how it’s going

May 27, 2024 / RCRuiz

I’ve been going to physical therapy with a group of oncology patients for a couple of weeks now and have noticed that while mornings are often much better in terms of energy, afternoons are now improving. I’m not as tired as I was during the first afternoon training. I take this to be a good sign.

Upon my return home from Gladstones, the eldest son told me that I could transform his former bedroom into a writing space. Something I hadn’t even thought of doing because it was always his room, a lot of his things are still in it, and perhaps it’s that mother thought in my head that held the space for him just in case. But, as I was reminded, it’s been a year since he moved out. Birds spread their wings, they leave the nest, and go discover the sky.

So finally, after more than twenty years of writing at the dining table and having to move my mess when it’s time to eat, I have this space where the books I am reading can be left as they are. Where my pens and pencils don’t have to be tidied up and where when I am done for the day, I can close the door and let the projects I’m working on percolate.

I can’t help but think again about Virginia Woolf talking about a room of our own and how women who write need this kind of space.

Before I went to Wales, I downloaded a book by Joanna Penn. In the past, I’ve read books on writing that made me go: Oh, that’s nice. But it doesn’t work for me. Joanna Penn’s “How to Write A Novel” is perhaps the first book on novel writing that’s made me stop and say: I recognize that. For one, Joanna Penn calls herself a discovery writer. She talks about how overwhelming the process of writing a novel can be when you’re like her(like me). It was like a letter from a friend saying: look, I get it. Now tell me why you’re not finishing that novel. For me the greatest thing was a sense of overwhelm. I’d get bogged down in the details and before I knew it, I was lost. (I have a bunch of novels with great beginnings where the middles and ends are all squashed together because I got caught in a tide of overwhelm and couldn’t see where things were going anymore.)

But here I am. It is the beginning of the week. I have returned from my therapy class feeling energized and thinking: you know, you’ve come this far. Look at the horizon. Can you see where this story is going? Can you see how it’s going to end? Can you see what the story is about? Coming on close to 50,000 words, it’s really getting there. (Alarming thought.)

I think of how my sister would tell me to write whatever I wanted to write and to never give up. If my sister were still here, this is the novel I would give her. I would tell her, this is the novel I wrote because of all the conversations we’ve had and which we continue to have in my head. There are moments I just wish I could turn to her and say: what do you think about this?

What’s kept me from finishing novels in the past? At the heart of it has always been fear. Fear I wouldn’t have the right words. Fear I wasn’t up to the task. Fear I would screw up.

It’s funny how my sister’s legacy continues in the words she used to speak to me. My youngest son has had some difficult moments at school (understandable in the light of everything) but I’ve said these words my sister used to say to me: “It’s your dream, do something about it.”

Since I got this room, I’ve been coming up everyday to write words because when we see each other again, my sister will probably ask me what I did about my dreams and I don’t want to say that I was too scared or too overwhelmed to do something about it.

Blessings and peace to you who read this. Agyamanac Unay for stopping by.

End of our week at Gladstones Library

May 17, 2024 / RCRuiz

It’s hard to believe that it’s Friday. I can hear the tolling of the church bell from the church that’s right beside the library and it’s just finished bonging out the 10th hour of the evening. Ah. It really is the last evening of our final day at Gladstones Library.

Being here has been a wonderful and enervating time for me. Being among the books reminded me too of my family and how books played such a huge part of our growing up years. My sister and I spent so much time in books, and much later, when we were older, we found ourselves discussing books and arguing or agreeing on the virtues or the failures of particular novels or stories. When my sister went for her Masters in Theology, we had long discussions about theology and politics and I do miss my sister’s outspokenness over matters patriarchal as well as the wrong interpretation of scripture.

‘Where does it say that in the Bible?’ She would say, when someone was inclined to lay down some ancient patriarchal thing as word of God when it really wasn’t. When I discovered myself sitting between stacks on theology and philosophy, I couldn’t help thinking of how much my sister would have loved it here. What kinds of conversations would we have had about Reinhold Niebuhr or Kierkegaard? (I confess to feeling quite learned right now. I mean, my sister probably would know who Niebuhr was, but I read him here for the first time. Kierkegaard is a familiar name, but I hadn’t read him until I was sitting next to a stack with a number of shelves with books by or about him. I admit something Kierkegaard says did give me an idea for a horror story. So….I don’t know that my sister would count me as learned, considering how I have this tendency to turn serious things silly.)

