The Brevity BlogWriting as Advocacy: Mustering the Courage to be Bold, Brave, and Direct
By Margaret Anne Mary Moore
Even now, I wonder if I’m too bold in my writing, if readers may misinterpret why I put forth certain ideas, certain arguments. The more I sit with these gut-squeezing feelings, though, the more I realize they are natural growing pains, the stretch and pull between the reserved writer I once was and the outspoken advocate I’m becoming.
Early in my career, I shied away from writing about adversities and controversies. Pushed by Fairfield University faculty and peers to delve deep and reveal raw details and truths, however, I developed the habit of writing the “tough stuff” and eventually felt proud of being more daring and vocal on the page.
Yet when the idea for a disability tolerance essay emerged, I could feel myself reverting into a timid writer. The piece, later published on Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility Project blog, details my experience hearing my diagnosis, cerebral palsy, used as a synonym for an undesirable human characteristic. The incident happened during a writing group meeting while my groupmates and I were critiquing our peer’s fictional short story about a man deemed an outcast in his town because of his “weird” ways of walking and talking. As the writer’s goal was to make this character unlikeable, somebody else in our group suggested giving him cerebral palsy, claiming that doing so would increase his odiousness. Unfortunately, since she had previously made disparaging comments about the valuelessness of disability narratives and had heard me read nonfiction pieces in which I describe my own CP symptoms, I knew her remark was not an accident.
I didn’t want to seem as though I was retaliating against the person who made the remark, but I wanted to respond to this peer’s surprising comments by highlighting the detriments of ableist language and simple measures that could promote inclusive language and tolerance in society. The key to my essay’s success would be to delve deeply into my emotions and why the incident was so hurtful and wrong. It could not, however, be governed by emotions; the argument could get lost in the heat of anger and heartbreak.
Early drafts emphasized the wrong aspects—the pain rather than the call-to-action. I spent months trying to figure out how to fix my essay, working through my draft for a few weeks, then putting it away for a while to give myself a chance to see it with fresh eyes. Finally, I started with another blank page, pasting chunks of the previous draft in a new arrangement, and making it a rule that each section’s placement would be determined by the preceding paragraph’s topic.
I began with the perception that appalled me and that I wanted to change—the quote from my peer: “If you want to make him an undesirable character, wouldn’t you just give him cerebral palsy? Nobody would want cerebral palsy.” This, I hope, introduces the crux of the piece while also serving as an effective hook. My guiding question for organizing the rest of the work was, “What might readers need or want to know after reading this part?” I move from the quote to a brief introduction of myself and why the comment has such an impact on me: “Sitting in my motorized wheelchair at 25 and hearing my diagnosis denigrated at a writing group meeting where members critiqued peers’ work, I was horrified.” This statement allows me to naturally segue into describing the effects of my cerebral palsy before moving into direct assertions about why the perpetrator’s remark was inappropriate (“Deeming CP synonymous with ‘undesirable’ wrongfully epitomizes it as life’s disgusting characteristics and inferiorizes the approximately 18 million who have it”) and what could be done in society to prevent similar instances of ableism. Each section became a “jumping off” point leading to the next idea, making it easier to keep my prose angled toward its intended purpose.
My goal was not to point fingers at anyone—if it was, the piece would be vindictive, making me seem like a writer simply out to get the other party rather than one establishing a valid and just argument.
Another rule I set for writing this essay was a self-imposed word limit—a maximum range of 750-800 words. Knowing that ableism is a hard topic to write about, especially in such a condensed length, I resolved to be flexible if, in the end, the work truly needed to be longer for purposes of thoroughness. As I hoped and predicted, this word limit forced me to scrutinize the impact of every word and cut any term that may be unjustly aggressive or angry. It also aided in sharpening my argument, making me remove any unnecessary, flowery or overly charged language until only strong, incisive assertions remained.
Beginning on its publication day, my essay initiated plentiful discussions about increasing disability tolerance, emerging as verbal and written correspondences from loved ones and readers near and far. These reactions reassured me that this essay belongs in the world, and the piece is one I’m proud of due to its potential to increase equity.
The unease surrounding writing and publishing it, though, never quite dissipated. I’m still discovering how bold and daring I can and should be in my writing, and it is honestly sometimes beyond my comfort zone—which is okay. This publication experience has taught me to accept and push past those feelings of apprehension. When an idea comes to me that seems too risky, too taboo to write about, I’m learning to lean in, embrace it, and muster the courage to put words on pages. I choose not to limit myself. I choose to chance that I am onto something capable of catalyzing positive change.
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Margaret Anne Mary Moore is the bestselling author of Bold, Brave, and Breathless: Reveling in Childhood’s Splendiferous Glories While Facing Disability and Loss and the nonfiction editor of the 2026 Connecticut Literary Anthology. With an MFA from Fairfield University, her writing appears in America Magazine, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, Fast Famous Women, and Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility Project among other publications. Visit Margaret’s website to connect with her and learn more about her writing.
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