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Quote of the Day: The Tree
“There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots. Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to. Then all round the Tree, and behind it, through the gaps in the leaves and boughs, a country began to open out; and there were glimpses of a forest marching over the land, and of mountains tipped with snow. Niggle lost interest in his other pictures; or else he took them and tacked them on to the edges of his great picture. Soon the canvas became so large that he had to get a ladder; and he ran up and down it, putting in a touch here, and rubbing out a patch there. When people came to call, he seemed polite enough, though he fiddled a little with the pencils on his desk. He listened to what they said, but underneath he was thinking all the time about his big canvas, in the tall shed that had been built for it out in his garden (on a plot where once he had grown potatoes).” — J.R.R. Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle.
All projects, whether they be simple writing assignments or elaborate paintings, tend to take on a life of their own, especially if not rigidly defined in advance. Sometimes they turn into masterpieces, sometimes into ill-defined messes. Tolkien wrote this as something of an allegory for his own struggles as a writer, for as famous as he is for Lord of the Rings, he actually published very little else in his own lifetime.
He never completed his real life’s work, The Silmarillion, despite writing and re-writing it many times and in many forms from his twenties on up until his death. His son, Christopher, compiled what he could for publication, but finding this unsatisfactory, spent another 20 years publishing further collections of earlier iterations of these stories — iterations which, while incomplete, were frequently superior in their style and depth when compared to what made it into the final mythology.
Published in Group Writing
Boy howdy, don’t I know about that. This one science fiction book that I’ve been writing has so far been published as two volumes and the third has become five concurrent volumes and…
This conversation is part of our Quote of the Day Series. If you’d like to share a quotation or just start a conversation based on one, you can sign up for a date in December here.
It’s not that the Silmarilion is dense; it’s actually pretty readable. But who wants to read a history of the elves?
Is anyone else loving these newer Alan Lee illustrated books? Like this one, the Lay of Beren and Luthien?
This is the peril you face when you find you need a spreadsheet to keep everything straight.
Have you thought about at least knocking out some of these interwoven stories as novellas or short stories, just to keep the series moving publication-wise?
Spreadsheet? I have two databases, at least a dozen spreadsheets, over 36,000 characters, over two hundred years of history, and it is all an integrated whole. ;^D
@arahant Maybe sometime you could post a small portion for our enjoyment. Got anything relating to Christmas?
I can’t think of anything offhand. It was not the holiday in the time period I am writing of that it is today. Dickens changed Christmas quite a bit in the Nineteenth Century. Others followed in his footsteps in the Twentieth. Who was celebrating that holiday and how was quite a bit different in the Eighteenth Century.
Still, I will think on the matter. I may have something that could be a stand-alone excerpt.
“Leaf by Niggle” is one of my favorite Tolkien stories. I see it as a parable of the creative impulse. Niggle is doing his best to depict something real, a tree, but truly reproducing it is beyond his grasp. The best he can manage is one good picture of a leaf. All artists are trying to make copies of the original work of art, the Creator’s creation. At best, the artist can help point other people to the Creator through art that reflects the creation. At best, the artist can enter into a sort of creative exercise, and maybe come to meet the Creator through it.