Here at Gladstones, I have been well fed. Not just with the books and with the writing, but also with rich conversations around the dining table. Milford writers are just the best and it seemed to me as if the words spoken and the knowledge shared–all the conversations and all the warmth and kindness worked to open up a portal to that realm where the good words dwell.

I think of this time with so much thankfulness. Who would have imagined that I would be able to fly and travel on my own again? Or that I would write so many words in the space of week. Or that I would finally get around to properly organising the novel.

At tea with friends, I shared how it felt to me like I was waking up from a long amnesia and it was like I was remembering to write what I love to write the most. Worlds and worlds and the undying hope for change and a better future.

Follow where your heart takes you. If you’ve tended it well, your heart won’t lead you astray. You’ll always end up exactly where you are meant to be.

Blessings and Peace and Agyamanac Unay for stopping by.

At work in Gladstones

May 13, 2024 / RCRuiz

Here I am in Gladstones Library in Wales for a week of writing at the Milford Writer’s Writing Retreat. It has been a while since I’ve done something like this and I had quite forgotten just how enervating taking time out to write can be. It’s more than carving out time during the regular day, but just being here among so many books with other writers and just focusing on the work of writing has proven to be quite helpful in my process.

Before the diagnosis in 2022, I had been working on a couple of projects which I quite forgot all throughout treatment, so finding them again early in 2024 made me realise that I actually still liked these projects and they were stories that deserved to be finished. But coming to the Milford week, I was still torn on which project to work on.

In the end, I found myself drawn quite strongly to what I call the En story. I had been avoiding finishing it because the scale felt just so large. I realised that I have to acknowledge that it really is a novel. Not a novella, not a long short story, but a novel. It also means that writing in Gladstones works perfectly. I am in the process of putting together all the bits and pieces which I feel belong in this work and there it was staring me in the face…climate change. And what joy to be able to look through the library catalogue, head to the stacks, take all the books you think will be helpful and find exactly what you need for the huge thing you have been terrified about. It also helps a lot that one of my writer friends is a geophysicist and so I could send her a message saying: “uh…I have a question, help”.

It’s interesting to me too that the desk I’m seated at right now is located between two stacks of philosophers.

There is something about the moment and place of creation and how tapping into the source will bring you to the places/people/sources that you need in order to keep moving.

Working on the En story, I understand what it is about this work that terrified me. Now that I have the proper focus, I see how the world has always been comprised of opposing forces. Forces at a constant push and pull and forces that threaten to overwhelm each other. There is the nature that uses up worlds without thought or without care. It’s the kind of nature that discards without thought because when something is used up, there will always be another to take its place. It is the assumption born of privilege. There is another nature at place here too. It’s the nature of lifegiving and restoration and nurturing. Because the second nature is not brutal in nature, it’s often trampled on or made little of. But without the second nature, what would happen to our earth? What would happen to humankind? There is another nature somewhere in there and this is one wherein I hope balance takes place. I am working on it and my head is constantly busy with it.

A little while ago, I had a conversation with one of my Dutch friends. We talked about the balance between the realm of the spirit and the real world and how it’s easy to get caught up and lost in the spiritual, but we need to remember that we are also here in the real. It is the same with writing. My first drafts tend to be vague and starry eyed and not too grounded…more floaty and slippery than solid.

I started writing again in 2024 and it feels to me like I am learning all these things all over again. But what a joy to be able to do so. To be able to write and tell the stories I want to tell. Isn’t that a blessing?

Blessings and peace to you who read this. Agyamanac Unay for stopping by.

Challenges

May 8, 2024 / RCRuiz

So, I decided to take the challenge and keep on writing in Dutch. When Liang de Beer asked me if I would like to take a shot at writing something for Modelverhalen, I thought–let’s say yes. How hard can it be?

