Who are you?
I'm Charlie. I'm a full-time university student who writes on the side as a creative outlet.
Why are you writing this book?
When I fist joined Wattpad and looked for books with deaf characters, I found the same misconceptions about hearing loss and deaf people being repeated over and over. Most hearing people don't regularly interact with deaf and hard of hearing folks beyond maybe an elderly relative so I wanted to make a writing guide to serve as a research tool for hearing writers looking to write accurate and respectful deaf and hard of hearing characters.
Are you deaf or hard of hearing?
Yes. My hearing loss is pretty complicated. To the best guess of my doctors, my hearing loss is as a result of a combination of a connective tissue disorder which makes me produce defective collagen and more recently, Ménière's disease which causes vertigo and low-frequency hearing loss. I also have Central Auditory Processing Disorder or CAPD which makes my brain jumble up the sound information it receives. An easy way to think about CAPD is audio dyslexia. My hearing loss is in the middle to low pitches. Oddly, I have near-perfect hearing in the higher pitches. I can hear birds chirp but I can't hear my car engine and I currently have good deal of trouble understanding speech.
My loss is progressive so I grew up very close to hearing. As a result I still live mostly in the "hearing world." I was mainstreamed as a kid which means I attended hearing schools for all 12 years. My mom is fully hearing and my dad has mild hearing loss. I learned some sign language as a kid my family stopped after I started first grade and was speaking full time. I am now trying to relearn American Sign Language (ASL) at college.
YOU ARE READING
Writing Without Sound - How to Write Deaf and Hard of Hearing Characters
Non-FictionA guide for hearing writers to writing realistic deaf and hard of hearing characters written by a deaf/hoh writer.
