Taking Steps is an extremely well-constructed collection of Sims’ poetry, short stories and commentary, which covers the emotional length and breadth of her childhood and adult years. In it, she treads a delicate line between appearing to write as a form of catharsis and wanting to make the reader stop, take notice and then question the subject matter in hand. But it’s a line that Sims never strays from – and it’s this personal investment she gives to her writing that makes her work so compelling.
There was, there is, no choice
Speaking to The Canary, Sims agrees that the process of putting pen to paper is cathartic, but explains there is much more to it:
I kept a ‘paper’ diary for years, and it certainly helped with my depression. Writing still does. It’s almost as if (when you put feelings down on paper – whether it be in a creative way or otherwise) I am clearing my mind. It doesn’t always work unfortunately, but it’s an outlet. There have been times when I’ve written things out, intending just to tear them up – but I kept them in the end, and they’ve been turned into pieces of work that I know have helped someone else.
It’s this idea of writing in the hope that the outcome will be to have “helped someone else” which shines through in Taking Steps. Because her brutal candidness means issues are tackled head-on, with no dressing-up. The reader is given the stark reality of situations many disabled people find themselves in from the beginning of the book.