Well. I am here to tell you that writing in Dutch is hard and challenging. Dutch isn’t an easy language and I actually caught myself turning English words into Dutch by changing the spelling. I know. Thank goodness for the native Dutch speakers who live in my house and who are pretty tough when it comes to my use of the Dutch language.

Even if my story doesn’t make it into the anthology, I have learned so much from the process of being edited by Liang. From fuzzy first draft, through tangled experimental versions, to the draft that I ended up submitting today, I can see the process the story has gone through and how the draft I ended up submitting tells a more cohesive story than the draft I submitted first. (Plus, I also feel like I learned to use the language better than before.)

Writing in Dutch also made me realise that while I may still have a journey ahead of me, I actually do enjoy writing in Dutch. I like the rhythm and the sound of the language and I want do discover how to use it to tell the stories I want to tell.

I think about life and how life is a journey and a process and learning to write in Dutch is for me part of my journey and part of my process of becoming a better inhabitant of the Earth. I am learning too to be more patient with myself because process cannot be rushed and neither can you rush the journey. Perhaps this is why it takes about 100,000 words.

I’m thinking about process and journey as I also recently took another step in the journey towards becoming stronger. I recently signed up for a physiotherapy class which is focused primarily on cancer patients and the needs of cancer patients.

Back before my diagnosis and all the treatments that followed, I pushed my body to the limit and I could lift and carry and do a lot of things which my body can’t do as well as it used to. What’s often frustrated me is how I seem to just run out of energy even when my brain tells me: we have lots of things to do.

During the intake my physiotherapist gave me the word “doseren”. In translation, the goal is to learn how to budget and make use of my energy so I don’t end up constantly with a deficit. Not giving your body time to recover energy results in a constant deficit until you are no longer capable of doing anything. The objective of physiotherapy is to make sure that your energy level eventually gets back to the point it was before all the traumatic stuff happened to your body.

I learned this lesson during my second class. I had had a broken rest and wasn’t feeling in tiptop shape, but I still came to class. My physiotherapist observed that my energy was low and told me not to make use of the weighted vests. When I insisted that I could, she said: remember what I told you about doseren?

It was a humbling moment. I had to admit to myself that in that moment, if I took the weighted vest, I might be able to finish the class, but at the end of the class, I would not be able to do anything else. Acknowledging the limits of my energy, allowed me to recover well and the day after class, instead of taking my usual quickstep one hour walk, I decided to take a gentle half hour stroll.

I think of how we’re often focused on the goal–on getting there–on achieving something–on becoming whatever it is that we want to become. But I am learning that process is important. Maybe even more important than the goal.

I have this tendency to be so focused on getting somewhere, that I forget to pay attention to the things that matter most. Being rooted in now. Focusing on what my body is telling me. These are things that are easy to forget when life is going at its usual pace. In a manner of speaking, it’s a blessing to be taught to slow down.

I am in the process and I am learning and what I am learning is all helpful. Nothing in life is ever wasted.

Blessings and peace to you who read this and don’t forget to take time to be in the moment.

A restless time of year

November 29, 2023 / RCRuiz

I’ve recently found myself feeling quite restless. Perhaps it’s because the year is coming to a close, perhaps it’s because the novel I wanted to finish this year is stuck in second draft around the 30,000 word count (there’s still time to finish it though).

I am looking forward to 2024 when I hope to be able to attend the MILFORD writer’s retreat and spend time immersed in the writing (as well as catching up with good friends).

I find myself thinking of liminal spaces and how there’s this restless energy found in that space of being in-between. While it’s good to be in liminal space, to remain there for a long time can sometimes be more harmful than helpful for the creative spirit. I think of a passage from Stella Adler’s book where she writes about “life being out there” and how engaging with what is out there, engaging with life and with the world is what makes us grow and thrive as artists.

Energy that we cultivate in the liminal space has to find an outlet. As a person who was given a diagnosis and is in treatment, I can make a choice to remain in liminal space or I can choose to take the energy I’ve harvested from liminality and put it to use as I engage with the world and step out into life.

I ask myself: what do I want to do? How can I do it? What do I want to achieve? How can I get there?

For me, it starts by going back to the waiting page.

