Song of the Body Cartographer

Returning to the world of the Body Cartographer

/ RCRuiz

Sometime in August, the English version of the story published in De Komeet is going up on Philippine Genre Stories. I’m very grateful to Mia Tijam for her patience with me as replies have been often delayed. I have a tendency to think I have done things and find out I haven’t. Chemo-brain sounds like an easy excuse, but this tendency is common with a lot of people who’ve gone through chemotherapy. It gets better with time and the longer you’re away from the last chemotherapy treatment, the more clarity you get as well. So I am very thankful for the gentle nudges and the patience coming from editors during the period I was in treatment as well as the period of recovery.

The publication of this story works like a jumpstart of sorts. I started thinking about the works in progress that I still had on my drive and when the call to join the Clarion West Write-a-thon landed in my inbox, I carefully considered whether I would be able to do it. A conversation I had with Marielle (Wegbree)made me think that the write-a-thon would give me an easy way to slide back into writing with some accountability. I thought that I could at least do some book reviews on the blog as a measure of how much work I was doing. But in the process, I found myself returning to my one drive. I had this idea that the drafts I’d been working on were still quite messy.

My first thinking was to go back to writing in the world of Raissa and Anghe. But somehow I found myself pulled back into the Body Cartographer’s world. (If anyone wants to read Song of the Body Cartographer, it’s still available online.) After my first round with radiation therapy, I started working on this long piece again except somehow it felt almost confronting. Mainly because it starts with the main character waking up after a moment of crisis, after a near death experience that changes her so much that she is no longer exactly as she was. Yep. I wrote those parts before I was diagnosed and continuing to write those parts felt too close, I had to put it away.

But now, six months after being declared in remission and after being told that the last treatment worked, I find myself drawn back into that world and I recognise the place my main character is at. Having a deeper understanding of what it takes to recover from crises and how life-altering that can be helps me to also see where I was making the journey to recovery too smooth for my character. But I also see how this crises doesn’t define my character. It has to become part of her life if she’s to really live her life. And I am reminded again of my oncologist telling me: you are more than cancer.

We are more than the physical challenges that we face. We are more than the crises we have had to overcome. We are more than our traumas and our illnesses. We are more than that. And so I want my main character to reach that realisation too because loss has been very much a part of this character’s life but those losses do not define her. Instead, I hope that she emerges stronger and more herself.

I’m thinking about worlds today because I’m going back to the team I’m working with and I think we are going to set world parameters or at least I hope we are. I would very much like to get away from the D&D model and I am hoping that this is a shared vision. If it’s not then I have to think on whether I’m okay with that and how to go about that. Of the games that I’ve played, the one that appeals the most to me is a game built on Belonging outside Belonging. I love it for the spontaneous creativity that it gives rise to–and yes unpredictable silliness which even if you know it’s silly, you just go with it because it is fun to be silly with friends.

So I suppose July is building up to be a month of lots of thinking and reading and writing happening. Something I would not have been able to predict a couple of months ago when I was down in the dumps about not being able to write. I am evidence that the Recovery and Balance programme pays off in spades.

Finally, if you’d like to support my quest to raise funds for Clarion West, please feel free to visit my fundraising page and press the donate button. I would love for us to go over our combined goal as that means more support for the workshop and the writers who will be going there. WordPress doesn’t seem to support embedding my page, but here’s the link to it:

https://givebutter.com/2025cw-writeathon/rochitaloenenruiz

Thanks so much for taking the time to read. I am quietly surprised when I discover people have read what I write here. I hope it offers some food for thought, some inspiration or anything that you can take with you on the journey. Blessings and peace and thank you for dropping by.

On the road to recovery

/ RCRuiz

A lot of things have happened since my last post on this blog. I am slowly but surely regaining strength and energy again. Not as quickly as I want to, but there is progress. I consider it a gift that I have a wonderful mental health carer and that social services considers my situation one where I am in need of more support. Recovery would have been slower than it already has been otherwise.

These past weeks, I’ve been working hard on the extended story set in the world of the Body Cartographer. I had originally intended this story to be one novella, but it’s grown far beyond the minimum length. So far, I’ve completed work on part one which is comprised of 17700 words. An immersive and cathartic experience. I had to laugh a bit because just this month I attended an event at the American Book Center featuring Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer and Thomas Olde Heuvelt.

Jeff talked about the process of novel writing and how when he’s immersed in a novel, he’s so engaged with it that even food becomes an afterthought. At one point–close to the end of part one, I had to stop because it was time to prepare dinner. I opened the fridge and stared at emptiness. I had forgotten to pick up groceries and so I had nothing to cook. Thankfully, eldest son offered to go for groceries and that evening we had french fries for dinner.

Then there was the time I wrote a scene replete with food goodness. After writing it, I was so hungry, but we only had Chicken Tonight. At least it was warm and there was steamed rice, but I would have rather had the dish I was writing about. It happens.

After finishing part one, we went off to grab ice-cream and cake, and when I came home, it was to find a message from Jaroslav Olsa, who is the Czech Republic ambassador to the Philippines. Harinuo’s Love Song, which appears in Alternative Alamat, was picked by PLAV’s team of editors for translation and inclusion in an upcoming edition. To say I’m gobsmacked is an understatement. I mean, I’ve been working towards resuming work on the translation project, but I never dreamed I’d have work getting translated into another language. How cool is that? 🙂

This afternoon, I did a bit of tweeting after I came home from speaking at the International Women’s Day celebration held by an organization I do volunteer work for. It was a lovely celebration. I spoke about the challenges we face as migrant women in the Netherlands and the effect of being uprooted. That we exist in a structured society that is meant to favor status quo but we are not without means and it is possible for us to think of strategies that will allow us to grow and to thrive in this environment.

I’m struck by how the conversations we have around the structural challenges migrants face, mirror the conversations we have around the structural challenges that marginalized writers face. It’s not exactly the same, but these two things speak to each other and strategies that work within one structure could also work within the other. The important thing is to see which ones work best and to find the support we need to thrive and take hold of our dreams.

It’s also been made clear to me that in conversations around race, we often fail to consider nuance. That race is not a black and white conversation. It’s more complicated than that.

This week has been full of things that I need to digest and I don’t doubt that some of it will find its way into story. For the next two days, I’ll be taking a break before immersing myself again in the writing.

I am thankful for friends and for loved ones, for the kadkadua who continue to walk with me and who remind me of what it is that matters most.

Salamat.

**PS. I think nonny is a really cute word. It might show up in one of my works someday. 😉