Moon & Sun
I’m working through an overarching structure for the Moon & Sun series right now, using Scrivener (of course) and trying to define the central crises of each book in the series, each of which will lead to the overall huge story of the world of Moon & Sun. (First book, THE RUBY KEY)
Have made some startling discoveries already: one on the true nature of the cat, one on Genna’s dark passage, one one the past history of the sun wizards, and one about trees.
Trees. I have a real problem with them, which is odd, really. First thing I do when I move someplace new is plant trees. Spent much of my childhood up in their branches. Absolutely love walking through a woods. I love trees in most of their forms, and find huge comfort in their presence and the sense of time slowed down that they give me.
And yet, when I write trees, I get the keyu (BAD trees, from Bones of the Past), and some decidedly dark forests and jungles in THE SECRET TEXTS and THE WORLD GATES, and now, here I am with the taandu trees, and what I’ll coyly call deep-rooted magic.
I dream in forests and jungles, and what I think about trees, and what my subconscious thinks about trees are clearly two ferociously different, almost diametrically opposed, views. I wonder why that is.
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6 Responses to “Moon & Sun”
said on August 9th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
I always wondered why forests in many books are evil. Tolkien and Stephen Donaldson have evil forests in their books.
One thing I do miss, is the trees in Connecticut and New England. The ones here in Oklahoma are short, twisty, gnarly, ugly things in comparison.
IF I write about forests and trees in my stories, I hope they are good (non-evil) ones.
said on August 9th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
You’re right. I can’t think of a single book with a friendly forest in it. All stories I can come up with have scary trees–Snow White, Wizard of Oz, etc. Maybe, if nature were written to be a bit more friendly, more people would want to go camping, more often. Half-
joking there.
said on August 9th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
There’s good forests in Eragon, but that doesn’t count. Hmm… the forest in Princess Mononoke is good, or neutral at least, and I suppose the forests in Endor in Star Wars are kind of good.
Maybe humans are a bit indimidated by their height and slowness? We’re fast-moving creatures, and we don’t like things that are different from us.
But there’s plenty of treehuggers out there. There’s hope for us yet. :D
said on August 9th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
I love the woods, too, but the tall, tall firs and pines scare me when it’s windy. The house I grew up in was nearly ringed by the remnants of a forest, and I was certain that some night, those trees would come crashing down. Didn’t help that one evening during my middle school years, a neighbor’s tree, of the same vintage, came crashing down. (It’s a pretty common occurance around here.) The wind still disturbs my sleep.
As for friendly, all that comes to mind is the wise old tree (oak?) in the Pocahontas movie… Hmmm. Don’t the Ents count as good? Of course, they’re technically not trees I guess, but still.
Now, those mangrove trees they have down in the keys… I’ve never actually seen them, but read a description of them in a (romance of all things) a while back that totally spooked me. It was describing how the tree roots catch things and eventually create islands… and oh, my imagination went wild. I spent half that night thinking about Man Grove trees that could move around and grabbed people octopus-like and built up hills…
said on August 9th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Long, long ago the forests in Europe and North America were mammoth compared to what they are today (I’ve read that a squirrel could go from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River without touching ground), and were full of mysteries and terrifying things (if there is only a small herd of sheep between you and starvation- anything that could endanger that herd would be seen as bad). That’s the kind of forest the original tellers of the fairy tales would have known intimately, so they weren’t going to write about safe and happy forests. And the fairy tale woods have seeped into the collective imagination, if you will.
P.S. I used to love climbing ficus trees, with their weird roots, and lots of places to perch.
said on August 10th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Tolkien has Mirkwood, but he also has Fangorn and the Old Forest. Mirkwood isn’t so bad up in the North, where the elves live. Its evil is mostly because of the Necromancer’s fortress at Dol Gulder. Fangorn is generally good, thanks to the Ents, and the Old Forest, though “queer” is basically neutral. So I think the Tolkien view of forests is that they are mysterious and strange, but not necessarily evil.
In my experience, there’s a huge difference between an ancient forest with trees soaring up to the canopy and mostly open space underneath, and a young forest growing out of a thicket of shrubby things. Ancient redwoods seem beyond human concerns, but I could easily see blackberry thickets as evil.
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