Leaf by Niggle

People say I notice things like a writer.
I like that. People saying I’m like a writer.
I’m not really one, though.

I’ve started calling it Leaf-by-Niggle-syndrome.

Leaf by Niggle is a Tolkien fairy tale. Niggle is a man who lives alone in a quiet village, and he paints. He likes dreaming big, but he’s actually much better at doing smaller paintings. He is, as Tolkien puts it, better at painting a leaf than painting a tree. But he doesn’t care- one day he starts on an epic painting of a tree. The painting grows and grows as he adds more canvas, every leaf is different, birds start to populate the tree, and the details are endless. Niggle can’t finish the painting.

That’s me right there.

About two years ago I read Alice in Wonderland, and I loved it. Then I stumbled on the ballet version by the Royal Opera House, and then I fell in love with the new character, Jack of Hearts. A story sort of hit me, and I started writing.
First it was just about a girl (Alice, renamed Catherine Blank) who hides in the attic of an old theatre, who gets it on with a ballerino (Jack of Hearts, renamed Daniel Walsh).

Right now that story has evolved to a fullblown fantasy/ science-fiction story with dragons and space travel and crystal golems and Frankenstein monsters, and I CAN’T put it on paper because it’s too big. And I hate myself a bit more every time I think about my story. And I started hating thinking about my story as well, because every time I make it even bigger than it already is. It’s tiring.

There is nothing to writing, some pinterest thing Hemingway once said. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed.

Sometimes I wish my dreams were smaller. Just sometimes.

The fairy tale ends with Niggle being taken away by the authorities. After a long time of hard work, he’s sent to a place that’s made especially for him. He gets off the train and starts walking, until, all of a sudden, he sees his tree, just as he had painted it. The birds are twittering, dew glitters off the leaves, the wind flutters through the branches.

Back at home, the canvas of his painting is torn apart and used to repair the roofs of storm-damaged buildings. Only a small piece is saved- a leaf, which later is hung up in a museum with the title ‘leaf by Niggle’.