be blown away by it. But there is no way I can show you how far Rarkin comes across a series, if I cannot show you how it all begins, with shadow banned on Itch, book one.

What Now?

Should you see an organisation making a concerted attempt to prevent someone from telling their story, ask yourself; who are they silencing? Who and how does that silence harm, as well as help? No one’s going to shout about the ‘harm’ part, and with fascism on the rise, acts of censorship where harm is the point are ever more likely.

Register Your Complaints

Tell Mastercard, Visa and Stripe that it is not for them to decide whether adults can sell or purchase (legal) adult content.
See YellAtMoney for Mastercard, Visa, and Itch’s payment processors Stripe and Paypal’s phone numbers, mailboxes and emails. (That link includes advice, scripts and resources you might want to refer to in your contact at the bottom of the page.) You’ll find even more payment processors and their contact details on stop.paypros
Why? Because if an organisation can pressure payment processors for the right reasons, then an organisation can pressure them for the wrong reasons. And 2025 has been a spectacular display of wrong ‘reasons’.

Protect Diverse Books

First they came for porn, then NSWF, then queer and trans and all diverse creator’s content? To secure your own access to books by diverse creators, or even better, to safeguard books by trans and other diverse authors, even the hyperlinked contents menu of this article by Transfeminine Review will help.

If you’re looking for more books by diverse authors and about diverse humans, see my Bsky lists of Marginalised Authors who sell books on Itch. Or browse some old (meaning you can’t buy the bundle, just individual books by selecting covers) Itch bundles with marginalised authors and or characters; Trans People Take on the World

Nonbinary Main Characters

Aro (aromantic) Books

Ace (asexual) Books

ADHD Characters

My Now Indexed Book

My book telling Rarkin’s story, Walking the Knife’s Edge, was eventually indexed on Itch. Like some other books, after being uploaded to the store, it needed manual approval, because it deals with challenging themes. (This turned out to be the case for a few books, which we hadn’t realised weren’t indexed, until censorship concerns prompted many authors to check).

Walking the Knife’s Edge is also available directly from me, on Kobo and other stores. Or you can request it at your local library!

Thanks for sticking with me to the end!

Sensory Challenges

Road Works, Construction & Obstructions

As navigator and driver, for me navigating unknown roads with roadworks is like navigating with one eye blindfolded and someone poking me repeatedly in the arm. My brain processes a row of cones, construction workers in their fluro clothes, trucks and other equipment as ‘big mass of stuff.’ I don’t want to look at ‘big mass of stuff’ because its overstimulating. So if the entrance to the venue, or my turn is next to or beside, behind or otherwise close to ‘big mass of stuff’… I struggle to process said venue/ turn’s existence.

I will miss the turn, because I’m so busy juggling not being overstimulated with not crashing into traffic moving at a different speed and direction, that I have zero processing power to perceive the second road. I’ll walk right past the entrance because I don’t see an entrance, just ‘shit ton of visual info, brain is jamming, look away!’

Obstruction Management Tip 1: Reduce Stimulation & Pressure

To locate the venue when roadworks, construction sites or other obstructions are present, I suggest navigating as near as you can by car. Then park the car. Now you don’t have to worry about crashing, so you can consult your phone and compare it to reality under less pressure. If you have to turn back into traffic and drive further; that’s fine. Its better than crashing. Its also better than a verbal argument with your navigator because you’re visually overstimulated and stressed.

Obstruction Management Tip 2: Reduce Stimulation & Pressure With Help

If your brain is already jammed with sensory overload, or fogged by covid, fibromyalgia or other condition, and you can’t connect your phone’s navigation directions to geographical reality… ask someone on the street. Or a customer service person in a shop.

