Ryan P. Freeman's Blog, page 3

What Failure Taught Me

It is the last day of Summer (by my counting, anyways). It is raining (How fitting). For me, it has been a wild ride personally and professionally. I was just journaling and reading a day by day book with bits from one of my favorite semi-modern writers,Madeline L'Engle. It suddenly hit me that this is life. It has taken this recent sojourn through misery, confusion, joy, ecstasy, surprise, shame, and hope to continue to make me who I am - the world what it is truly is.In mid spring I was doi...

"Represents" is a Dirty Word

It's been on my mind to blog again for awhile now, so here we go. I've always writing stream-of-conscience style (and I ALWAYS misspell concience) I have several different ideas I want to blog about today, but none are rising to the surface right now. Wait, no, here one comes now: I've had a notion to write a non-fiction book on Tolkien's Story Stew idea from his essayOn Fairy Stories. Especially after a fun back-and-forth I had with a friend about Joseph Campbell'sHero With A Thousand Faces...

They Even Fought Over It

Good news, everyone!OOOkay, so, first off, yes, I am very very, very very (very) sorry for the absence over the last few months. Life was just that way, ok? Ok, so first off, Good News! I have returned victorious fromThe St Louis Writers Guild'sannualGateway Con!And I have, like, some HUGE news for you! Ready? I had agents fighting over my next book, Nameless, in the pitch room.To paint a picture for the uninitiated, to have one full manuscript request from an agent is a big deal. It's cause...

Writing as Precarious Existence

I wanted to write today about something freeing. Often, I feel crampt in my little house in the backwoods of Missouri. Tucked away from light and sound – noise and culture; while at the same time also excluded from what I’d call the Wild, too. It’s a precarious existence around here.I mention this because as a writer, this isn’t my native grounds. I wasn’t born here and I’m not ‘from ‘round these parts’. The sense of isolation gets to me sometimes. Feeling full of noise and clamor – cell phon...

Seriously, This is All Just Rambling Nonesense

I reread old things and I take away new things each time. Steph thinks I'm crazy. I've read Tolkien's stuff like 14 times and counting (I read through his stuff each year). In my previous post, I mentioned how I'm currently rereading through Blue Like Jazz. It's almost a decade old now. Now THAT'S crazy.I feel like I used to think I had things figured out. Figured out enough to write books about, you know? But now I don't think I do. I think I have a lot of bluster and not a whole lot of subs...

Second-Class Souls

So, I'm re-reading Blue Like Jazz... it's one of my favorite non-fiction books. Living where I am has about at decade loading time for 'culture' to finally make it here, so it's funny to watch the little local versions of 'hipster Christianity' slowly poke its head around the Hannibal/Quincy area. Most of the newly rebranded Christianity has sleeker logos and carefully re-manuscripted topics... but it still smells like the area, if you know what I mean.I have a weird relationship with my reli...

A Blast From the Past...

This morning I started combing through old posts from one of my other blogs for a non-fiction book idea I have rolling around in my mind. Reading through them, it's like the me of then is a different person. Like I'm a library, and this is a book off a different shelf. Anyways, here it is, from back when Rienspel was barely written... enjoy:"So, I've been trying to write this dumb fiction story for practically five years now- And a recent brush with some e-publisher friends of mine really got...

A Midwestern Shire

Location. I know it's been a rather divisive topic ever since someone way back when started claiming it as 'theirs'. Throughout my life, it's been a fascinating take on just how much where one lives influences the person. I feel like the relatively recent push to divide this topic between physicality and genetics is a bit forced. Like, are those really the only two teams, and must we really pick one or the other to identify with?Anyways, I just got finished with Feb's St Louis Writers Guild m...

I Once Saw an Aristotle

I've been dreaming a lot lately. This morning I awoke with an old, faint memory. I remembered the public library my mom used to take me to back in Oregon. It had three floors (including the basement). I include the basement because that's where the kids' section was. We'd walk out of the rain and the swaying pine trees into the silence of the books within. In the basement, I remember learning for the first time the difference between 'Fiction' and 'Nonfiction'. Fiction meant stories - and Non...

A Digression

Today is a new day.I find it interesting how I have, up until this point, more or less divorced my professional writing from my faith. (for those who are touchy about this, don't worry, I'm not going to go nuts and preach... that's for Sunday... lol...) I actually do this on purpose. Religious people will say it's because I'm ashamed or some such nonsense... but that's simply not the case.A whirlwind summary of me up until now: I am a childhood cancer survivor. I have died several times. I've...