Writing Disability & Lesbian YA Romance w/ Reese's Book Club Fellow Chatham Greenfield Pt 1 | Ep 63
"Sometimes the only certainty is the pain."
My first video interview is with Stonewall Honor winner Chatham Greenfield—or, as I have dubbed them—Gay of the Year. We talk about the realities of writing with chronic pain and chronic illness:
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00:00 Introduction
Sophia Chang (00:00)
Welcome to The Sophia Chang Show. We have a very special guest — my very first video and my very first video guest.
00:08 Meet Chatham Greenfield: Author and Fellow LitUp Fellow
Chatham Greenfield is a Reese's Book Club LitUp inaugural fellow alongside me, and debuted last year — that would be 2024, in case you're watching or listening far in the future. Hello. And with their book Time and Time Again, I think I've read it like two, three times. I love it. It is so heart-wrenching and hilarious and relatable, whether you are disabled or chronically ill or just tired of life sometimes. And so I highly recommend you run out, read it right now. There's also an audiobook form. Chatham, welcome to The Sophia Chang Show.
Chatham (00:53)
Aww, my gosh, that was such a warm welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Sophia (01:02)
Yeah, tell us a little bit more about yourself.
Chatham (01:04)
Yes, so like Sophia mentioned, my first book, Time and Time Again, came out last year. Both of my books — I have another book out September 23rd, 2025.
Sophia: Is there a cover? Can you reveal it to us?
Chatham: And yes, yes I can. It's very pink and yellow and it's very cute. And then the first one is very blue. It's... it's fun, it's fun. I think they go together well. They're both by the same artist, Erica Lugo. They're separate books, but I love the little — they just look so good next to each other.
So yes, Time and Time Again came out last year. It has since gotten a Stonewall Honor and a Lambda Literary nomination, whose award ceremony will be next month, actually, so that's very exciting.
Sophia (01:50)
It's such an honor. Those are amazing honors — the top, top, top accolades you can get.
Chatham (01:55)
Yes, especially for a gay book. They're both gay awards.
Sophia (01:58)
I am so happy that Chat is on, because now this podcast is three-quarters gay. So we're almost there. We're almost there.
Chatham: We are. We're ramping up the gay levels, yes, yes.
Sophia: It's usually only half gay, but we're getting better.
Chatham (02:07)
Yeah. And when I got the Stonewall Honor, Sophia coined me Gay of the Year, which I should add to my official bio. But yes — and then Try Your Worst is my second book, out September this month, if you're listening as soon as this comes out, which I hope you are. And yeah, we can talk about it more later, but that is also a lesbian YA romance, it's got disability representation, it's got tension and angst, it's got mystery this time. So yeah, it's a lot of fun to write and I'm excited to talk about it more and for people to finally read it.
Sophia (02:41)
Yay. I am also very excited about that. We were both not only writing about disabled things, but we were disabled while writing it.
Chatham (02:49)
Yes, it's super fun.
Sophia: Yes, so fun! I want to do more! Which we are, we have to. We don't have a choice.
Chatham: I think — yes, do it forever, which I guess we will. Yes, yes. I think that's one of the first things we bonded over when we met through the fellowship. Yes.
03:05 Writing While Disabled
Sophia (03:05)
That is true, yeah. Yeah, yeah, tell me about that. Because I have discussed in previous episodes with my listeners about how I basically had to do our entire fellowship on my back or on my stomach, just like in weird positions. And it was kind of a nightmare. So tell us how your experience went with writing while disabled.
Chatham (03:26)
Yeah, and I'm so impressed that you did that, because for those who don't know about the fellowship — we went through two rounds of revisions on a book with a Reese's Book Club author mentor. And it was intensive. It was fun. My parents were like, it's like you're crash-coursing a grad program, because I didn't go to grad school. So I'm like, yeah —
Sophia: Yeah, same.
Chatham: — exactly, right? So yeah, writing while disabled is tough.
