The Many Puzzles of Writing

Imagine this. You love puzzles, and have started to assemble a jigsaw, but just as you’re building steam and pieces of the overall picture are emerging from the jumble of pieces, you open a second puzzle and dump those pieces in, too.

Sounds like fun, right?

Now give the assorted jigsaw pieces a stir, throw away the boxes, and you’re sitting in my desk chair.

The Thrill of the Puzzle

At the start, my only goal was to finish my first, first draft. Now don’t get me wrong, the thrill of writing The End is a serious thing to be celebrated.

However, just as I thought I could see the end of puzzle, the developmental editor handed me another puzzle. During the revision process, I dumped those jigsaw pieces onto the table, too. Suddenly, I was learning about structure, tension, pacing, and genre.

After a couple of drafts, the manuscript went to the next editor. This editor handed me a new puzzle, and even though I hadn’t fully sorted out the pieces of the previous two puzzles, I dumped this one out too. Show-don’t-tell, prose, and internal conflict.

More Puzzles To Add

Along the way, I’ve added more puzzles to the jumble. These include creating and managing a website, email/marketing platforms, short story submissions, author branding, cover design, assembling a freelance team, market research, publishing a book, social media, blogging, self-promotion, and marketing.

The latest box of jigsaw pieces I’ve added is learning how to build, manage, and track the performance of Amazon ads. I’m just scratching the surface, but what I’ve seen tells me I’m going to need a much bigger table.

Thus far, my writing journey has been like a never-ending series of dumping the next box of pieces into the pot. I have assembled pieces of many of these puzzles, but I’m not sure I’ve completed an entire puzzle yet. At some point, I hope to have unloaded all the pieces from all the puzzles, but for now, I’ll keep learning and sorting. Fingers crossed that all the pieces are here…

How have you handled your own writing puzzles?

Header Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash