[stylist] Fwd: [Nfbk] Ruston novelist and Braille instructor shares his inspirations and struggles

[David Andrews]

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>Ruston novelist and Braille instructor shares his inspirations and struggles.
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>Jerry Whittle, a former Braille instructor, is a writer.
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>He has self-published three novels based loosely 
>on his experiences growing up in South Carolina. 
>The novels — “Slingshot,” “Standing with 
>Better AAngels” and “Two Hearts Make a 
>Bridge” — are aavailable on the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook.
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>The novels also deal with living with vision 
>loss. Whittle has written his books without being able to see his computer
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> screen.
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>“Because I cannot see people,” said Whittle, 
>“I found myself remembering what my friends 
>looked like, so I used my family and friends as 
>means to describe characters.”
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>The novelist has suffered from vision loss since 
>he was 15. He first noticed a problem with his 
>sight while playing baseball one night for the 
>American Legion team in Seneca, S.C. where he was born.
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>“I could not see the ball under artificial 
>lights,” he said, “so I turned in my uniform
 and had my eyes eexamined.”
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>Whittle was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, 
>a form of hereditary vision loss that begins 
>with night blindness. In the years since, he has 
>dedicated his life to education and to writing 
>about the condition of the blind.
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>Writing presents unique challenges for Whittle. 
>He writes with a voice-activated screen reader 
>and hires personal readers to help him edit. 
>“I do not like the computer voice,” said 
>Whittle. “I prefer a real human voice, and I 
>can tell my reader to add or change something 
>for me.” He usually writes early in the 
>morning, when he feels he will do his best work.
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>Though recently retired from his 28-year career 
>at the Louisiana Center for the Blind in Ruston, 
>Whittle said that before becoming a Braille 
>instructor, his short stories met with success 
>in literary magazines. “I won a contest and 
>published several stories,” said Whittle. “I 
>even received a fan letter from a college 
>student at the University of Tennessee, who told me to keep up the writing.”
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>While working at the center, Whittle also wrote 
>23 plays about the nature of vision loss and 
>blindness, all performed by his students at 
>state and national conventions. He used these 
>plays as outlines and inspiration for his novels.
><http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20140108/NEWS01/301080043>http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20140108/NEWS01/301080043