“Gigil” is one of those Tagalog words that doesn’t have an exact English equivalent. It’s a state of excitement on the edge of frustration, very much like the idiom “champing at the bit.”
I used to talk about finishing books like I was slaying a dragon. Books were something I had to defeat. Something that gave me a sense of satisfaction once I completed the task. And I used to think that was all it took…that I needed to learn to finish novels and that was it. I would get better and the dragons would fall faster.
Sometime between writing The Ikessar Falcon and Blackwood Marauders in 2018, something changed.
I didn’t get better at slaying the dragon…but I started to enjoy the dance. I started to enjoy the heat on my face. I started to enjoy the pain.
I’m not sure what happened. But I started wanting to push the boundaries of what I’ve done with my work. Bitch Queen Book 3 was arguably the book that told me hey, this isn’t enough to just do what you already did with the other two. You have to escalate that plot, you have to elevate it to something you can barely explain yourself, you have to push your craft even if it means reaching your breaking point, physically and mentally. The outline was really straightforward…I ended up using it only for the first act of the novel.
The rest, I can’t even explain till people have read it.
It’s like knowing yes, you can defeat the dragon this way, but wait–let me get back in there. Let me try it another way. Let me try another weapon, let me try two at once. And then of course whatever I did there, I have to outdo. I’m working on two projects now that–if you had told me I’d be writing two projects like this at once, years ago, I’d tell you you were out of your mind. It turns out I am. At least, that’s what writing these days feel like. By the end of the day my brain feels pleasantly numb and empty, and I can only stare at the sky with a can of beer and wonder at my choices in life.
I don’t even know why I’m doing these. There is no guarantee any of this will sell. But commercial or even critical success is not the reason I write in the first place. I get the business side out of the way as fast as I can, but at the end of the day, it’s just that feeling of wanting to conquer these stories…of getting in there and dancing with those dragons.
And it’s scary and most days I don’t know what I’m doing or why. I just know I love it. Nanggigigil ako. I want to see how much bigger my stories can get, while still learning to control them, while still exploring elaborate character arcs and relationships. I want to wade through this insanity of politics and swords and dragons and airships and magic and gunpowder and monsters, and never leave.
