Coming this Halloween...

Releasing World-Wide October 31st, 2016!

 

What is Rienspel? There's a Phoenix?! Check out the 'Books' tab to read all about Ryan P Freeman's next up and coming novel! 

Writing Rienspel (Warning! *Contains Spoilers*)

Writing Rienspel

Thanks to my wife Steph's urging, I might try to start writing the much anticipated follow up to Rienspel: The Grey King. I'm not sure how to do it, though... Writing Rienspel was magical. It was personal and real - it throbbed and beat with exactly what I needed at the time.

How do you just start again? Sure, I've grown as a writer since then, both in style and technique... but there's something which neither finesse or skill have... and I don't know what it is... but it's something. Writing Rienspel took what I think many new, young writers do - put a version of themselves into a new literary world - and go on adventures. I traveled alongside Rien from Nyrgen to Firehall. I faced the undead and examined my own past. I came to grips with what it means to grow up - to both put childish ways aside, all the while become more childlike. I watched part of who I was die, and be reborn.

In the movie Gladiator, in the end the question is asked, Is Rome worth one good man's life? This morning, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was on, and we talked about how because Lily sacrificed herself for her son, Harry, that by taking his place, a powerful spell of protection was placed on him. Evil (initially, anyways) couldn't touch him. I want The Grey King to be about Death and Life... all so often, I think many stories cheapen Death, by either simply resurrecting the character or by misunderstanding what Death is.

One of my favorite fantasy authors of all time, George MacDonald, was wrote that 'Death is simply more Life'.  And in fact that we often misunderstand what Life is because we do not die because of Death, we die because of lack of Life. Life is more than what your heart and lungs do - it's more than an ability to articulate higher brain function... It hints on what CS Lewis wrote, "You don't have a soul, you are a soul: you have a body."

One of the things I do with my fantasy writing, is actually use it as a vehicle to explore real questions I have about life, the universe, and everything. What sort of realms untold lay waiting just beyond the Pale for us? Who/what are we, really? What if our existence is much more than we scarcely can imagine, even at our best?

Now, I'm no Great mind. I'm no Lewis or MacDonald... or anyone else for that matter. I'm just me. When it comes to writing well, I still feel like a lost beggar wandering on the fringe of Faerie... with Rienspel, I was given by luck, chance, or design, the faintest of glimpses inside its depths - and for that, I'm extremely grateful. While writing Rienspel, I learned the hard way just how much obsession can cost you... I've seen the Shadow on the wall, and done my best to not horde the writer's manna lest it rot. I've learned to accept what you are given, take what is needful for today only...

I know, I know... I'm probably going off on tangents here. I let me mind wander and this is where it leads me... I worry about being good enough - writing enchanting stories which slip inside the back doors of your minds and hearts. Life goes on... I get farther away from The Great Forest as the years crawl on. But I don't forget. I can't. Part of me is still there - wandering the woods... Except now I've found myself outside, wondering how to get back in... and at the same time, worrying about how I also need to continue going, too.

How does one continue going?

I remember those long silent Saturdays I would spend, tucked away in the Library at Central Christian College... as the snows fell... and I would dream and write... I remember the dorms - with our laptops and coffee... writing on - invincible in our ignorance, impetuous in our youth. There is this place I have inside, from which my stories flow. It's my heart, I think... because I feel my best writing is when I sit down and bleed - and it comes out as words on the page. I've read books on disciplining one's love for writing into a honed craft... I've read Stephen King and Ursula LeGuin. There's this simplicity and purity to writing - just like there is this equally simple and pure way of living which springs from it. We write from our Living. We take what has been filtered through our hearts like a french press brews rich coffee - and then we pour it out onto our pages and screens, and wonder if it's good enough.

Maybe what makes it 'good enough' isn't an arbitrary list of marks to hit... but if our stories in turn are worked again into the good earth of others' lives? That's it. And in season, we allow ourselves to see the garden of light and color flourish around us.

