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Garry Gooding

The triumphs and tribulations of producing a book with vision failure.


“I can’t expect anybody to understand; exactly what it’s like trying to edit a manuscript when you can’t see all the letters on the page.”-G.L Gooding

One of the hardships that I faced when writing Fresh Snow on Bedford Falls was severe vision loss. It took resilience, perseverance, and encouragement to finish the novel under those trying circumstances.

My vision problems started in 2005. Over the next three years, I had multiple retinal detachments, a couple that where very severe. Then I developed a disease called Ocular Histoplasmosis, which has symptoms similar to Macular Degeneration.

I retained a degree of central vision until early 2017, right as I was finishing Fresh Snow on Bedford Falls. Thanks to the support and love of my wife, Sarah, we worked through the last critical steps of the book – the final edits – after my central vision was gone.

Looking back now, I can laugh at the scene of Sarah and me sitting in front of my giant monitor as she read, stopping while I enlarged the type to edit, she would then start reading again. With over 300 pages, you can imagine how long that took.

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