Aug 26, 2023
How to Recharge
When I’ve been staring at a screen for too long, it helps me to close my laptop and focus on something else for a while. Something that makes my hands move in ways besides typing. Rest my brain a little but exercise a different part of it with a puzzle or an art project. Or… View Article
Aug 25, 2023
Multitasking
If you try to go in too many directions at once, you go nowhere. But somehow, I don’t mind multitasking my writing projects. When I clock out of work, hopefully work won’t follow me home. Hopefully, I can focus on finishing something I started writing some time back. I juggle a few such projects right… View Article
Aug 24, 2023
Encouraging Art to Thrive
Recently, two of my artist friends had problems, which I was able to help by patronizing their art. One is a brilliant painter who needed to find a new home for her masterpieces. The other, a teenager with a knack for illustration, needed to go back to high school to finish school and get her… View Article
Jan 26, 2023
Travel in 2023
So this year, I’ve decided to travel more of the Philippines, starting with the far-flung locales of my future graphic novel. I’m still not done with world-building, of the future in 17 years time. But its an exciting new endeavor – travel again as the pandemic subsides, and see what is out there… Elizabeth and… View Article
Oct 23, 2022
Paper Phoenix
About a decade ago, I wrote the worst story I have ever written. It was a tough sem. I failed nearly all my classes except for a foreign language and this one creative writing workshop class. The story made no sense but I submit it anyways. The most interesting character was a side character, and… View Article
Oct 20, 2022
Swimming in Research
My day job can really distract me from what I want to write… But I find research to be positively delightful. Scouring libraries and news websites for data. Using sticky tabs to mark every relevant page, writing colorful sticky squares of summarized data… Color coding my research. It is absolute fun. And as midnight nears… View Article
Oct 18, 2022
Genre Choice
I usually prefer to write science fiction and fantasy, with teenage or college age protagonists. Roaring adventures. But there have been exceptions to that. Among my unfinished manuscripts are two or three horror stories, and maybe a tragedy or so. Horror isn’t really my genre… I find myself allergic to movies on it. Too easily… View Article
Oct 17, 2022
Dreams and the Results
When I was younger, I imagined I’d be married with kids by the age of 28. I imagined that I’d be a novelist, and my husband would keep the kids out of my study while I write my novels. That didn’t happen. I’m in my mid-30s now, and I have yet to find that kind… View Article
Oct 16, 2022
Reservoirs
Over a week ago, I was writing about how blogging kept cabin fever away. And again, I was unable to write for a few days… yet a reservoir of blog posts, written in advance, got me through that. Similarly, I’ll need a reservoir of chapters if I am to publish a webnovel later on, parallel… View Article
Oct 15, 2022
Writing Breaks
As this is posted, I’m probably already back at work. But as I write this, I’m on what is likely my last week of vacation, sick leave after recovering from a surgery. This isn’t the first time I’ve taken a break from work to write. I find it helpful. Back around 2014, when I shifted… View Article
Oct 14, 2022
Targets and Endgoals
What is my purpose? My target? My end goal when I write and hope to publish? A library. A school. Someday, I hope to earn enough to start an international school with no tuition fee for impoverished students in the Philippines, or who hail from the Philippines in any way. Starting a school is a… View Article
Oct 08, 2022
The Writer’s Tools – A Sword!