Sometimes our brains fail us (I’ve navigated with moderate brain fog, moderate fatigue and severe ADHD and could barely navigate a supermarket, let alone New Zealand.) Don’t be hard on yourself, don’t persevere if your brain will not co-operate or is otherwise being an arse. Just ask someone else when its clear reality, your map and brain are not co-operating. This will save time, frustration and spare you the exhaustion of doing something very draining, because you’re attempting it while cognitively and or physically impaired.

For advice on minimising visual overstimulation at home, see this post.

Do You Have the Right Travel Companion?

To the able bodied, neurotypycal reader, if you’re travelling with someone who struggles with navigation/ overtimulation, and you struggle to be patient with that; I suggest don’t travel together. There are too many factors with the potential to cause tension, stress and frustration on both sides. If you don’t understand and or can’t be patient with the other person’s struggles; you’re likely making a challenging situation worse.

To the neurodivergent/ disabled reader, if you suspect your travel companion(s) do not understand why navigation is so difficult/ frustrating/ stressful for you; can you manage better on your own? I often travel solo, so I KNOW its more work. But depending how much strain travelling with a companion puts on you, is it ultimately less stressful/ less exhausting to travel solo? (You could just meet them at your destination.)

Navigation Communication Challenge: Noise

If you’re travelling with an autistic person, please bear in mind that we can hear you, and the conversation next to and behind us, and birds chirping and traffic and car horns and- If you are travelling with an ADHD person, they may be listening to you, then that song they love pumping out the window of a passing car, or something funny the person behind them said.

Communication Tip: Seek Quiet

For autism, be prepared to step into a quiet laneway, shop or somewhere less noisy, so the autistic person you’re speaking to is processing what you, and no one else is saying. We can’t receive the message ‘lets go into that museum’ when its competing with ‘(insert lyrics),’ ‘Mum I want an icecream!’, ‘Hi Steve!’ Bang, thud thud, DRILLL! from the construction site.

So to give an autistic (or ADHD) person the best chance to hear what you’re saying about where to go next; say it somewhere quiet. Turn off the radio. Ask the back seat passengers to stop speaking when a passenger is giving the driver directions.

Minimising noise makes audio directions or suggestions easier to access and respond to. It also saves you having to repeat yourself umpteen times every time you want to say, ‘I need to go to the toilet first.’

Sensory Overload

City’s are fun. They have buildings from many eras, and people from all over the world moving through their streets. They’re also busy, noisy and jam packed with visual information. I love walking city streets, listening to foreign accents, and taking photos of historic buildings. But as an AuDHD person; I NEED balance in my site seeing. I DO NOT WANT to site see in a busy, crowded, noisy city multiple days in a row. There comes a point where every hour I get tireder, more overloaded and more easily frustrated. Where city site seeing has become a tiring struggle to process ‘big wall of sound and visual info overload’.

Site Seeing V.S. Sensory Need Balance Tip

My favourite way to let my overstimulated brain and tense body relax, is to punctuate loud, crowded city site seeing with quieter, peaceful breaks. For example, spend 30 mins or more wandering a state library. Spend an afternoon at the zoo, or a morning wandering the city’s botanic gardens. I love gardens and animals, and tend to visit at least either in every city. I find it makes for calmer, more relaxed, more enjoyable travel.

View through grubby windscreen of a bend lined with protective metal fence, right pointing arrows, pretty gum trees and green slopes down to pale blue and cloudy horizon.

Avoiding ADHD Time-Fail Tax

Last year I navigated New Zealand’s North Island with moderate brain fog, moderate fatigue and severe (undiagnosed and unmedicated) ADHD. My biggest learning was; do NOT book morning anything unless staying within a 15 minute drive of that activity. I was one hours drive away from one activity, gave myself two hours to get there and still missed it. My ADHD got distracted, and missed a turn. Then I lost track of time, and drove 20 minutes beyond the turn before realising I’d missed it.

ADHD Booking & Time Tips

Use a Physical Calendar, with days of the week and dates labelled to write bookings on manually. (Days and dates DO NOT correlate in my brain and a device offers too many distractions. So I have an A4 weekly calendar notepad and its a huge help to my school holiday and travel planning.)