Life continues. I teach. I write. I make art. I make music. I share what I can. I mother my sons. I pick up the threads of life and make a decision to keep on living. Circumstances may change the course of our trajectory, but what matters is what we do and how we respond.

It’s strange how having written these words makes me feel more rooted somehow. I may not know and yet I know. And that’s enough for now.

Blessings and peace to you who read this and may you find strength in your own journey.

Titles are a challenge

September 27, 2023 / RCRuiz

Titles are not my strong point. I am currently working on the second draft of a novel titled The Fifth Woman. Don’t ask me why…it probably just felt cool at that time or maybe I was just like: whatever. Let’s just call it this as a sort of jumpstart. So far, I haven’t found anything in the draft that talks about a fifth woman. It’s a pretty amazing feeling though to have been writing consistently everyday for the past two months as prior to that time, my brain often felt like a jumble of words and there was not enough quiet to properly focus on fiction. To my surprise, I have passed 15k on second draft and it looks like it’s still going.

Before I found The Fifth Woman, I had been writing away at The Cartographer novel which I’ve left stranded at 85k because the world was getting so big and unwieldy I had to step back from its noise for a bit.

Finding The Fifth Woman (first draft from end of 2021 before cancer struck) was like finding a gift because there was enough distance for me to appreciate and see where I’d gone off the rails with it ( characters with names like ‘this person’s dad’ and lazy shorthand place names ‘let’s just call this place wherever’ and I’ll call this form of transport something unpronounceable). Clearly, I was just in a rush to finish first draft. When I read it for the first time after regaining my focus, I thought it was someone else’s work, until I got to some place names and memory hit me…oh right. I wrote this while doing the Munabol online workshop for BIPOC kids. And then…Oh. This thing is long. It’s super-long. What is it? Is it a novel? Is it finished? (Yes. It was indeed a first draft clocked in at a little above 65k.) That was two weeks ago.

My current writing speed is an average of 1000 words a day (sometimes 1500), but at the end of a writing session my brain refuses to focus and I just want to go watch Formula one or something mindless for a while. (I have become quite the Formula One and bike racing addict. Tour de France, the Giro, Vuelta, and then there are the classics. Cobblestones! I can hardly watch but I still do anyway.)

I’ve noticed that there is a lot of messiness in my head the closer I get to the appointments for my bloodtest and immunotherapy. As I said to people closest to me, it’s quite weird because it doesn’t hurt, but I have an increasing aversion to being stuck with needles. It melts away once the bloodtest and immunotherapy week have passed and for most of the time I forget that I am under treatment. My oncologist tells me we are on this road for two more years and then we’ll see. It’s an interesting space to be in because no one really knows and I think that’s okay.

Just a little while ago, I bumped into an acquaintance who I hadn’t seen in a long while. Upon hearing about my diagnosis and about all the treatment things, she went: But you’re too young… (I won’t insert what was implied here because it took me aback). It’s one of those really odd responses that makes me want to laugh out loud. I know it’s well-intentioned and well-meant, but I remind people that I am not dead and I have no intention of dying anytime soon. I am completely in the land of the living and I believe I’ll still be here for as long as I am meant to be here. It’s the thought that comes to me when anxiety strikes: Peace. I remind myself. As my mother said to me at the start: you go ask God what he wants to do with you because until He’s done with you, you’re not done doing.

My mother, a cancer survivor, was diagnosed with metastasised cancer when she was 46. It had spread to her bones and she was given one year to live. Today, she’s 85. She laughs talking about it: ‘Actually,’ she says. ‘I decided I wouldn’t die because I didn’t want your Dad marrying someone else.’

There’s this thing about coming face to face with mortality. You come to understand what it means to be alive. I think about one of the participants to the workshop saying: this is my now.

It’s a pretty radical thing to say and to do. To be present in the now. To rest in this moment. To give as well as to take pleasure, to share in what is funny, what makes you laugh, what makes you cry, what warms your heart, what melts you–to choose to be here in now is such a powerful and radical act because it is the essence of being alive.

