Gabrielle Drolet on Look Ma, No Hands and Living with Pain

When Gabrielle Drolet started her MFA in creative writing, she had one plan: write a novel.

“I had this really specific idea of what that book was going to be,” she says. “And it just wasn’t coming out that way.”

Halfway through the program, a sudden onset of chronic pain made it nearly impossible for her to use her hands. “It went from being kind of bad and painful to—I couldn’t type anymore.”

What followed was a total creative upheaval: “Because I was in school, I had to suddenly adapt and learn to use voice-to-text, but I didn’t learn to use it well. The way we speak is just different, fundamentally, from the way we write.”

Vous devez être connecté

Inscrivez-vous gratuitement à The Main et continuez à lire.

Créez un compte gratuit.

Créez un compte gratuit pour débloquer cet article et obtenir 3 articles gratuits par mois, ainsi que notre Bulletin hebdomadaire.

3 articles gratuits par mois
Sauvegardez vos adresses et guides
Infolettre hebdo The Main Brief
Restez branché sur la culture montréalaise

Allez plus loin. Devenez Insider.

Bénéficiez d'un accès illimité, de guides exclusifs et d'avantages réservés aux membres, tout en soutenant les récits indépendants sur Montréal que nous publions chaque semaine.