2. Dates: double check the month, year and 24 hour timing when you book. (Yes, I did drag my family to the air port 12 hours early to see me off the first time I flew to England. Better 12 hours early than 12 hours late!)

3. Timezones: check your device for local time before you plan your next step. Especially before you go buy food at an airport. (Yes, they may refer to flight number but not destination when changing your gate just before boarding. And not page you to the new gate when you don’t board on time).

Tours and Accomodation Tips

Morning Activities: Only book a morning anything, which doesn’t allow for mis-navigating the countryside, if you’re staying a SHORT distance from the morning activity.

Extra Time: If your drive is theoretically 30 minutes, give yourself AT LEAST one hour to get there. (To allow for factors you forgot to consider that could delay you, like traffic, road works, finding a car park etc.)

If there’s one thing you really want to do/ see, plan your trip so if there doesn’t end up being time for it today; you’ve got time tomorrow. Flexibility was essential to my last solo, unmedicated ADHD trip!

Low Spoons Travel (Pain/ Fatigue/ Chronic Illness)

I’ve just come back from a road trip with my mum. I put my back out on day one, just before we got in the car. Constant back pain quickly became fatigue. It mean difficulty getting in and out of the car and difficulty walking. It meant I burnt through energy quickly, and got tired and frustrated swiftly. These latter are things I have to be aware of all the time, because I have fibromyalgia, and that (permanently) predisposes me to brain fog, fatigue and chronic pain.

Low Energy Management; Snacks

Normally we try to cut back on snacks because we’re eating too much period, or too many calories. This DOES NOT apply to me when I travel. On my recent 9 day road trip, I didn’t just need breakfast, lunch and dinner. I either needed a substantial breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner, or breakfast, morning tea, lunch and dinner. Any one big physical activity, like an hour long walk, needed to be followed by eating and drinking. I might not notice I was hungry, but a meal made me feel better. Food and drink as fuel run out faster for me when I travel.

Low Energy; Pace Yourself

Even when my back recovered on my road trip, I still had to pace myself. If the slope was steep, or there were too many stairs, or I walked for longer than an hour, a flare of burning back pain and or fatigue (due to fibro) were likely. (When I say fatigue, my feet/ legs/ lower back feel A LOT heavier than usual, like I have to peel my feet off the ground and actively fight gravity to take each step).

Low Energy; Rest Breaks

What if I wanted to spend two hours walking around the botanic gardens/ nature trail/ city centre? This happened in Adelaide recently. I was able to walk for several hours; mostly because in the middle we sat at a cafe for a good forty minutes. I sat in a chair with proper back support and sunk into it, letting my body recharge. (And used this as the snack and drink recharge mentioned above). After that sit down; I could keep walking.

Another option when travelling solo for me is that with my seat adjusted to support my back sufficiently, sitting in the car driving helps me physically recharge.

Low Energy; Mobility Aids

The thing about invisible illnesses is you can’t see the bastards. Vision impaired people can get glasses, and hearing impaired people can get hearing aids. But do people with fatigue or chronic pain need mobility aids?

This is a conversation I didn’t have with my doctor, not when diagnosed with long covid, or fibromyalgia. But with back pain from putting my back out, my mother, having her own back issues, knew I wasn’t able to walk. So she did some research, and found that walking polls can provide physical support, while also helping a person build their core body muscles. (This article is aimed at hikers, but consider how more even distribution of your weight and the strain of making it walk can aid low energy movement.)

My mum bought me walking polls in Adelaide, which I used on nature trails. I found them especially helpful to reduce the strain on my body and my proneness to pain and fatigue when walking uphill, and up or downstairs. They were also great for longer walks, where I wanted to go further, but was tired and or fatigued.

So if you’re prone to chronic pain or fatigue, I suggest discussing mobility aids with your GP.