It’s easy to get pulled into the rat race. To think: I’ll make time for what matters and what makes me happy when I have more time. Time is an ephemera. It’s an illusion we create for ourselves. Time that matters is now. What am I doing now? How am I being present now? What am I sharing of myself now? What kind of memories and legacies am I putting in place now? It’s in this now moment that we are doing and creating and making and establishing connections and as I said to someone precious to me: humans and relationships are more important than things. Wealth, status and possessions you can replace. Connections, relationships and humans you cannot.

Perhaps it’s why I’ve become so invested in The Fifth Woman. Because it’s a messy novel about messy relationships. It’s about the now space versus the could be space. It’s about family and relationships and all the pressures that are exerted upon that precious space of simply being. It could be fantasy, but it could also be science fiction. I really do not know. I’m just writing it. In the now.

Blessings and Peace and Agyamanac Unay for reading.

Writing practice

October 28, 2021 / RCRuiz

Done during the Guerilla Writers Session.

Signal boosting: Other Futures

October 4, 2021October 4, 2021 / RCRuiz

One of the projects that’s near and dear to my heart is the Other Futures Festival. We weren’t able to push through with the previous festival due to covid, but this year, the festival is pushing through and will take place on the 5th and the 6th of November, although I believe there is an art exhibition which has a longer run date. Do check out the Other Futures site for details. (Click on the link and it will take you there.)

Brigitte van der Sande, who is the founder, artistic director and mover behind Other Futures is an inspiring force and her energy and passion for the work is contagious. I wanted to write a bit about Brigitte because her presence and her encouragement are important to my own practice. She doesn’t know this, but at a time when I was uncertain about how to move forward, her invitation and her belief in what I could do helped me to remember how much I love my practice and how much I love the work that I do. There are people in this world who inspire us and who have this gift of propelling us forward. For me, Brigitte is one of those important people.

Recently, Brigitte introduced me to Ellen van Neerven and Rafeif Ismail and we are working on a workshop for Other Futures. Ellen and Rafeif’s work resonates with me. To meet kindred spirits from the other side of the world is a privilege and I believe that this work of encouraging a multiplicity of voices is important and essential to the breaking down of walls and borders–indeed to the creation of new kinds of being and making.

The workshop we’re giving is scheduled for the 6th of November. Ellen and Rafeif will be present via internet connection and I will be present in the space where the workshop will be held.

To you who are on the journey, I hope you will embrace those other futures. 😉 (see what I did there?) And yes, do check out the site.

to be unconstrained

October 1, 2021October 2, 2021 / RCRuiz

I’m thinking of borders and permeability in relation to art and writing, in relation to making and to being in the world and I also find myself looking at nature, looking at what the various sciences also tell us about how nature and the universe works.

Related to this, I have to think about various conversations I’ve had with friends and journey mates. One thing I wanted to share was this thought that the borders between practices are permeable and as beings whose strength lies in our ability to imagine, there are or should be no borders.

Glissant, writing about borders advocates for permeability–for moving past seeing borders as a means of defending or preventing, but rather as a way to mark that one is crossing from one country to another.

Translating that into the practice of making, it makes me think of how I am not bound to only one form or genre of practice. It also means that the doors to various genres and forms of making need to be permeable and to my mind, we also need to make the threshold less imposing and more inviting. (Open the door, break down the barriers or walls and say welcome.)

I’ve often had people tell me that they’re not really writers because they’ve never been published or because they’re just starting to express themselves in writing. I’ve also spoken with people who practice art but don’t dare call themselves artists because ‘well, there’s a study you have to do for that’ and also ‘my work isn’t as good as’ or my work isn’t worth it because I don’t have the right background’. (Did the first cave painter have the right background, I wonder.)

As humans, we tend to be fond of creating labels. We say: you are a writer, you are a visual artist, you are a painter, you are this, you are that. Even when it comes to being in the world, we like to employ these definitive and concrete labels and breaking away from those definitive and concrete labels is often viewed as strange or weird. (Actually, it’s often brushed aside or denied because it doesn’t fit into how people like to see things.)

But we can’t put limits or borders around the creative mind and we can’t put borders or limits around being in the world.