I have a whole host of disabilities. I would say kind of the overarching one is I have what's called ankylosing spondylitis. It's an autoimmune disorder. It's a form of arthritis. And then that kind of — under that umbrella, there's all sorts of other things that pop up with chronic pain and fatigue and irritable bowel syndrome, which is what Time and Time Again is about. So yeah, writing while disabled is hard. I mean, there's a lot of days where I don't have energy to get out of bed, and sometimes that means I'm writing in bed and sometimes that means I am sleeping eighteen hours. Yeah.
Sophia (04:27)
And before, you know, there were times where I was like, I'm so jealous — because my illness makes me insomniac. And you were like, no, sleeping for that long is not what it's cracked up to be. You don't feel rested afterwards.
Chatham (04:38)
Yeah, exactly. Like, I sleep so much so I have less hours in the day than an able-bodied person. And when I finally get up, it's almost like my body just keeps craving sleep. It just never stops, you know? And so that's not fun. And, you know, I love writing, but that's also why I kind of turned to it as a career, because it's so hard to maintain a job like a nine to five when there are days where I'm completely non-functioning — and most days, pretty much every day, I cannot get up at 9 a.m.
Sophia: Yeah, we're both night owls.
Chatham: Sophia knows I'm exaggerating. It is every day. I'm like, pretty much every day. This is the No B.S. podcast. I will say I'm never waking up at 9 a.m. unless I have a commitment. I mean, I think probably the only time in the past year I've woken up that early is for the Stonewall Honor award ceremony. That was worth it, but —
Sophia (05:24)
It's actually offensive to me when people want to meet me in the morning. I'm like, how dare you?
Chatham (05:29)
Yeah, it's like, what if we didn't do that? What if we met at noon at the earliest? So, yeah.
Sophia (05:35)
What the irony is, though, is like — this is the only job we can do, yet this job is so up and down emotionally and even financially. So it does wreak havoc on our emotions and psychology. And on top of that, it's physically taxing. This podcast tagline is books and biceps and no B.S. because writers aren't just about the craft and the mentality of it. It's also — it's an embodied career. You mentioned how your wrists hurt.
Chatham (06:05)
Yeah, yeah, so I have arthritis, like I said, and so yeah, typing is hard. I think that's something — I don't think we talk about the physical element of writing a lot, because it is, you know, it's not like, of course, like a warehouse job or like something where you're using your whole body, but it is still physically intensive. I think I feel it most, definitely, yeah, my wrists. I use wrist braces that I have to wrap them in all night.
And it's gotten worse over the years. Like I now feel it in my upper arms as well. My shoulders will be tight from working. My eyes will hurt, which I don't think is even a symptom. I think that's maybe just getting to my late 20s. They just get really dry.
Sophia: You just wait. It gets worse.
Chatham: Exactly, right. But I definitely — because I'm on medication that's helping to manage it, but AS is a degenerative condition. I'm not able to accomplish as much in a day writing-wise. You know, there were times even two years ago where I was writing — I mean, I had one day where I wrote 10,000 words in a day, like a few years ago. And now I could do that, but I would be ill. And then the next day I wouldn't be able to write at all. You kind of also have to think in terms of preserving your energy so you can keep — like, I've found that I can get more done if I do smaller amounts, you know, multiple days in a week rather than really pushing myself one day and then being out for the count for a few days after, you know.
07:32 Pushing Our Bodies Past Our Limits
Sophia (07:32)
I actually haven't learned that myself. I think for me, I get so excited and so eager when I have the energy that I try to push it as hard and as far as I can. And then, yeah, I'm super wiped, but I just don't know when I'll have it again.
Chatham (07:49)
Yeah, I get that. And I do that sometimes too, especially when the creative energy just keeps flowing, because that's such a hard thing to stop. Like you don't want to stop that. You don't want to interrupt that. I mean, that's when you get your best work. So sometimes — yeah, I mean, I make it sound like I pace myself every day. Of course I don't. Right? I mean, especially because, you know, I have deadlines, and sometimes things with my health come up and I have to ask for extensions. But sometimes even with those extensions, I have to be pushing myself and doing more in a day than maybe my body is able to. But yeah, other times the creative juices are just flowing and I don't want to have to be limited by my body. Like I know able-bodied authors aren't, you know? And so sometimes I don't limit myself maybe as much as I should, but that's the reality, you know?
