The Walk

On Sunday afternoon at the Castlefest fantasy festival, I made a last-minute decision.
I’d already spent the previous day interviewing authors for my new Dutch podcast, Fantasyfans.nl. Instead of recording more conversations, I decided to spend the rest of the festival making a short documentary.
There was no camera crew, no script and no elaborate equipment. Just my iPhone and a rough idea of the story I wanted to tell. I wandered through the castle grounds, talking to visitors about the stories behind their costumes, interviewing artists and following whatever caught my attention.
By the time I boarded the train home, I couldn’t stop smiling.
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An Old Craft
It took me a while to understand why.
Long before writing became such a big part of my life, I spent seventeen years making television documentaries. I eventually learned to do almost everything myself, from finding stories and conducting interviews to filming and editing.
The first documentary I ever made was awful.
I made every mistake a beginner could make. After spending the better part of a week trying to rescue the edit, I finally asked one of our experienced editors to have a look. He watched the footage for a few minutes, suggested a different structure and suddenly everything fell into place. It wasn’t that I had filmed the wrong material. I simply didn’t yet know how to shape it into a story.
That afternoon at Castlefest brought all of that back.
As soon as I started filming, it felt familiar. I instinctively knew who to approach, which questions to ask and how to collect the pieces I’d need later in the editing room. It reminded me that seventeen years of practice don’t simply disappear because you spend a few years doing other things.
The Next Chapter
On the train home, another thought crossed my mind.
Writing my first fantasy novel feels remarkably similar to making that first documentary all those years ago.
The story is there. So is the enthusiasm. What I’m still developing is the craft. Over the past year I’ve interviewed dozens of fantasy authors for the new podcast, and every conversation has taught me something. We talk about worldbuilding, rewriting, publishing and all the invisible work that goes into finishing a book. I often leave those interviews with pages of notes, not because I plan to imitate anyone else’s way of writing, but because it’s reassuring to hear how every author has learned their craft one book at a time.
That’s exactly what Castlefest reminded me of.
For one afternoon I stepped back into a profession that once felt impossibly difficult. It no longer does. Years of practice have taken care of that.
Perhaps writing works the same way.
Right now, I’m wrestling with the first rewrite of my novel, trying to solve problems that seem enormous. Maybe, years from now, I’ll look back at this manuscript the way I now look back at that first documentary.
Not with embarrassment because I was still learning, but with gratitude that I had the courage to begin.
And perhaps that’s what I really fell in love with all over again.
Not documentary making or writing.
But the joy of discovering that every hour you invest in a craft makes the next story a little better.

Fr. Roderick Vonhögen
From My Desk
* This article is based on the latest episode of The Walk. If you’d like to hear the story as I originally told it, simply press play on the podcast player at the top of this page.
* Curious about the documentary I mention in the article? I’ve started sharing a few behind-the-scenes photos and video clips on Instagram and Facebook. I’ll post updates there as the project comes together.
* Work on my Camino book continues, although at a slightly slower pace than I’d originally planned. August is also dedicated to rewriting my first fantasy novel, and I’d rather make steady progress on both projects than rush either of them.
* If you speak Dutch, you might enjoy my new podcast Fantasyfans, featuring conversations with fantasy authors, artists and cosplayers. Recent guests include Sandy Butchers, Pepijn Hamer, Cocky van Dijk, Charlotte de Winter and Arlieke van Remmerden. You can find all the episodes and articles at fantasyfans.nl.
* Meanwhile, my daily Camino series continues in my Dutch podcast Heilige van de Dag, following my pilgrimage to Santiago one saint at a time until the end of August. Earlier this week I also joined a Dutch radio program to talk about the series, and you can listen to that interview here.
* One final thing: I’m hoping to resume my live Q&A sessions on YouTube and Substack later this month. I miss talking with you in real time, so keep an eye on my social media channels for dates and announcements.


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Every creative life has one problem that success doesn’t solve. Sometimes it actually makes it worse.
Earlier this week, I found myself looking at my calendar with a growing sense of unease. It should have been a quiet week. After walking two hundred kilometres during the Nijmegen Four Days Marches, I’d planned to recover before beginning the next phase of my fantasy novel. Instead, my schedule filled itself almost overnight. Interviews in three cathedrals. Editing another series of podcasts. Publishing a few articles. Parish work. A radio interview about my Dutch podcast. And then, almost at the last minute, an invitation to Castlefest as a member of the press, my favorite fantasy festival of the year. The sensible thing would have been to stay home. Instead, I immediately started looking for my recording gear.
That’s the problem with work you genuinely enjoy. It rarely feels like work. I love interviewing authors and exploring old churches. I love telling stories about saints and meeting people who care about fantasy as much as I do. Every invitation sounds like an opportunity I shouldn’t miss. Yet somewhere along the way I realised that I was measuring success by everything I managed to fit into a week, while the project that matters most, writing my own books, kept waiting patiently for “when things calm down.” They never do.
Earlier this year, I made a public promise that I wanted to publish eight books this year (most of them already exist as drafts). It’s an absurdly ambitious goal, and I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else. But I know myself well enough to understand why I set it. The number isn’t really the point. It’s a reminder of the person I’m trying to become. You don’t become a writer by thinking about books. You become a writer by protecting the time to write them. That means saying no, not only to bad ideas, but sometimes to wonderful ones as well.
So this August I’m trying something different. One chapter a day. That’s all. Not the perfect chapter, just the next one. Everything else will go on hold. Cathedrals will still be there. Festivals will return next summer. New opportunities always appear. Stories, on the other hand, only exist if someone sits down and writes them. For the next month, I want that someone to be me.
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.
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For four days, I walked fifty kilometres a day. I came home with sore feet, very little sleep, and a renewed faith in people.
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By Friday afternoon, every step hurt.
After four days of walking fifty kilometers a day during the Nijmegen Four Days Marches—the world’s largest multi-day walking event—I had reached the point where my feet objected to almost every surface. The next morning, the short walk to the supermarket felt harder than some of the longest stretches during the event itself.
Yet that isn't what I remember most.
What stays with me are the people.
Every village seemed determined to keep forty-five thousand walkers moving. Children stood along the road handing out cucumber slices, cookies and sweets. Churches served us free coffee. Complete strangers applauded as we passed, as if finishing the walk mattered just as much to them as it did to us. Along the route I kept running into familiar faces. Friends from the fantasy community. People I’d interviewed years ago. Listeners who recognized me from my podcasts or from my social media posts. Even the Klingon cosplayer I'd once posed with at Comic Con somehow appeared among the crowds. With tens of thousands of participants, none of those meetings should have happened. Yet they kept happening.
Walking fifty kilometres together has an interesting effect on people. Conversation becomes easier. Pretence disappears somewhere around the thirty-kilometer mark. You talk about books, life, work and dreams simply because there's nothing else to do except keep putting one foot in front of the other. I spent much of the week with friends who are organizing a new fantasy festival. We talked about storytelling, community and why so many people feel at home in worlds filled with elves, dwarves and dragons. By the end of the week I found myself sketching the mythology behind their festival in my notebook. Apparently, sore feet don't stop the imagination from wandering.
On the final day, someone said something I’ve heard after almost every fantasy convention I’ve ever attended: “I wish the real world were more like this.”
I understood exactly what she meant.
But perhaps we’ve got it the wrong way round.
Maybe this is the real world.
A place where strangers encourage one another, where generosity is the default, where differences matter less than the simple fact that we’re all traveling the same road.
The news rarely reports on that version of humanity.
But it's there.
Sometimes you just have to put on your walking shoes before you notice it.
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.