I articulated some of my thoughts in this message to the guerilla writers. I wrote: I feel that as beings we are fluid by nature–maybe born with certain body parts, but that doesn’t mean we are limited to those parts. Those parts don’t define us or speak of who we really are and to my mind remembering that fluidity, remembering that freedom to just be–while it can be scary at first, it is most certainly a source of joy and hopefulness.

One of the writers asked me if I could share my experience of this and so I talked about how I slowly came to recognise and embrace this fluidity for myself as well as my thinking on it. It was for me, the first time I was able to say to someone that I was born in a body that I’ve often felt awkward in, but which I embrace as being part of me. To put to words that feeling that the self that lives inside the body, that pure self is one that’s not bound to societal parameters or social constructs, it was scary but also freeing. Having done that, I found myself better able to say that I am simply as I am–a being in the world. Unbound, undefined, but very much joyful for having embraced this knowledge.

To you who are on the journey, I wish you love and the joyful embrace of self and work that isn’t constrained by borders.

the writer’s notebook

September 29, 2021 / RCRuiz

I’ve returned to making use of my physical notebooks–to writing down notes and thoughts longhand, and to thinking through projects, as well as taking notes from lectures or books that I’ve been attending or reading. My favourites are unlined notebooks with thick paper and while a lot of it is note-taking and recording of thoughts and possible scenarios, I also unabashedly include mundane lists for daily tasks or groceries or things to remember. I also like to draw diagrams because visuals help me a lot and that act of capturing something in a drawing even if I’m not great at it, helps me as I process through to what I want to say or write about.

I shared this process with the nibling during our once-a-week scheduled convo and as the nibling is a budding artist, I decided to send them a couple of journals like mine as I totally get how attention can drift when you’re listening to a lecture online and sometimes diagramming the lectures or drawing a weird head speaking the lecturer’s words will help make things more interesting.

I also showed them some of my awkward attempts at visualising stuff from inside my head which was funny and fun to do. As I said to them, I have all these images in my head, but I’m not good at drawing, so I write because I want to get them out of my head onto the page.

Anyway, the notebook is a hodgepodge. It’s not neat or academic. It’s more of a collection of all the things that catch my attention–things I obsess about–subjects I hunt down as I try to figure out what it is my brain is obsessing about.

I’m thinking again about Jeremy Kamal talking about how we may think we’re obsessed with the apple until we find ourselves obsessed by a fire hydrant or a firetruck and then as we track these obsessions we realise that what we’re really obsessed with is the color red.

It’s a thought I’ve taken with me in my process and the truth in those words is reflected in the search and the resulting pieces. For instance, in a recently completed piece, I thought I was obsessed with black holes, when in fact, what I was obsessed with was grief and saying goodbye. This is something that had me sitting back a bit as it’s something I still struggle with although it is true that time takes the sharp edges away.

What is personal to us or what comes from that place where our emotions reside can be scary, but as Kiini Ibura Salam in her book, Finding Your Voice, says it can also be the place where some of our strongest work comes from (I am saying it as I understood it). I am thinking of this as I work on various pieces and the notebooks help a lot as I find that creating diagrams of my thoughts or simply just wrestling with ideas using actual pen and paper does help me find some resolution or some direction when it comes to what I am working on.

I find myself thinking too about the instrument to body connection and what it represents or what it means for makers–writers, visual artists–all of us who make things. Perhaps, it’s this connection–the slowing down of process, the taking time to reflect and think and be in the moment with the work in progress that has made me feel less anxious and more capable of believing in what it is that I want to bring into the world.

During one of the lectures I recently attended, the speaker spoke of how what’s important isn’t having or finding all the answers, but rather finding the questions that we want to ask. This speaks too to what Jeremy Kamal has said about finding what it is you’re obsessed with.

As we enter the fall season, I’ve started working together with various makers. Writers and artists. Thinkers and creators whose work excites me and makes me see how the boundaries between the worlds of making are more porous than we imagine them to be. There is a lot waiting to be discovered and a lot of questions waiting to be asked. For the time I have been given and the opportunities that arise, I am truly grateful.

To you who are on the journey, don’t be afraid to ask questions. As has been said: curiosity is the mother of invention.