Sophia (08:39)
I do think that is a trait of us who kind of live long-term with this. We bend over backwards to make our deadlines no matter what. Do you feel guilty, or do you really hem and haw when you have to ask for that extension — you try not to?
Chatham (08:55)
I do, I do. It's really hard for me to ask for extensions, even small extensions. I always remind myself that pretty much every author I know, regardless of health status, asks for an extension at some point. Some of them — I know many authors who have delayed their second book by a year or two years. My second book was delayed by one season, so what that means is it was initially supposed to come out in the summer of this year and it came out in the fall. But it actually worked out, because I had asked for an extension or two and then my editor came to me and said, hey, it's seeming like you need more time, and we actually have a lot of romances coming out this summer and kind of want to space them out. How would you feel about the book coming out in the fall? It takes place in the fall — this is my second book, Try Your Worst — so it kind of works. And I was like, perfect. So I'm very fortunate to have my team at Bloomsbury, my publisher, who kind of works with me on things like that.
But yeah, I definitely feel guilty whenever I'm not working. I think that's the hard thing about having a job like this. I previously had a nine to five before my health got worse. And what I liked about it, as hard as it is working within constrained hours, was as soon as it hit five o'clock, I was done. I wasn't thinking about work. I was fortunate to have a boss who was not that kind of boss that's calling you at 10 p.m. So as soon as 5 p.m. hit, that was it. I didn't have to think about it until the next day.
With this, I'm constantly thinking I should be writing right now, you know, no matter what's going on, no matter what's going on with my health, my personal life, other commitments, friendship, you know? Talking to Sophia, talking to my other friends, it's like, well, yeah, I'm talking to you the whole time, thinking I should be writing now.
Sophia (10:25)
What do you mean, other friends?
Chatham (10:27)
No, no, it's just you. But yeah, there's this constant feeling of I should always be working and I'm never doing enough work. Or like just the other day — I'm working on my third book now, which is also with Bloomsbury, coming out 2027, so I won't talk about that one.
Sophia: I'm like excited.
Chatham: Yeah, it's gonna be a fun one. But I planned to work on, like, I think 20 pages, and I did one scene and I had to completely rewrite the scene.
I'm doing revisions for it now. And I was doing, you know, when you kind of mesh two chapters — it was like I had one, actually I could tell you the details because you have read the book, but I won't, for anyone listening. But I had to take a chapter from way later in the book and combine it with this chapter, because that later chapter had a sort of romantic tension that I was looking for there.
It just took a lot out of me. I'd been planning on doing like two more short chapters and I was just like, that was a lot — like that was a lot of brain focus, like figuring out how to make that work. And like, I'm just spent. But I felt guilty because I was like, well, that wasn't what I was planning on doing. I was planning on doing 10 more pages and I can't do 10 more measly pages, you know? These ones aren't gonna be as hard to revise, but I don't know. I wish I had good advice. I just kind of live in the guilt. I always say I'm Jewish and Catholic, so I always say I'm like a perfect storm of guilt. So.
11:37 Writer's Guilt, Jewish Guilt, Asian Guilt — We All Get a Guilt
Sophia (11:46)
Yeah, yeah, I think we get along because we have a lot of those similar traits and upbringing.
Chatham: Yeah, yeah.
Sophia (11:52)
And that is the thing about — I think with writers, when you get to that pro level, we have that work ethic where we're just like, we have to do this no matter what. And then there's also a sense of — the guilt is also a sense of, we're doing things that a lot of people want to do, you know, that we've wanted to do our whole lives, and we're finally here doing it. Like, we should try to squeeze every little bit out of it.
Chatham (12:16)
Yeah, exactly. I think that's it too, is knowing that you are living the dream, basically. Also knowing I have friends who have very physically intensive jobs. Like, one of my best friends is a farmer. My partner works out of the house, works an eight to five job.