Brick & Mortar/ Local Alternatives

As an Aussie, when I lived in Frankston, I bought books from Robinson’s Bookstore. In inner Melbourne, I discovered Collins Bookstore, and then my new favourite indie store in the inner suburbs, Readings. Anywhere I went, I also borrowed from the local library. Anything niche I wanted that wasn’t at a local store could be ordered online from Book Depository. Yes, the giant who offered free shipping world wide, the rival Amazon bought, then closed permanently. You’ll find seven Book Depository alternatives described here.

Bookshop.org

The brick and mortar alternative I like best for UK and US readers, if you don’t have one nearby is Bookshop.org, because they share their profits with indie stores. Its a good paperback alternative to Amazon and, as of 2025, Bookshop.org sell ebooks too.

Note for Authors: distributing your paperbacks via Ingram Spark directly, or using Ingram via Draft to Digital (which I prefer, as I find the D2D dashboard and customer service more accessible), will automatically make your paperbacks available on Bookshop.org. (For more on self publishing and book distributors, see this blog).

Online Store Alternatives

Before I link big multinational stores, I’ve found my Ruarnon Trilogy ebooks (courtesy of StreeLib) in national stores in western Europe, and one (so far) in South East Asia (all linked here.) So if you’re wanting to buy local, unsure of your choices and outside America, western Europe, UK, Canada or Australia, check in with the internet/ friends/ family about bookstores owned by your country.

Itchio

Itch.io was most popular with gamers, but in 2025 is growing in popularity among readers and indie authors. They sell ebooks DRM-free, and offer authors a better profit than many alternatives (buying direct from the author is best for authors, but comes with an international taxation headache that puts off or delays quite a few us with selling direct).

Note for Readers: Itchio doesn’t have a storefront for different countries. There’s one online storefront and the author chooses a currency for the minimum price, which can be free and you can tip above it. If needed, the price is converted into the purchaser’s currency.

Note for Authors: you need to create an account and upload your books directly to sell on Itch. Setting prices in UK/ US or Euro currencies means unfavourable exchange rates for readers in the rest of the world. For example, a US $4.50 ebook cost me around $8.30 Aud. The standard Australian dollar indie book price is $6. So you might want to take exchange rates into account when setting your minimum price.

Kobo

For Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, much of Europe, the UK, South Africa, India, Japan, and some of the Asia-Pacific (specific countries listed here), we can buy ebooks via the Canadian company Kobo. Kobo is part owned by Rakuten, based in Japan, where they don’t call it ‘DEI’, but they say ‘we respect human rights of all and uphold individual dignity,’ and commit to ‘contribute to a sustainable future.’ (Kobo became home of my digital library in 2024, and I plan to purchase a Kobo now in 2025.)

Barnes & Noble

I assume Barnes and Noble is (if anything now even more) popular in America. I couldn’t find much about them and DEI, though they still have their Black Lives Matter statement up, which I take as a good sign.

Apple

All of the aforementioned countries for Kobo, plus more of South America, Eastern Europe, Asia and the Pacific (specific countries listed here) have access to Apple, whose commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion remains firm. (Though, honestly, I’m prejudiced against Apple. I see their release of new model iphones as the most obvious instance of promoting needless consumerism, of sending the old model to landfill and generating carbon pollution from shipping the new model not because the old is broken, but because the new is ‘the latest’).

Booktopia

It would be un-Australian of me not to also mention Booktopia, Australia’s largest online store (yes trading again as of 2025 after voluntary administration in 2024). And they own another Aussie bookstore, which seems to be more online than brick and mortar these days; Angus and Robertson.

Note for Authors: I distribute my ebooks (and for B&N and Booktopia my paperbacks) to all of the above stores except –Itchio– via Draft to Digital (who also distribute to Everand, listed below).

