{"id":966,"date":"2009-02-22T06:56:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-22T06:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bestfantasynovel.com\/2009\/02\/22\/just-one-leaf\/"},"modified":"2009-02-22T06:56:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-22T06:56:00","slug":"just-one-leaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/2009\/02\/22\/just-one-leaf\/","title":{"rendered":"Just One Leaf"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_sS4sIiNH6pg\/SaD_BPUNw5I\/AAAAAAAAADE\/fOX4ehDjIYA\/s1600-h\/Leaf+by+Niggle.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_sS4sIiNH6pg\/SaD_BPUNw5I\/AAAAAAAAADE\/fOX4ehDjIYA\/s320\/Leaf+by+Niggle.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>One of my favorite Tolkien stories is &#8220;Leaf by Niggle.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>It is about an artist who aspires to paint a beautiful forest, only to find his talent insufficient to the task. So he tries to focus on painting just one tree &#8212; perfect the tree, and then maybe, he will grow enough in skill to paint the forest. But the tree is too hard too, so he ends up concentrating on just a leaf. If he could only paint just one single leaf right!<\/p>\n<p>He hasn&#8217;t much time because his pesky neighbor keeps bugging him (life) and because he has to take a trip (death). Life interferes with art. Death interferes with life. Art must be squeezed in between.<\/p>\n<p>Like Niggle, I wish I could paint the forest, or at least a tree, but it is a struggle to even capture just one leaf.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking about High Concept, and my Dindi series, and the desperate feeling that it falls far short of the forest I originally envisioned. I&#8217;m down to grasping at leaves.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s interesting to look at books which become bestsellers. What do they have in common? Actually &#8212; not much. Some of them are short and simple, about just a few characters; others are door-stop epics with a cast of thousands; some are beautiful, lyrical, literary and tragic; others are wham-bam action with 2D characters but 3D explosions. And on and on.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d say the one thing all bestsellers have in common is One True Thing. They don&#8217;t have to capture the be-all and end-all of human experience, only One True Thing about what it means to be human. One leaf&#8217;s worth of life &#8212; that&#8217;s enough.<\/p>\n<p>Ah, but it is hard to capture One True Thing. It&#8217;s the hardest thing there is. <\/p>\n<p>If only, if only, I could paint just one leaf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favorite Tolkien stories is &#8220;Leaf by Niggle.&#8221; It is about an artist who aspires to paint a beautiful forest, only to find his talent insufficient to the task. So he tries to focus on painting just one tree &#8212; perfect the tree, and then maybe, he will grow enough in skill to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[228,539],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-high-concept","category-tolkien"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}