A writer, especially an action or adventure writer, needs to have a sword and know how to use it, in my opinion. How can you write a fight scene realistically if you don’t know how to fight? 😀 Featured in this photo is a Bohol Blades Ginunting, the sword of any arnisador. I’m sure my… View Article
Oct 07, 2022
The Writer’s Tools – A Pen
In the picture are five fountain pens quite dear to me, and commonly used prior to the pandemic. I need to clean them. But I know when I do, and refill them with ink, they will write splendidly. Yesterday, I wrote of the journals I use. Today – pens! A caveat – due to current… View Article
Oct 06, 2022
The Writer’s Tools – A Journal
Every writer needs something to write on, I suppose. And notebooks and journals beat loose pieces of paper that get lost along the way. So I figured I’d write about my favorite journals, and where to find them. In the photo are three journals I’ve used over the years. One is for my fiction characters,… View Article
Oct 05, 2022
The Comfort of Cats as Company
Meow. I write, flanked by two furry donuts that twitch gently as they dream of the world beyond my home. They entertain and comfort. They bring joy. Cats have always been my preferred pet. I don’t have to walk them twice a day, I don’t have to wrap my hand in a plastic bag to… View Article
Oct 04, 2022
A Vice that Harms None: Comic Books
When dad died in 2018, grief hit like a freight train. I coped by diving into the Marvel multiverse of comics. It helped a ton. I don’t collect comic books to resell them. The focus on financial gain has always turned me off ever since mom valued money as more important than her own children…. View Article
Oct 03, 2022
Going back to grief
Just after my post on grief… A pillar of UP Diliman ROTC passed away at a surprisingly young age. He helped me with some of my college endeavors, and only raised an eyebrow if my projects ever wandered near the edge of trouble for some reason or another. But he provided much guidance. For one… View Article
Oct 02, 2022
The Gravity of Grief
Over four years ago, my dad died. Grief struck like a freight train and I’d sleep for most of the day while someone I thought I could trust took care of the arrangements. (Quick fact – I shouldn’t have trusted him, but that’s another story). Dad was the one who guided and supported me, all… View Article
Oct 01, 2022
The Want for a Day Job
There was a time when my dad passed away, and we sold his massive house in the States and moved the family back to the Philippines. Cheaper living here. I could’ve quit my day job then. Maybe I should’ve. But I chose, back then, not to be a full-time novelist. I chose that for a… View Article
Sep 30, 2022
The Need for a Day Job
So I’ve only been able to blog every day for the past four weeks (more or less) because I’m recovering from surgery and have a rare long vacation from my day job. But why, if I’m enjoying this leisurely and restful recovery heaven would I want to go back to my day job if I… View Article
Sep 29, 2022
A Blog Every Day Keeps Cabin Fever Away
Four weeks ago, I had a surgery. When I came home from the hospital, I started this website and I’ve made it a goal to blog every day I’m on vacation since. It helped me a lot. Four weeks later, I’m only starting to feel a little bit of cabin fever. Four weeks later, I’m… View Article
Sep 27, 2022
A Lesson from Lolo: Enjoy Fiction
My grandfather was also an avid reader. Poverty could not hold him back in his youth – libraries helped him access knowledge he could not otherwise afford. He graduated valedictorian and later rose the ranks thanks to his constant reading. But in his old age, he shared one piece of wisdom. For all the books… View Article
Sep 26, 2022
The Truth is Out There
I was five years old when X-Files came out. Every Friday night, my dad would sit down on the living room sofa to watch it. I’d sit on the floor, leaning my back against the sofa, and watch it beside him. For several years, it went like this. I saw the stuff of nightmares and… View Article
Sep 25, 2022
Lessons from dad: File it away
Dad always told me to ‘write it down’ when I ran to him with a story idea. And because of that, I had a ton of paper throughout high school with all these story ideas written down. The next lesson was through example and never spoken: File it away. Dad always bought extra school and… View Article
Sep 24, 2022
Lessons from dad: Write it down
When I was little, I’d often run to my dad, excited, with a story bursting in my mind that I wanted to share. He’d usually be at his architect’s table at home, drawing something or reading, and he’d stop me right there. “Write it down.” That was the first of two lessons dad taught me…. View Article
Sep 21, 2022
MOOs, MUDs, and the wonders of TELNET as descriptive practice
In high school, dad gave me a secondhand laptop. It had a crappy graphics card that prevented me from playing any 3d games. World of Warcraft was out of the question. So I found another avenue for entertainment – text based role playing games. TELNET Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) and MUDs Object-Oriented(MOOs) are old programs that… View Article
Sep 19, 2022
John Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth
