Autistic author hopes book will raise awareness about autism

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Well, at the very least, you need to point to the already-existing statistics and cite your sources.


You lost me. Searched for what content, where? (I'm also not at all familiar with Lindsay Brown and Catherine Webb/Luke Jackson/Kenneth Hall.)


Have you researched the circumstances under which those particular kids were picked up by publishers?


Why not provide a link?

You need someone to coach you on how to present your case in such a way that people will take it seriously. You're obviously not succeeding at doing that. I'm far from a public-relations expert myself, although I can see a few obvious things you are doing wrong, and I hope that some of my suggestions may be helpful to you. Hopefully you'll find someone who can give you more and better advice.

That's what the dates were. Sourced on those kids' dates of first publishing, and the gap's searchability by anyone.
Yes, but my argument does not depend on it, as I have read of enough different kids to see that they can get picked up in all sorts of different ways. The point is that nothing had destroyed their opportunity before it happened.
Lindsay Brown impressed a teacher with it: a particularly maddening story when it was school's demands that squashed me. Luke Jackson was involved with a GFCF diet professional when he wrote it up. Catherine Webb had a dad already in the writing scene. Kenneth Hall's story is damning enough in its comparison with kids kept in school, to link to - thanks to his diagnosis he was made homeschooled with the state providing a tutor, who as he was already known to be an intensive writer, actually prompted the book idea.
Because you argued about findability. By googling it you see that it's findable.
Wrong. It got into a book as I have mentioned, before the present article 2 were on older autism websites, it was twice recorded in the Scottish parlt's public policy meetings on autism, the long-serving Autism Coordinator for Fife took up awareness of it. I never take advice from folks with unreasonable catch-22 expectations like to already have research statistics existing before you start ! ...

My point wasn't that it's not findable. My point was that you shouldn't be asking your readers to find it. You should provide links, where possible, to back up your arguments. You're the one making claims that you want your readers to take seriously; hence it is your responsibility to back up your claims with both coherent arguments and self-contained citations.


If you want to be taken seriously enough to advance your cause further, your writing needs to be more self-contained.


Good for you! But you are CURRENTLY having trouble getting various organizations to take your cause seriously.

If you want to advance your cause further, the least you can do is present the above-quoted information in a clearer, more specific, self-contained way, using proper citations. Perhaps create a blog that expands on the information contained in your chapter of the book, as well as documenting all your historical assertions above about the Scottish parliament, the Autism Coordinator for Fife, etc.?


At the very least you can present whatever information/evidence you already do have in a clearer and more self-contained way, with links and/or complete citations, more accessible to newcomers to the issue than your current blog is? I don't see any catch-22 here.


A teacher who evidently had the necessary connections to the relevant publisher. Do you think all or most teachers have such connections, even now?


Thanks for the link. I'll look at this later.

Anyhow, it now appears that you actually do already have enough material for a blog focused on introducing readers to your cause. My main point was simply that you should create such a blog.

The link you provided in your initial post in this thread was NOT to such a blog, but only to a collection of posts on another blog bashing various organizations for not taking your cause seriously. By having a lot of blog posts devoted to denouncing groups for not taking your cause seriously, but WITHOUT having a much larger amount of blog posts simply making the case for your cause itself, in the first place, you come across as just a cantankerous troublemaker rather than a serious goal-oriented activist. You can remedy this problem, and hopefully be taken more seriously, by creating a blog devoted to presenting the evidence for your cause itself.

And it looks to me like you have enough evidence and relevant history to get at least a good start on creating such a blog. You can do more research later and then keep adding that to your blog.

Necessary? That's a jump of logic. Neither all child authors nor all authors have to have a social connection to a publisher at their start. eg the Aultbea ones in the noughties had clearly not had that, nor Kenneth Hall.

And "CURRENTLY" nothing - Britain's National Autistic Society has always been bad, not just currently: and not only about this, see an open letter from the scene to its trustees on its total unaccountability towards us and how it just exists in its own self-promotional arrogance purportedly in our name.

How is it clear that they didn't have that, at least indirectly?


The blog page you linked to in your first post in this thread (autisticgroupsfairnesswatch.wordpress.com/tag/child-authors/) contained loads of complaints not just about the NAS but about a whole bunch of other organizations as well, all for not endorsing your cause.

Do you REALLY think that that's a better way to win people to your cause than you could by presenting the case for your cause, itself, in a clear, well-organized, self-contained fashion, easily accessible to people like me who have never heard about it before???

This is exactly the reason why I think you need to create the blog I've been suggesting that you create. So that newcomers to the scene will know that the issue exists. So that, when speaking of successful child authors, we can also educate people about your cause by linking to your blog.

NAS is the really prominent one.
Claims stand when they are evidenced. They don't stand speculatively until evidenced against, as in "how is it clear they didn't: and I had already cited examples who didn't.

No point in continuing to debate the above. My most important point is simply this:

If you are serious about promoting your cause, you need a blog devoted to presenting the case for it in a clear, well-organized, self-contained fashion, easily accessible to newcomers to the issue. And the blog needs to be devoted to making the case for your cause, itself, not bashing people and orgs who haven't taken it up.

To other readers. Saying "No point in continuing to debate" must never be allowed to serve as a trick for bagsying the last word.
Instead it serves as an abdication of the last word and gives me it on a plate.

Whenever anyone full of pushy bossy advice is so rude as to repeatedly make attacks about "seriousness", and to tell you not to speak out against oppressors of us, then the attitude's wrongness evidences the advice to be wrong. Then anyone with proper self-esteem and rational confidence in their own actions will become committed on principle not to take the advice.

Okay.... So, if anyone ever wants you to do anything, they should pushily, bossily, and rudely tell you to do the opposite thing?

P.S. to my remark immedately above: My point is that the actual merit of an idea has nothing to do with the manner in which it is expressed; the latter affects only the psychological impact of the idea.

I'm sorry to have expressed myself, in earlier posts, in a manner that has apparently turned you off to what I believe to be the most effective way that you can advance your cause.