Subscription Service Alternatives

For Americans, there’s Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

For Americans, Canadians, Aussies, Brits, Kiwis and everyone who has access to Kobo, there’s Kobo Plus.

There’s also 24 Symbols, which is multi lingual.

And Everand.

Note for Authors: I distribute my books to 24 Symbols and a range of local online stores throughout Europe, Latin America and elsewhere via StreetLib.

Library Apps

My favourite place to read and make my own book available for free is my local library. Any author who doesn’t have their books in Kindle Unlimited can make their ebooks (as well as paperbacks) available to local libraries, and yes, some services or government grants will pay us per borrow, or reimburse us beyond the libraries’ initial ebook purchase (Canadian and American authors, see Indie Author Project. Australian authors, see Lending Rights Schemes). You may want to borrow ebooks directly through your local library, or check if your local lets you borrow via the two popular apps below.

Libby

The readers of Bsky made me away of Libby, an international library app.

Hoopla

Your local library may also or alternately let you borrow through Hoopla.

Note for Authors: if your books are available for library purchase via Overdrive (to whom DraftToDigital distribute), readers can borrow them via Libby. DraftToDigital also distribute directly to Hoopla.

TBR & Review Alternatives

StoryGraph

StoryGraph is independently owned and was founded by Nadia Odunayo, with a focus on readers. This article by Distractify explores the benefit of that. Yes, you can export your Goodreads data to Storygraph, so you have the same TBR, book stats etc. They also offer a short questionnaire about your reading preferences, to inform their recommendations, and a free (which I use) and a paid tier. Book Riot’s (2021) Review has more information. Or you can create an account on Storygraph’s sign up page. (And or check out my epic YA Fantasy books.)

Note For Authors: the reason I’ve linked to my books instead of author profile (above) is because they’re not linked, as the option to do that doesn’t yet exist on StoryGraph. Apparently its in their roadmap for future developments.

BookBub

Bookbub is another option for following authors, getting notified of new releases, tracking your reading, reviewing books, etc. If you add a book to your wishlist or follow an author, they notify you when that book is on sale, not just on Amazon, but also on Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. You can sign up for their daily email of books on sale by genre, and again sale links are for multiple stores. I’m on there mainly to review books (which I’m quite behind on), and my profile is here.

Note for Authors: you can pay for your books to be advertised in Bookbub’s emails. They also offer a coveted feature deal, which is far from cheap, but from all reports say it gives you a sales spike the day it goes out by email. Author sign up.

Fabel

I’m hearing mixed reviews of Fabel. It’s a paid service, but I’m including it because it emphasises book clubs and interactive reading, both of which seem less of an option on StoryGraph and Bookbub. I haven’t used Fabel.

Abandoning Amazon as an Author

Why do Indie Authors Publish On Amazon?

As an Aussie who grew up in a city when indie bookstores thrive; I never had any interest in Amazon as a reader. It didn’t exist here till 2018, its foreign owned, bad for the environment and treats its staff in exploitative conditions that would NEVER be tolerated in my country. But when I was doing my homework on self publishing in 2021, before releasing Manipulator’s War in 2022; every indie author I spoke to believed you HAD to be on Amazon.

It dominates the American market and has a firm grip on the world market. It was the best way for indie authors publishing in obscurity like myself to become ‘discoverable.’ It was the site all my indie author friends most valued reviews on, so that’s where I reluctantly purchased and began reviewing their books. Then I learned if I spent less than $50 a year annually on Amazon; I couldn’t write reviews there.

I never liked it. I didn’t want to have my books there. But even Wide for the Win, authors dedicated to and supporting each other with publishing wide (beyond Amazon as well as on it) seemed to believe you had to start on Amazon, and could gradually build your readership on non-Amazon stores. So I reluctantly published my books on Amazon from 2022 to 2025.