When I was in fifth grade, there were a slew of standardized tests that I did very well in. The end result was that I got to join a summer camp which had a creative writing workshop for kids. If any program contributed to my creativity as a child, this was it. For a few… View Article
Sep 16, 2022
Writer Fuel
I used to drink 20+ cups of 3-in-1 coffee back when I was a workaholic in north Africa. From 8am to 12mn for weeks, I’d tackle mountains of work. When I crossed a border and had their strong, strong, little lattes, I drank a lot less. Maybe 2-4 cups a day there, even at night…. View Article
Sep 14, 2022
The Person I Love, Pure and Chaste from Afar
Francis gave me three writing prompts, and this is the third. But I think he’ll be disappointed, as the only person I’ve ever written love letters to is a country. My dearest Philippines. As a teenager in high school, when I discovered my love of country… It was funny. I was in the US, but… View Article
Sep 13, 2022
A Secret I Have That Others Don’t Understand
Francis gave me a writing prompt for my blog, so I’m running with it (with an edit). People don’t understand why I left America. But it’s more than that. Why did I come home to the Philippines? When I phrase it like that, maybe you’ll understand. But when SO MUCH of the Philippine population dreams… View Article
Sep 12, 2022
The Happy Place I Can’t Admit to Everyone Else
I asked my friends for blog writing prompts, and Francis gave me three! 😮 So I’ll start with this one: The Happy Place I Can’t Admit to Everyone Else. Have you ever seen Jaime Nepomuceno’s sculpture at GSIS in Pasay City? The one entitled “In Dreams We Fly” – I swear when I saw it,… View Article
Sep 11, 2022
21 Years and an Ocean Crossing
September 11, 2001. I was in Memphis, Tennessee, in middle school at the time. When the towers fell, all the boys in my class stood up and said they’d join the army or the navy or whatever, just they’d fight for their country because of it. And some of the girls there said similar, though… View Article
Sep 08, 2022
Lockdown Writing Buddy
Around Feb/March 2020, I lived in a North African capital along the Mediterranean coast. For over 3 months, the whole country was in strict lockdown due to the pandemic. Only 3 things kept me going: a pair of kittens and my novel manuscript. I’d been working on this particular novel since June 2007. There were… View Article
Sep 06, 2022
Seeds of Inspiration
They say there are two kinds of writers: those who are gifted, and those who work really really hard to write something good. Since my youth, I was never really the latter. I’d catch a seed of inspiration and stories would burst onto the page as I scribbled or typed at high speed. The inspiration… View Article
Sep 04, 2022
What happened?
So in 2020 I was stuck in North Africa during the pandemic, locked down in some shnazzy city with a laptop and some hard copies of my old manuscripts to my first novel. I retyped the whole damn thing. All 60,000 plus words. And then my elbows and hands started to go numb, all pins-and-needles… View Article
Sep 03, 2020
The Smithsonian Museums
In the year 2000, I was a homeschooled twelve-year-old living just outside of Washington, D.C. That year, I made my story universe, which I write in to this day. In terms of authors, I was propelled by C.S. Lewis, JRR Tolkien, and Madeline L’engle. The worldbuilding, the fantasy, the science fiction. The continuity of characters… View Article
May 30, 2020
How I wrote 100 pages of novel in 2 weeks
Back in 2013, I was in my final year at UP. I started the second semester with 100 pages of novel – carefully workshopped pieces over the course of six years of creative writing classes. But I also had a day job. Thanks to exciting work, I sort of forgot that I had a thesis… View Article
May 23, 2020
My favorite place to write in UP
Back in the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman, I started Hunting the Rememberer: Chimera Anamnesis. On my first days at UP, I’d sit on the steps outside the massive Main Library, and I’d eat my baon and write the first pages of Chapter 1: Cala. It was fun to have lunch there and write…. View Article
May 17, 2020
Workshops
I made the most of the workshop classes in UP during my college days. Every chance I got, I’d use a workshop to refine another chapter of my novel. Only nonfiction, normal fiction, children’s stories, and graphic novel were set outside of Chimera Anamnesis, but even then I still wrote stories in a parallel universe… View Article
May 16, 2020
Why I studied Creative Writing at UP
Back in November 2007, I was an Anthropology student who’d taken a Creative Writing elective under the late Professor Butch Guerrero. I’ve been able to read since I was 2 1/2 years old, and devouring books outside my age range since I was 6 or 7. I knew from a young age that I wanted… View Article
May 09, 2020
Introduction
Hello world! I’m Isabel Risone, a Filipina-American science fiction novelist working on my first book. Here’s a little bit about me. I was born and raised in the United States to Filipino parents. After high school, I moved to the Philippines and studied B.A. Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman, in Quezon… View Article