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When I arrived in Santiago de Compostela two months ago, I assumed the journey was over. I’d recorded forty podcast episodes along the way, filled my phone with hundreds of photos, and written a short diary entry every evening before going to bed. Surely that would be enough to remember what had happened.
This month I’ve started turning those memories into a book. Every morning I open my Camino diary, replay one of the podcast episodes I recorded on the trail, and begin writing. Almost immediately, something unexpected happens. A single photograph reminds me of a conversation I’d forgotten. A village on Google Street View brings back the smell of wet earth after an early morning rain. I find myself remembering details I never consciously stored away, as if they had simply been waiting for someone to ask the right question.
The biggest surprise is that I’m not just recovering memories. I’m discovering meaning. While I was walking, most days were wonderfully ordinary. Walk, eat, meet people, find a place to sleep, repeat. Only now, with a little distance, do I begin to notice how those encounters belong together. A conversation in the morning sheds light on a visit to a tiny church hours later. The story of a saint suddenly explains why a particular moment stayed with me. None of that was obvious at the time. Apparently, experiences need room to breathe before they reveal what they were trying to say.
Perhaps that’s true of more than pilgrimages. We often expect life’s important moments to announce themselves while they’re happening. In reality, they tend to whisper long after we’ve returned home. Looking back isn’t simply an exercise in nostalgia. Sometimes it’s the first time we truly understand where we’ve been. That’s why, in a strange way, I no longer feel that I’m writing about the Camino. I’m still walking it.
Listen to the podcast
This article grew out of this week’s episode of my podcast The Walk. You can listen by tapping the play button in the podcast player at the top of this post.
Help Me Write This Book
For the next few weeks, I’m publishing a new chapter of Saints on the Camino every weekday on my Substack.
You’re reading the book as I’m writing it.
Before I send the manuscript to a professional editor, I’d love your help. If you notice an awkward sentence, a typo, or simply have a suggestion that would make a chapter stronger, please leave a comment. Your feedback will help shape the final version.
You can start at the beginning or jump to any chapter using the table of contents.
→ Read the book in progress
Thanks in advance!Father Roderick Vonhögen


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On Monday evening, I finally uploaded the first chapter of my Camino book. By the time I’d published the accompanying newsletter and shared it online, it was already half past ten. I stared at the clock with mixed feelings. Not because the chapter had taken longer than expected, but because I’d broken a promise to myself. For months I’d been trying to stop working at five in the afternoon. That simple habit had transformed my days. I slept better, woke up with more energy, and actually looked forward to sitting down at my desk each morning.
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The irony was that nothing had gone wrong. Quite the opposite. The book had finally found its voice. I had set out to write a guide to the saints along the Camino de Santiago, but somewhere in the first chapter it became something else. Instead of describing churches and biographies, I found myself back on the trail, meeting fellow pilgrims again, hearing the church bells of small Spanish villages, and rediscovering the conversations that had shaped my own pilgrimage. Every chapter opened the door to another memory, and before I knew it, I wanted to keep writing long after dinner.
Only a few weeks ago, I couldn’t persuade myself to work on my novel. Now I had the opposite problem. The words kept coming, and I didn’t want to interrupt them. It’s a much nicer problem to have, but it carries its own danger. I’ve learned often enough that enthusiasm can be just as exhausting as procrastination. Creative work isn’t only about finding momentum. It’s also about protecting it.
So this week I’m trying something that feels almost unnatural. When five o’clock arrives, I’ll turn off the computer, even if the next paragraph is already forming in my head. I’d rather leave something unwritten today than discover, a few weeks from now, that I’ve exhausted the very excitement that made me want to write in the first place. The Camino taught me that long journeys are completed one day at a time. Perhaps writing books works the same way.
🎧 I talk about this and more in this week’s episode of my podcast ‘The Walk’. You can listen via the player at the top of this page.
👉 Read the fist chapters of my book about the Camino here: Saints on the Camino.


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