writing

Process: Fire and Life and Story

/ RCRuiz

Wrote 1647 words to the wip yesterday.

Worked on that story that I let lie for a long long time.

I am sitting at my writing desk–butt in chair, eyes to the screen. I plan to write and I plan to keep on writing.

I think of conversations had with friends about the writer’s life and the act of writing. I think of stories and I think of fire and I think of how what is twisted and cold and hateful will always try to kill what is warm and passionate and alive.

Fire and life.

I think of how we come to story from many different backgrounds. Half-scared out of our skins because to write story is to bare yourself to the world. It is to make yourself vulnerable and open to possible derision, to possible shaming, to possible rejection, to possible pain. And yet, we keep doing it. Again and again and again.

While sorting through the business of paperwork and thinking through how I should go on, I told the accountant who was helping me to deal with the finance side of stuff that I was working on my first novel. She smiled and told me that it’s a rare writer who is able to make a living off of their writing. I know this. I know this very well.

Still, I write.

I write because stories are life. They remind me of hope and joy and of the passion that is so vital to life. I know what it’s like to walk in this world carrying worlds inside my body–to have that feeling of knowing a place that is beyond the space my physical self occupies.

 

Story is a fire. It is my job to open the door, to make the fire so inviting that the reader can’t help but come in. It is my job to make the world I carry inside me become just as real to the reader as it is to me.

There is enough killing hatred in the world. There are enough people who populate the world with killing words and killing deeds.

Words have power. (Fantasy reminds us of this.)

I write to remember that the world is filled with infinite possibilities, that there is still hope, that we have the power to change, that we can change ourselves and the world around us.

Blow fire into your story.  Keep hold of your hope. Be contagious.

The stories we write. . .

/ RCRuiz

This year’s write-a-thon seems to be really good for me. In the past two weeks, I’ve written close to 10,000 words including words from two new short stories.

One of the stories takes place during a period of Ifugao history that is surprisingly well-documented. I’m talking of the period when American colonizers took a large number of Ifugao to the US where they were put on display as living exhibits. I remember visiting the Folk Museum in Seattle and seeing newspaper clippings about this period there. I wish I’d taken the time to ask for copies of these clippings but I was feeling quite upset at the time. I thought of growing up with men and women who were very proud of the culture and to see it being written about in a condescending manner– I had no words for what I felt. I still don’t.

This is one of the most intense stories I’ve written and I find that the more I delve into history, the more it becomes impossible to be unmoved by it. I find myself wondering what it must have been like.The years when we lived away from the mountains were like years in exile. Now I live in the Netherlands, but for all that I am surrounded by green things, I have moments when I feel very much like an exile. My personal narrative contains that longing for home and the desire to return. I suppose it’s inevitable that this finds its way into story.

The second story I wrote, which is still in full first draft glory, intersects with Alternate Girl’s life story. For quite sometime now, this character named Adventure Boy has been lingering in the back of my mind. I kept trying to write his story, but kept coming up with the wrong words for it. Then, last week, I sat down and in two days, the first draft for Return to Metal City was written. I need to do a bit of tweaking and probably need to do a major overhaul on one section, but aside from that, it’s the story I’ve had in my head for quite a long time.

Right now, I’m back to working on the Body Cartographer novel. I’m hoping to write at least 5,000 more words to it by weekend. I’m terrible at updating but I will post excerpts sometime soon.

publications and updates

/ RCRuiz

It’s been a pretty busy and exciting two weeks with lots of things going on. On Saturday, I celebrated International Women’s Day together with the Filipina women of Stichting Bayanihan. It was a good day focussing on gender consciousness. Not too high threshold but with enough material to provide good food for thought. 

This week, I received news that the ISF 2012 Annual Anthology with my story, 59 Beads, is now free to download from the ISF site. I’d like to acknowledge Roberto Mendes and Ricardo Loureiro for putting this anthology together. 

I also received word that Decolonizing as an SF Writer, which first appeared simultaneously on The Future Fire Blog and Kate Elliot‘s blog, has been selected for inclusion in Speculative Fiction 2012:The Best Online Reviews, Essays and Commentary. The list of contributors has been released and is viewable here. I look forward to reading all the pieces selected. 

I’ve also received the contract for Dagiti Timayap Garda, a short weird/horror story that I wrote which was inspired by the shapeshifting Tikbalang and monster stories from my childhood. I’m quite excited about this sale and look forward to when I can announce everything about it here. 

And I am completing work on a short story and am also completing work on the final draft of my novella. I’m really excited about both of these stories as they are both rooted in indigenous culture and in the case of the novella–very much inspired by Filipino history. 

I have an unexpected free day tomorrow and I hope to finish one of these two things by weekend. I think the short story first and hopefully the novella before Eastercon.

(crossposted to http://rcloenen-ruiz.livejournal.com)

The work-in-progress, Eightsquaredcon and blogs I read

/ RCRuiz

It’s been ten days since I last updated here. I’ve been engrossed in the work-in-progress which is coming along quite well. When I wrote the first draft of this novella, I was very concerned about the war and how it would go and how it would end.  As I was working on the rewrite, I realized that revolutions aren’t just about the war and the road to freedom is more complex than winning a battle. Extensive rewrites are taking place and I’ve added another dimension to the WIP that wasn’t there in the first draft. I’m really hoping I finish this soon. But as with most of what I do, it’s going to be a lot more than just getting from point A to point B.

I’ve been catching up quite a bit online and I thought I’d share some blogs that I visit from time to time:

Decolonization:Indigeneity, Education & Society has lots of thoughtful and thought-provoking stuff. Go read.

For critical Dutch readers, I can’t stop recommending Roet in Het Eten.

And Tiger Beatdown always has thought-provoking stuff.

I’m also trying to catch up on my TBR as part of my preparation for Eightsquaredcon. I’ve offered to moderate a panel on non-western SFF and will be participating in several other panels.

There are regular updates at the Eightsquaredcon blog.