And so, you know, when I'm just working two hours, three hours a day, making up, you know, angsty butch lesbians, I'm like — and, you know, getting to have this dream of publishing a book that some people wait their whole lives for, never happens — I'm like, well, aren't I an asshole for being like, I can't do this, you know, this is the worst.
Like, who am I to complain? And I wouldn't say I'm so much complaining as I am just struggling, because even doing nothing in my body is hard. Even just sitting here, like, I'm feeling pain in my shoulders. I feel exhausted. I'm like, you know, so of course then doing something like writing that takes a lot of mental focus and some physical work as well is — it's gonna be hard on me, you know? I'm still — I love writing, like I love the process of it. I love obviously seeing these books in the world, but it's hard. There are hard days for sure.
Sophia (13:37)
I love that you brought that up, because I think people think that our pain is on a scale of zero to ten. Our pain is on a scale of five to ten. Like, there's never a time we're not in pain. Right now, my knees are achy. I've been adjusting my medication, both my infusions and my medication, and the body's not having it, you know? And so — but then if I don't adjust it, I've got some issues with my white blood cells. It's like I can't win no matter what.
And like, I still feel a little nerve tingle. I had to bring down my nerve medication because I don't want to suppress my central nervous system that much. And I feel like it'll make me a little bit keener if I don't do that. Yet then now I feel the tingle. So it's like, yeah, we can't win.
14:05 Writing About Bathroom Woes While Running for the Toilet
Chatham (14:19)
No, there's no winning.
Sophia: Heh.
Chatham (14:23)
What a message. And it's interesting too for me, because that's what my books are also about. So there's kind of irony to it — like what you were saying with the medication, that is actually a theme in Try Your Worst, my next book, specifically in the context of antidepressants. And this character who is struggling, her antidepressants aren't working for her, but she's like, I don't wanna try a new one because what if it makes things worse?
And I think that applies across the board with being disabled. There's so many times where my medication isn't really helping, but I've had experiences where I change it and then things are a thousand times worse. I mean, I've been on medications that have given me a seizure. I've been on medications that have brought my pain to a level that I can't squeeze a bottle of shampoo. So it's like, I could feel better, but I could also be worse. So what do you do there?
And so I try to reflect that reality in my writing, but there is often irony to it. Like Time and Time Again — the main character has IBS, irritable bowel syndrome. And there were times where I would be in the groove trying to write a scene and then I'm running to the bathroom, and I was like, wow, this is like life reflecting art in the worst way possible.
Sophia (15:36)
I actually read the ARC of that book on the bathroom. I remember saying — I said to you, I was like, you're not going to be offended, right? If this becomes my like bathroom reading book. And I just love what you said. You were like, I was hoping it would be.
Chatham (15:49)
I was like, no, that's an honor. Like, you know, I'm fingers crossed, you know, Try Your Worst makes the cut — unless you do the audiobook, because I will say I'm very excited for the Try Your Worst audiobook. This one is dual point of view, so there's gonna be two narrators, which — I'm gonna say that I was kind of nervous. I kind of thought maybe because it's a lesbian couple that my publisher might be like, well, what, one woman's voice will cover it? I don't know, I don't know why I thought that might be what they think, you know.
Sophia: Awkward.
Chatham: But they emailed me, they're like, we want two narrators, you know, let's pick them out. I was like, yay. So that'll be fun. But I would also love to be a bathroom book again, so we'll see.
Sophia (16:28)
Yes, I'm excited.
Chatham (16:30)
But yeah, people reading it on the toilet — A plus in my book. I mean, the dedication for that book is actually for anyone reading this with a heating pad on. And, you know, anyone is welcome to read, of course. You don't have to be in pain. There's other things going on.
Sophia: But if you are in pain, it'll make you feel heard.
Chatham (16:48)
Yes, I hope so. Heard, maybe a little heard, maybe a little close to home. But there's also lesbian romance and fun, hijinks and friendship and good old-fashioned, like, teenage angst, you know, so something for everyone. But I do definitely try to reflect the reality of the fact that being disabled is kind of just ongoing. You know, I don't write books where the character is magically cured at the end, but I do write books where the character tries to come to terms with their reality and be more comfortable in their skin by the end.