My Tipping Points for Leaving

As I said in the introduction, I was tempted to pull my books when Amazon abandoned DEI back in January. But with Meta updating their hate speech policy to exclude many forms of hate speech and abandoning fact checking around the same time, January had me busy connecting with travel friends and family on alternative platforms, before deleting my Facebook and Insta accounts.

I then dedicated myself to redesigning Manipulator’s War’s cover with art from my retired cover artist, and overcoming major paperback formatting issues for Ruarnon Trilogy, to release paperbacks via Draft to Digital and on Amazon. Within weeks of all three paperbacks being live on stores in May, I became aware of more Amazon bombshells.

Gen Ai Book Summaries- Author Copyright Violation?

I saw a post about how Amazon are introducing ai summaries of Kindle books. And those summaries include plot and character development. The book blurbs authors submit do not have all of that information. It could only be obtained by feeding an author’s book into generative ai. Which no author gave Amazon consent to do. Multiple authors began emailing Amazon about this, and I learned of it via this post by Skyla Cameron, summarising her email chain conversation with Amazon. After over a month of emails were exchanged; they failed to disclose whether they were storing and using the book data we did not consent to be fed to gen ai to train their gen ai.

Skyla and I both concluded from the Amazon customer service person saying, ‘I cannot say’ that Amazon are indeed training their gen ai on authors book files (uploaded for the purpose of selling them), without author consent. I was ready to pull my books then.

Ai to ‘Narrate’ Audible Books

Within days I saw another social media post about Amazon’s plans to make 100 ai ‘narrators’ available to narrate audio books. Stealing from authors on one hand and trying to put voice actors out of a job with the next? Decision to pull my books made!

Then Amazon announced they were cutting author royalties by 10% as of the first of June, and I laughed at them for confirming I’d made the right choice so swiftly.

I Don’t Want To Share Profits With Zon

The other thing the May gen ai revelations brought home to me was something that didn’t sit well with me in April. I participated in a big indie author books sale then (the Naratess Sale), and I sold three books on Amazon. That meant I made them $3 and me $3. I resented that. It’s the tinniest of profits, absolutely nothing to a billionaire. But I couldn’t be happy about those three book sales (there are months where I sell no books at all), because I resented Bezos getting anything.

And that realisation made me not want to promote my books, to avoid Amazon profiting from them. At which point it was obvious the decision I would be happiest with is removing my books from Amazon, then promoting bookstores I like, who treat authors (and in the latter’s case; book stores as well as customers) well, like Itchio and Bookshop.org. So those are the kind of stores my Ruarnon Trilogy books page now promotes. Meanwhile, I’ve been tracking down local stores in other countries too, and listing them on this stores by country page.

So Where Are My Books?

Thanks to Draft to Digital, when I pulled my books off Kindle, they were already on Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, Booktopia and a few lesser known stores. Thanks to Streetlib, they are also on local country onlinne stores, like bucher.de in Germany, Bol in Netherlands etc. I uploaded Ruarnon Trilogy epub files/ ebooks to Itchio, and DriveThru Fiction directly, to give myself more reach and readers more options. And my paperbacks and ebooks are available to libraries via Draft to Digital as well. (All of my these links are on my books page.)

And I may, perhaps later this year, set up direct sales on my website, if looking into it in more detail shows its worth the time and author earnings to sell directly from my website AND on Itchio. Why Draft to Digital, and Itchio, and DriveThru Fiction and possibly also direct sales? For one of the same reasons I’ve never been exclusive to Amazon; I hate putting all my eggs in one basket. Twitter has shown how volatile that can be. (Yes, I had my largest social media following there before moving to Blue Sky).

What Does Being on Author not on Amazon Look Like?

