Meet Irving Ruan | Fiction writer, TV scribe, and engineer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Irving Ruan and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Irving, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I was born and raised in China and my family and I immigrated to Montana when I was about five-years-old. We moved around when I was young but we ultimately ended up settling down in San Diego. As a kid, I grew up around an cornucopia of books and stories and movies. They were my life rafts for accessing my sense of belonging and place in a new country. And I couldn’t get enough of them.

But I never thought that I could personally ever be an artist — a storyteller — one day myself. And so, I ended up studying computer science in college and later moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to work as a software engineer. It was such a fun, wild ride, and there’s nothing in the world I would have traded for that experience. A big thing I learned while working in the technology industry was cultivating a “hacker” mentality, especially as an engineer. A “hacker” isn’t necessarily a person who illegally hack into things (though it can mean that, and is often depicted as that in TV and films). But it’s more about a way of life — a philosophy of thinking — that means experimenting and failing, experimenting and failing. A commitment to trying and doing things without the oppressive, looming phantom of failure. It’s an attitude that, in my opinion, is ultimately playful and inviting. And for me, at least, it empowered me to just dive into things and not second-guess myself.

As a fiction and TV writer nowadays after transitioning careers from software engineering, I still very much employ this attitude. It’s definitely scary to jump into new areas, but simulating a lower stakes environment by approaching it from a place of open play and iterative experimentation makes it feel more inviting, and, more importantly, more enjoyable. Whenever possible and applicable, I try to practice a hacker mentality on not only projects but any new curiosities that I’d like to explore more of.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I love to make people laugh and smile, which is why my artist’s journey started out as a comedic performer. I love making comedy that is weird and absurd, but also comedy that has something to say about the world we live in and the culture we breathe. I remember how before I decided to commit myself to getting better at comedy, I was so, so scared. I never did theater growing up and I have a background that is the mathematical opposite of the art form. So, you can imagine that I was probably the last person on earth who should have done it. But there was something really special about the medium that spoke to me on a bone-deep level. It was this feeling — and the responsibility that came with it — that I could alchemize my thoughts and feelings, my joys and my sorrows, to make people laugh. That, somehow, I could ultimately connect with them through this art form. I’ve never experienced that feeling before, and once I started comedy doing more and more, I was hooked.

Starting out as a performer before I dipped my toes in writing was helpful. But learning how to write jokes, how to construct the beats of something funny, was not the easiest walk in the park for me, and it took a long time for my to find my voice, if you will. I definitely kept failing and failing, over and over again. But the thing that kept roping me back was that, at the end of the day, when I had the rare moment of writing something that made someone laugh or even chuckle, it was all that I needed to continue learning and failing. Knowing my “why,” if that makes sense, from the beginning was extremely clarifying and sustaining in my journey, especially when the times got tough, which was many.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The WarnerMedia Access Team. They’ve been incredible supporters of my work and career in the TV/film industry, and believed in me at a time when I was feeling a lot of doubt. I am deeply grateful for their mentorship and guidance.

Website: www.irvingruan.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/irvingruan

Twitter: www.twitter.com/irvingruan