I'm still not sure how to keep writing The Grey King... but I'm sure it'll come when it does.

(Thanks for listening)

- Ryan 

Playlists

As I continue to write my next work, "Nameless",  

one of the biggest motivators pushing and calling me on is music. Awhile ago, I began collecting songs which I felt really captured the essence of my various stories. While you wait for Rienspel to come out this Fall... whether you're working, camping, or maybe doing your own bit of applied creativity, check out my various story playlists on Youtube. 

Go, ahead - get lost for awhile...

- Happy listening,

Ryan

On Despondency

On Despondency

"To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power."

- George MacDonald 

 

 
I will write until something comes to mind. Sometimes it's good just to let yourself wander. After all, as the infamous Mr Baggins once wrote, "Not all who wander are lost." The quote is on a piece of art hanging up next to me in my office; I think it serves as timely reminder for us all. Since writing can often be a bit of a head game, despondency can be a real creative killer. When it's basically up to you, the writer, to keep going, the long lonely stretches can be challenging...

One of the things I've learned along the way, is how by continuing to write you build muscles. When I first read in Stephen King's On Writing how he types about 4,000 words a day, I was admittedly staggered. Immediately, my mind went from awe, to jealousy, to disbelief, and finally to dreaded despondency. How could I EVER write that much on a regular basis, I grumbled. Likewise, on Amazon's new author updates I receive, I'm bombarded by all these smiling, successful authors who gush about their dedication to their art.

And then there's me. I'm lucky to find spare moments to peck out a few pages at a time, much less dedicate scheduled time for 'making good art'. What's to be done for the rest of us regulars?

Keep going.

Any way you can - do it. Only you can express it. Only you can write it just so.

Also, remember you're not Stephen King. You're (probably) not any of those gushy, successful new authors featured in Amazon newsletters, either.... But you're you. (and they're not; in fact, nobody else in all existence is) So long as you keep going as best you can, your work continues to live and grow and ultimately, be yours.

One of the types of stories I like to read are about near-death-experiences. (I know, I know, please forgive the apparent randomness) In some of them, they describe a sort of library filled with all the books ever written. For a fantasy-writer like myself, this sort of material is gold! Imagine, a place where every book ever written exists (including your own). In these descriptions, in this library, there resides a large wing filled with all the books and stories which exist but were never actually written. Whether you believe in this sort of stuff is entirely up to you, of course - but I think the notion remains rather sobering.

What great wonders and heart-felt treasures never grace the earth because someone never wrote them down?

Now, I don't tell you all this to shame you or guilt you or anything like that - but to remind you, what you write, big or small, great or just for fun, matters. We write for ourselves and other people. We write because we must. We type and scribble on because we love to. We write because It Matters.

We are given each day what we need to keep going, and sometimes we must be forced to slow down in order to appreciate it. Sometimes (*gasp, dare I admit), we need to be stressed, tired, and generally over-worked, so we are forced to go back and shelter in what we love best. And as we stumble on, we must look around with new eyes upon the everyday, in order to see the mundane afresh. When we next pick up the keyboard or pen, we're ready to bring keen literary life into our world. Our hands may be callused and weary as we write, but they're still our own. They make each word we spell and each sentence we string that much more ours.

So come marauding dragons or long boring work-weeks - Write on.

"Good night and joy be with you all"

- Ryan

There Is a Me I Know

There is a Me I Know

There is a me I know.

I am Him

and He is me

Whenever in my wanderings

I wonder what to do

I find Him still

inside of me

and suddenly I know

what to do

What could I do

if I were me?

unleashed and unbridled?

Could I travel far and wide?

Could I find my dreams

come true?

Each day there are so many

things that I must do

and mostly they are mundane

whether task, or chore, or bore

Duty says, 'Here you stop

and do'

But the Me who is inside,

He, we stare on past

to far horizons calling

new and fresh and true

our heart knows best

what our mind forgets

We know what We must do.

-RPF '16