Inspiration for a Novel: See the Forest for the Trees

I have written all my life; my outside-the-box brain demands it (along with photography, sketching, painting, theatre … You get the picture) for creative and emotional release. There are binders and bins of stories, poetry, drawings saved in various recesses of my home. (Even the start of a novel or two—inspired then thwarted by my whirlwind life) Some of those dog-eared pages are drivel. Some have been published or shared with those that inspired them. There are Two A.M. ramblings, creative writing assignments, declarations of love, spiritual revelations, melancholy lyrics, funny antidotes, and outpourings of pain too heartbreaking to reread.

When a stranger-than-fiction event called Covid fell upon the world, my idea for a novel swirling in my head said, “Let me out!” So, I leafed through years of scribbles and typing and came upon a little story about a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. That is how Beyond the Broken Window started.

The Charlie Brown tree was my inspiration and Chapter One of the book. It was not the tree itself that became the inspiration for this novel, but the events and people it affected. I didn’t wake up one day and say, “Hey I have an idea! I shall write a novel whose pages are filled and formed from trees!” (well, the actual paper began as one but …)

IDEAS FOR A NOVEL TITLE

Somehow, as I wrote, trees began to grow among the pages. The first tree inspiration was to use a familiar metaphor–Family roots run deep. The two families in the book are very different from one another, but both are rooted and tangled together. With that in mind, the title idea became something like Twisted Roots Or Tangled roots, Battered Branches, or Kites in Trees … As the story grew so did the imagery. As if their seeds were scattered in my mind, they sprouted into words about swirling leaves and barren branches. So much of this story became more vivid, more resonating with the use of tree analogies.

Think about it! We use them constantly in our everyday conversation.

Family tree
Branching out
The apple doesn’t fall far from the… (You know)
Go out on a limb
Beat around the bush
Empty nester
BONZAI!!
Turn over a new leaf
Nip it in the bud

Excerpt from Beyond The Broken Window

Driving the back way to the Madsen home, Julie took a road called Poplar Hill, barely two lanes that traveled from the Loch Raven Dam up and over, then down, steep and winding to Paper Mill Road. On that narrow stretch was a pair of trees—a dogwood and a weeping redbud—that had grown together. Their branches entwined as they reached for the sky—a marriage of magnificent blooms, white and magenta, mingled in haphazard symmetry—their roots and trunks bound together, a lover’s embrace for eternity. She looked up the phenomenon. The scientific name was inosculation.

She always slowed to gaze upon its beauty and wondered; if one died, would the other continue? Would the survivor still bloom into the sky even with lifeless branches clutching at it? Or would the branches of the dead tree slowly strangle the living one until it could no longer bloom itself?

INOSCULATION

Taking my daughter to school, I used to drive by trees wound together in inosculation. Years later, after I’d written the inosculation passage, I went back to that yard on Poplar Hill, but the trees were gone. Would the homeowners cut down such a beautiful creation? Did they perish locked in an eternal embrace? Or did one strangle the other only to find the dead would not let go?

More seeds for thought on inspiration for a novel

Here is an ironic side story: In spring of 2022, on one of my daily neighborhood walks, I noticed something I had somehow missed since we moved here in 2018. Growing next to the pond two houses from me was a tangled miracle of nature. A white and pink dogwood growing together, entwined in a loving embrace. Talk about kismet! My heart leapt at the sight.

YOUR TURN!

Can’t see the forest for the trees? OH!, you say, but now I can! From the tiny bonsai to the mighty oak. If you haven’t read the BEYOND THE BROKEN WINDOW yet, please look for places where my trees took root. Stop and think about how they relate, what they represent. Climb them, swing from them, sing a Carol.

If you have read the novel, did you find this imagery bold or subliminal?

Send me your ideas on the novel trees.

Tell me how they spoke.

How they created the scene.

What other common expressions involve trees?

What other ideas for a story spring from a simple sapling of life?

Send me your own inspiring idioms to add to my forest.

Look for my next novel–PLAYING WITH FIRE: A BitterSweet tale of Reinvention and Revenge

On shelves and kindles this summer! AND join the mailing list to read more . . . Beyond the Book.