How doing jig-saw puzzles helps me as a writer — Don’t force anything!!!
I always avoided jig-saw puzzles. I’d tell people (and it was true), I can’t put together a puzzle of more than 100 pieces. Basically, I’m not that kind of visual person. I can’t read the small print on an instruction sheet and follow directions for assembling furniture. I’m a pretty decent cook but I have to read recipes two or three times and still usually miss an ingredient.
Color is another matter — I can immediately spot what works color-wise whether it’s a pillow, blanket, rug or blouse. I can distinguish between subtly different shades of mauve or chartreuse.
Which leads me to the moment, near the beginning of Covid quarantine, when my husband suggested we get a full-scale jig-saw puzzle and set it up on a table where we could work on it over days or even weeks. I agreed…as long as it had a 500 piece limit — nothing would induce me to attempt 1000 pieces.
Now let’s switch gears — I’m a writer and have been a writer of one sort or another for the past 40 years. Yes, that makes me pretty damn old (and experienced). I’ve written TV scripts, articles for magazine articles for TIME and PARADE, award-winning books for young people and plays for adults.
Now let’s return to jig-saws. My husband is a natural — he loves them. The more difficult, the better. He picks up a puzzle piece, studies it, then gazes at the picture of the whole puzzle and figures out exactly where that particular piece fits — it works nearly every time. Not me — I struggle. My approach is different, too. I look for color similarities between the whole puzzle that’s being constructed (by my husband) and the piece in my hand. Once I’ve matched the color of the piece to a place on the board, I try to find exactly where it fits. (This does not work if you have great expanses of blue or black or green so we avoid purchasing those types of puzzles in favor of images with plenty of different colors and figures.)
My husband locates and places 10 to 20 pieces for every one that I stick in. My process is like “hunt and peck” for letters on the keyboard. Slow and tedious. And sometimes I get desperate. I push and pry and attempt to fit a piece into the puzzle where it doesn’t actually belong. I’m more and more upset — why won’t the piece fit in like it should. Damn!!
Other times, however, I sit down at the puzzle, pick up a little piece and immediately find the right place for it. Wow! It’s like magic. I marvel at how it fits in so perfectly, how it locks into place. Then, feeling emboldened, I pick up another puzzle piece and spend 30 frustrating minutes trying to find the right location…and don’t succeed — no matter how hard I try. Ugh!
Now back to writing. Years ago when I was a journalist, I discovered that if I was having trouble writing an article, if I was just moving the words or sentences round and round but getting nowhere with the story — the problem was that I didn’t have enough information. I needed to go back to the source — either to my notes or by doing more research. I had to make another phone call or look up information in books or (later) on-line. Then voila — I was back on track with the story. The writing flowed smoothly; it worked, it fit.
Nowadays, I work on fiction — either plays or books or screenplays. Yet I’ve had the same experience of trying hard to make something work when it just wouldn’t. I’d try to make a character do or say something that wasn’t quite in keeping with who the character was. Or I’d stick in a piece of business that I needed to have happen but it just wasn’t quite right for the plot-line.
At these moments, finally, I’d stop and realize that I needed to go back to the source — in this case my imagination — to figure out who that character is and what’s realistic for her to be doing at that moment. Or how to make that piece of action happen in a logical way. To resource my imagination I walk away from the writing — take a walk, take a drive, take a shower, fix a cup of tea, sit down and stare at the hummingbirds on the hummingbird feeder. Occasionally I’ll even do something useful like running a load of laundry or washing dishes — any activity is fine as long as it doesn’t occupy much brain space. Then magically — the solution flows into my mind. I figure out what piece of dialogue or action truly makes sense. Once I grasp that — voila — my writing goes smoothly. I’m in sync again. In other words — I can’t force it. I can’t make it happen — any more than I can stick a puzzle piece where it doesn’t belong. If it’s meant to work, then it will work, it will fit — like magic!!
It’s always marvelous to regain the flow of a piece of writing — no matter what the genre. I’m still far more confident about sitting down to write than I ever will be sitting down at a 500-piece jig-saw puzzle. Yet I’ve discovered both are satisfying in very different but complementary ways!
