I love jigsaw puzzles. It’s the perfect introvert activity.
All my life, often a day off has meant round the clock puzzle solving,
stopping only for tea and chocolate, well, and the occasional sandwich. The best puzzles are Thanksgiving weekend puzzles when the sandwiches are turkey and cranberry. My
family of origin taught me the value of a good thousand-piecer. If we learned nothing else in my family, we did learn perseverance. And dogged determination.
First you clear off a nice big table with room to spread out. Then you sort through and pull out all the edges and finish the border. Next you sift through the entire box, sorting pieces into like colors and identifiable objects. If it's a really hard one, you stay up until dawn, go to bed, then come back to it as soon as you get up. If you're feeling generous, you can share your puzzle. You can work in silence or put on music. A puzzle pieced together while watching a movie marathon is especially fun. When you finally put in that thousandth piece, the feeling of satisfaction is euphoric.
What I'm finding is, writing a novel is like doing a hundred-thousand piece jigsaw. In a good way.The challenge is bigger, but the process is much the same. You have to have a strategy. You work on it one piece at a time. You can work on one bit for a while, then move to another bit. You can work on the whole thing, or focus in on just one little area. If you get tired and none of the pieces are fitting, you can take a break. It is fun to work on it alone, but it is also fun to work on it with other people.
First you clear off a nice big table with room to spread out. Then you sort through and pull out all the edges and finish the border. Next you sift through the entire box, sorting pieces into like colors and identifiable objects. If it's a really hard one, you stay up until dawn, go to bed, then come back to it as soon as you get up. If you're feeling generous, you can share your puzzle. You can work in silence or put on music. A puzzle pieced together while watching a movie marathon is especially fun. When you finally put in that thousandth piece, the feeling of satisfaction is euphoric.
What I'm finding is, writing a novel is like doing a hundred-thousand piece jigsaw. In a good way.The challenge is bigger, but the process is much the same. You have to have a strategy. You work on it one piece at a time. You can work on one bit for a while, then move to another bit. You can work on the whole thing, or focus in on just one little area. If you get tired and none of the pieces are fitting, you can take a break. It is fun to work on it alone, but it is also fun to work on it with other people.
It’s been years since the last time I did a jigsaw puzzle of
any kind. Moving several times, having cancer, working again after the death of my husband; there’s always been too much to do, and I've been too scatterbrain to take the time I used
to think nothing of, the time it takes to do a large, complicated, but satisfying puzzle. I may not have done a jigsaw in a long time, but I realize I am now finally working on something remarkably similar. I guess if you’re meant to
solve puzzles, whether it's the thousand piece kind or the hundred-thousand piece kind, you’ll eventually get back to doing just that.
More later.
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