On Chronological Snobbery

On Chronological Snobbery

(A Rant) 

 

When researching through mythology and history for my fantasy works, I think it's an important point to remember the dangers of Chronological Snobbery.

What is Chronological Snobbery?

Roughly, it is a term coined by Professor CS Lewis used to describe people who assume their time and culture are right and how others which came before are obviously wrong.

A good example of this is the general idea of Modern Progress, which has its distant roots grounded in The Renaissance and its nearer roots embedded with the Industrial Revolution.

Are we living in the greatest moment in all of Time? 

Isn't that a bit conceited to assume we are? 

What about other times and places?

Now, it could possibly be an easy route to take, in trying to say that oh, well since we don't live in 1548 or some such era, we can't very well say, either way, which has it better.

As my good friend, fellow author, and budding Medieval Historian, R.E. Dean would say (probably),

"PREPOSTEROUS!"

When you read old works, try and understand what the authors mean - not what you assume they might mean. One of the wonderful qualities of History is how it can tell us exactly what WAS witnessed, believed, and considered important. Professor Lewis, while remembered mainly for his outspokenly Christian-based fantasy and lay-man theological works, also wrote other things, too. 

(As a British Professor, he was sort of expected to, you know...)

In one of the other excellent books he wrote, On Words, Lewis explores the importance of how words are used through the ages, by following a few of them. By doing so, one can learn just how easily passages from Shakespeare to Caesar can be misread because linguistical context is misunderstood.

Will we always only read things 'correctly'? 

Is reading and understanding 'rightly' all there is to enjoying a good book?

(*rolls eyes) What do you think?

But the ideas and sentiments behind what is being recorded through History and Myth - the storied voices and mirrored Truths which other eyes witnessed and other hands now long turned to dust touched come to life. They rise like long shadows cast down through the years to illuminate our own modern history and everyday lives. When we read intelligently, we are not reading books. We are peering through another's eyes.

Good History does that. - It is not merely the analytical recording of tedious events, but second-life. When you pick up the Illiad, it's not assigned reading or something you're finally getting around to... You see the world as it was thousands of years ago. You're not learning dates, you're re-experiencing other people's lives, passed down through countless oral stories and translations, because what they saw and felt is important. Primal, even. And we're not too different from them, on a human level, either.

But only, if we continue to learn - and also think critically, with intelligence and an open mind.

To remain ignorant is to live in the Dark.

...

Other excellent reads relating to this rant include the following:

- Lies My Teacher Told Me

- The Book That Made Your World

- From Homer to Harry Potter

- The Discarded Image

- The Greek Way

- On Faerie Stories

Read On!

- Ryan

PS, my up-and-coming fantasy novel, Rienspel, releases THIS Halloween!!

(Don't worry, I'll keep you posted)

Firehall Beckons!

The Phoenix of Redd, Volume I: Rienspel

Coming this Halloween!

"What Rien discovers about his past will change his future…"

"Rien Sucat wiles his days away, bored-stiff in his small backwoods village. But soon gets more than he bargained for after he befriends a magical Phoenix, accidentally witnesses a secret necromantic ritual, and comes face to face with a league of racist, knife-wielding assassins out for his blood. Travel with Rien as he and the Phoenix journey from the unassuming Rillian village of Nyrgen through the enchanting depths of the Great Wood where the unquiet dead lurk, to the high north country of Firehall - elusive sanctuary of the Elves. Launch into an epic quest with consequences farther reaching than Rien could ever possibly imagine."

 

 

 

"Rienspel is about heart. It is about family and about how the power of love played out in everyday life often carries lasting consequences. Rien’s tale transcends the dim shadows of our own world by revealing the lingering power we all carry through how we live and treat others. It is a tale about the Story we all reside in which readers both young and young-at-heart will find compelling. As C.S. Lewis once penned for his colleague and friend J.R.R. Tolkien, so it is with Rienspel, ‘here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a story which will break your heart”… and re-forge it anew in Phoenix-fire."

- Available as ebook via Amazon and print-on-demand via Createspace Halloween, 2016.

 

In the meantime, check out Freeman's The Grey Isle Tale, now available on Amazon!

The Question

The Question

 

As I continue writing, I find I'm feeling a bit of an emotional disconnect with my content. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. It simply is. See, writing Rienspel's sequel is hard. (I know, I know, I think I already covered this in a previous post...) I think it bares repeating and lamenting, though. I know others have told me emotional disconnect is a good thing when you're writing, because you can't be held hostage by it, in turn. However, the way I primarily Make Good Art is an intensely emotional, personal process most of the time. I sit down, write, and bleed. Especially when it comes to Rien and Rienspel. I realize first novels can be awfully stereotypical. Mine's no exception. It's a 3rd person omnipotent coming-of-age fantasy. Some would even fling the mewling complaint, "It's just wish-fulfillment"...

And yeah... it might be... but do you blame prisoners for wanting to be free? And yeah, I am projecting a bit... or at least I was... but we grow up (and if we're especially sharp, we keep growing, even later on). Rien is no longer me any more - and I am no longer him, either. We came to a forking path in the forest one day, and we both took our roads less traveled, in accordance to who we are. Our stories are leading us different ways... We are still brothers, for sure. We share many things and ways. But I'll be damned if somebody looks down their noses at us. We're both proud of what we are, whatever that is - whoever that is.

Yes, I realize he's a fictional character of my creation. It's a book I wrote which is currently sitting, locked in time and space, inside various computers and drives... But when you create something, when you use your heart and your mind, your soul and your love, I think you can bring something entirely MORE into the world for other people, in turn, to love and care and hope for too.

I envy Rien a lot. (yeah, I just used 'a lot' - it's me and it's how I actually talk). I love the idea of being able to wander The Great Forest in autumn time. I'm fascinated with hidden wonders and ruins of times long ago. I furiously believe Man was not meant to bide his days desk-bound - it wounds the soul. If you could forget your life - your consequences- your responsibilities - your upbringing's life assumptions- and simply BE and DO... what would you do? Who would you be?

This Question is the genesis of Rienspel.

It comes out this Halloween - the same night the first few pages take place in the story.

And whether you chose to ultimately read it or not, maybe your own deeper questions can find their voice, too. What question does your own heart and soul ask over and over again? Once you can put words to it - what will you do about it?

...


In the meantime, while you await the Fall release of Rienspel, and while I struggle on to write its' sequel, May the Sun Illumine You Path, and Light By Stars Where Else...

- Ryan

PS

The Grey Isle Tale is now available on Amazon - Prince Janos and friends, likewise, have their own Questions to answer, too!

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