Sophia (17:20)
That's the best we can do. And in so many ways, though, that's still aspirational, because I can't say that I've gotten there.
17:27 Aspirational Writing and Open-Ended Endings
Chatham (17:27)
I don't know that I have either. And I think it is aspirational. I think the reason it's aspirational too, especially, is because I do write young adult books, and I want to set an example of what we're aiming for here, what the reality is. And in a lot of ways, personal growth in my book isn't strictly related to disability. It's a lot about just like opening yourself up to love and other ways that we can grow as people. Because I think that's almost easier than just accepting — accepting the pain is gonna last forever. It's hard. It's hard.
And it's definitely hard to — that is something I think about a lot with my endings. My endings for Time and Time Again and Try Your Worst are both a bit open-ended, which I know some readers probably won't like, but I'm a sucker for an ambiguous ending. And I also just — I like the reality of that, of not knowing exactly what's gonna happen next and not being like, yeah, everything's great now, you know? I'm cured and I'm in love and I'm happy and nothing's wrong, you know? So I try to make my endings hopeful, but still with the hint of realism of like, you don't know what's gonna happen. And sometimes the only certainty is the pain.
Sophia (18:46)
That comfort with uncertainty that you're trying to impart onto your readers, whether teenagers or people like me who have remained at the maturity level of a teenager — I think that's why we read. That's kind of what we're looking for, is help to accept that uncertainty.
Chatham (19:05)
Yeah, definitely. And I will say one of my favorite things that's been said about my writing is my dad once said to me, he said, oh, your book's like Finding Nemo. And I was like, what? What does that possibly mean? And he said, you know, it's for kids, but the parents — people of all ages watch and they still enjoy it. They have a great time.
19:24 Pre-Order Information
Sophia (19:24)
I love that.
Chatham (19:25)
Yeah, I was like, okay, I'll put that on the back of my next book. So, you know, I'm going to write it on every copy. So yeah, so I do think — I hope there's something in it for everyone, but I don't know, I think some YA books definitely can also appeal to adults, because yeah, we're all kind of always coming of age and trying to learn these hard life lessons, yeah.
Sophia (19:43)
Absolutely. So if you guys want to grab a copy of this, it is available for pre-order right now. And I'm going to be dropping the link in the show notes and also in my Substack newsletter. And of course you can go and grab that link off of Chatham's website. So can you let us know where we can find you?
Chatham (20:02)
Yes, so my website is chatgreenfield.com. My first name is hard to spell, so I just shortened it to Chat to make it easier for everyone. And all my socials are @ChatGreenfield as well. So yes, if you are listening or watching before September 23rd, the book is available to pre-order. And what I will add is if you pre-order it and then submit your receipt to the link that's on my website and socials, you will receive exclusive access to the alternate ending of Time and Time Again.
So yes, there is a scrapped epilogue — because like I was saying about ambiguous endings, there was sort of a debate early on with some people who read it, like, should it have a little more, should it have an epilogue, should it end that ambiguously? So I tried to write one, but I was like, it has — the way it ended was perfect, I don't want to take it that step further. But I was thinking about it and, like, you know, I had some people message me like, well, what happens the next day? And I'm like, okay, if you want it so much. So if you pre-order, on September 23rd you'll get it sent to you digitally in your inbox. So.
Sophia (21:00)
That is so worth it! Well, thank you so much for joining us. And stay tuned, folks, because we have another bonus episode with Chatham coming up, so you better subscribe! See you next time on The Sophia Chang Show!
Chatham Greenfield (21:14)
Bye! I'll be back, see you soon.
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Sophia Chang is a Reese's Book Club LitUp fellow, disabled dancer, and extroverted writer. She hosts The Sophia Chang Show podcast where she shares No B.S. publishing stories and advice she wished she'd known. Subscribe if you don't want to cry alone.
