Back in Medieval Ireland

Home again Every weekday morning this week, I’ve found myself back in early medieval Ireland. The morning mist still hangs over the valley as monks make their way across the monastery grounds. The bell has just called the community to prayer. In the scriptorium, novices bend over their desks, learning to shape letters and illuminate manuscripts. Outside the walls, old legends are stirring, and somewhere in the distance a young novice is about to stumble into a story much bigger than he could ever imagine. Then I look up from my laptop. For the first time in months, I’m genuinely looking forward to sitting down every morning to rewrite my first fantasy novel. Not because I’m making spectacular progress. Quite the opposite. Some mornings I rewrite a single page. Others I don’t write anything at all. Instead, I listen back to old voice notes, rethink the history of a monastery or spend an hour trying to understand one of my characters a little better. And I’m having the time of my life. Exploring instead of producing Only a few weeks ago, this felt completely different. Rewriting the novel had become a mountain I kept avoiding to climb. Every new story idea seemed more exciting than returning to the manuscript I’d already written. I felt guilty about that, convinced I simply needed more discipline. Now I think something else was going on… Last week I wrote about letting go of the imaginary version of myself who always had enough time to do everything. Once I stopped measuring myself against that impossible person, something unexpected happened. The pressure disappeared. I no longer felt I had to prove I could write a novel, I could simply take the time to learn how to write one. And that tiny shift changed everything. Instead of trying to produce pages as quickly as possible, I’ve started treating these mornings as an opportunity to explore. Sometimes I end up reading about medieval pigments. Or I draw a map of the monastery grounds. Sometimes I realise an entire chapter needs to happen somewhere else. None of that feels like wasted time anymore. It’s part of building a world I’d actually want to visit myself. Becoming a storyteller As I mentioned last week, Tolkien once described writers as sub-creators. I’ve always loved that expression. We don’t create out of nothing. We receive the world as a gift, then patiently shape it into stories of our own. Perhaps that’s what I’ve been rediscovering this week: writing isn’t simply producing words… It’s learning to see. Learning to listen. Learning to inhabit a world until it begins to feel real enough for someone else to step inside. Will it take longer to finish this novel than I’d hoped a year ago? Almost certainly. But that no longer bothers me. Because every morning I return to medieval Ireland, I leave my desk with something much more valuable than another completed chapter. I close my laptop with the feeling that, little by little, I’m becoming the writer this story has needed all along. Fr. Roderick Vonhögen P.S.: This article is based on the latest episode of my podcast The Walk. If you’d rather hear the story in my own voice, you’ll find the podcast player at the top of this page. Fantasyfans.nl update It’s been exciting to watch my new Dutch fantasy podcast and community slowly find its audience. Just over a month after launching, Fantasyfans.nl has grown to around 350 Instagram followers, while the Facebook and YouTube communities are steadily growing as well. What I enjoy most, though, is the interaction. Every week I record a community podcast, and it’s wonderful to see the discussions continue long after the microphones have been switched off. Last week I published an interview with fantasy author G.J.G. Klaassen, whom I quite literally bumped into while walking the Four Day Marches of Nijmegen. We talked about his debut novel, writing fantasy and finding inspiration in unexpected places. You can read or listen to the interview here. This weekend I also spent a day at the Evermore Fantasy Festival in Ede, where I recorded a new community podcast and spoke with visitors, authors and creators. I’m editing those conversations now, along with plenty of photos from the festival, and I’ll start sharing them later this week. If you’re curious about the Dutch fantasy community, keep an eye on Fantasyfans.nl! Get full access to Father Roderick at fatherroderick.substack.com/subscribe