The Bodily Craft of Writing About Trees
Maggie Haggith's reflection on prose style arrives as a quiet counterargument to the rise of automated text generation. A Scottish novelist and poet based in the Highlands, Haggith has spent three years obsessing over elm trees, transforming archival research and personal memory into what she calls a "mycelial" narrative. The piece opens with a critique she received two decades ago — one that shaped her entire approach to writing human characters.
The Criticism That Changed Everything
Picking the best-written books writes, "'Your trees are less wooden than your people.'" This feedback came from a respected writer who read Haggith's early fiction set in a forest. The critique was scathing but constructive — followed by "genuine raving" about her tree descriptions and evocation of forest atmosphere.
As Picking the best-written books puts it, "I've never taken a line of dialogue for granted since." The incident became a turning point. Haggith received a "lush canopy" of reassurance about her nature writing strengths while getting sound advice on improving fictional humans.
"'Your trees are less wooden than your people.'"
Childhood Among the Elms
Haggith's book The Lost Elms traces a life-long relationship with these trees. She watched them die of Dutch elm disease near her childhood home in Northumberland, then discovered them surviving disease-free in the extreme north-west corner of Europe.
Picking the best-written books writes, "Elms shaped the sacred playground of my childhood." The opening paragraphs of her book establish both linguistic style and spiritual dimension. Details like "woodruff and sticklebacks" create specificity while the phrase "fox dens, caterpillars and sticklebacks" carries musical rhythm.
The Guardian has noted similar patterns in writers who blend landscape with moral inquiry — the physical world anchoring abstract questions. Haggith's prose is matter-of-fact with poetic varnish, using repetition and rhyme to emphasize riverine contexts.
Critics might note that this reverence for trees risks sentimentalizing ecological loss. The sacred framing could alienate readers seeking straightforward environmental argument rather than spiritual meditation.
The Rhythm of Loss
Haggith describes her opening paragraph as arriving like a poem — mulling in the mind, then spilling onto the page fully formed. "It was hardly edited from first draft to publication." Only two commas became em dashes, and one sentence was smoothed to highlight the crepuscular evening time of badger-watching rituals.
Picking the best-written books writes, "I think all good writers have multiple 'voices' and much of what is written about a writer 'finding their voice' is bosh." When reporting on elm botany or Dutch elm disease science, her prose becomes level and plain-spoken. Then she inserts livelier anecdotal sections to prevent readers from "dozing off."
This rhythmic variety mirrors what Cormac McCarthy achieved in his late works — the scientific precision of The Passenger alternating with lyrical passages that grounded abstraction in bodily experience.
Wonder Versus Automation
The piece builds toward a claim about human writing that AI cannot replicate. Picking the best-written books writes, "This is the pinnacle of wonder: a full body, mind and soul experience. I don't think AI will ever be able to come close to this."
Wonder requires a body — hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, seeing. It is a creaturely response that makes us say "Wow!" before cognitive faculties engage. As Picking the best-written books puts it, "I am watching the invasion of AI into spaces that used to be the exclusive domain of human writers and intrigued by what will come of it."
The BBC Sports Unsung Hero Award celebrates those whose contributions go unnoticed while supporting others — a parallel to how Haggith positions wonder as the unseen foundation of genuine writing.
Critics might note this bodily argument assumes consciousness cannot emerge from non-biological systems. The claim that wonder "requires" flesh remains philosophically contested.
Bottom Line
Haggith's meditation on prose style offers a grounded defense of human writing rooted in sensory experience and rhythmic variation. The elm becomes both subject and metaphor — trees that shaped her childhood, now surviving as refuge while their species faces extinction. Whether AI can replicate bodily wonder remains open, but her craft demonstrates why the question matters.