I’d already refused back in January to utilise the two most popular ways for authors to make readers aware our books exist: paying Bezos to advertise them on Amazon, or Zuck to advertise them on Facebook. I’d also tried Bookbub ads in 2024, and found my graphic design skills (for my trilogy at least) were NOT cut out for getting Bookbub link clinks, let alone sales. And those are the three most likely paid ads to successfully advertise your book and build your readership…

Itchio Bundles

Having participated in an Itchio Bundle for Pride Month, which gathered 23+ books by 23 authors with aromantic main characters, I see the power of Itch book bundles to put underrepresented characters into the hands of readers who crave them. With every author promoting the same bundle on their social media; our reach is greater. And with book bundle profits split evenly between participating authors; we all earn something.

2025 -? Itch Bundles of Underrepresented Characters

I’m already planning a Nonbinary Books Bundle, with nonbinary main characters for Nonbinary Awareness Week, July 14th to 20th (Ruarnon of Ruarnon Trilogy being nonbinary.) I’ll also do an Asexual Spectrum Bundle for Asexual Awareness Week, and ADHD Rep Bundle for ADHD Awareness Month in October. (Yes, Ruarnon ticks both of these identities as well, while the second main character of Ruarnon Trilogy, Linh, is aro-ace and her best friend Troy is diagnosed ADHD, but not the only ADHDer.)

Whether these bundles will be a thing year in year out I’m not sure. But for this year at least, they’re a good way to meet and connect with more indie authors who share my marginalised identities. And a good way for us to help each other put our books into the hands of more readers, and give more people insight into what life with any one of those identities and more can be like. (They’re also an effective way to collectively market the first book in everyone’s series full stop).

I’ll definitely do an Autistic Book Bundle (or join someone else’s) during Autism Awareness Month (April) next year, with Rarkin, MC of my new Sythe Series being autistic. And perhaps consider broader themes and bundles, like Queer Normative SFF, or SFF Full Of Hope, both of which Ruarnon Trilogy very much ticks. (Technically Sythe Series does too, though its somewhat darker).

In Person Author Events

Having got long covid a mere six months after releasing my debut novel, and not successfully balanced my work life with ongoing chronic illness (fibromyalgia) until this year, I’m FINALLY ready to contemplate attending in person events. If I time them right, I should have the energy to participate and enjoy them physically and socially.

With the complete Ruarnon Trilogy in paperback, and book one of Sythe Series likely to be out in August/ September 2025, I’m hoping to attend some local Sunday markets with my books. To start casual, local and small scale. I’ve applied for a booth at Australia Book Fair (the first ever) in Melbourne in 2026, and hope to attend Supa Nova in 2026 as well. Being a sociable person with a background in retail, and currently a teacher, I think I’ll enjoy meeting people at in person author events.

Online Book Promotion?

Ok, maybe I’ll set aside some time to write some more post-length blurbs for book 1 of Ruarnon Trilogy, make a few more graphics and start posting them at least once a month. Or fortnightly? Like many authors, I don’t like self promotion. And perhaps its my autism that insists that social media should be social, and is so reluctant to post about my book with a link to it, like a straight up ad, on social media. But I definitely need to do more than my super sporadic and rare posts of previous years.

There’s author chats and daily writer prompts where I’ll also talk about my characters, world building etc (more details on both in my Bsky Newby Guide). And there are questions I’d like to ask other writers in my posts, and discuss, which would also involve me sharing more about my book.

There are paid ads in newsletters for readers that I could try (again), like Book Barbarian (which is for fantasy). And I could consult paid promotion indie author gurus like David Gaughran (who have ideas about marketing beyond Amazon) recommend.

Yes, this post hasn’t just been me sharing links I hope will help readers and authors alike, or aiming to be informative. Its also me setting goals and trying to keep myself accountable. If you’re a fellow indie author trying to do the same, I’d love to hear your ideas/ plans on book marketing in these crazy times. You can find me on Blue Sky, Mastodon or send me an email via my contact page and check out my Writer/ Author Discord on there too. Best of luck!

While you’re here, if anyone likes portal, epic, YA fantasy led by queer and neurodiverse characters… maybe take a look at my Ruarnon Trilogy?

Elise Carlson