What Jigsaw Puzzles Taught Me about Writing - and Life

My younger son often gives me a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas. As soon as I open the box, I lose interest in everything else in my entire life. Nothing else matters- NOTHING - as much as sitting hunched over the card table putting those thousand little pieces together.

This year he invited me to open that gift early. So on the day before Christmas Eve, that's just about all the two of us did. I stayed up late to work on the puzzle. I got up early to work on the puzzle. In the hours in between I worked on the puzzle.

Here it is, in all its splendor: Mont St. Michel, which our family visited on a trip to France fourteen years ago.

Now, much as I love jigsaw puzzles, it's hard for someone as addicted to "progress" as I am not to view them as, well, a total waste of time: to spend so many hours assembling something that will be disassembled the very next day! So I made a list of what I've learned about writing - and life - from jigsaw puzzles:

1. Even the most daunting puzzle can, and will, be completed by doggedly putting into place piece after piece after piece: one piece at a time.

2. Every single piece is important. Oh, the heartbreak when one puzzle piece turns out be missing and there is that great gaping hole in the picture! Details matter.

3. More often than not, the missing piece does turn up, albeit in some dark and dusty corner of the floor. Be willing to look in unexpected places.

4. Sometimes pieces that look SO MUCH as if they fit together. . . don't. You may not discover this until quite late in the process. Be prepared to revisit even your most confident assumptions.

5. It's truly helpful to get the border done first (my puzzle-whiz sister disagrees on this one!). Once you have a grasp of the overall size and shape, the overall concept of a project, the other pieces do start to fall into place.

6. If you're stuck on one section of a puzzle, take a break from it and turn to a different section. Or just move your chair to look at the problematic section from a different angle, or in different light.

7. Your eyes become trained to detect the slightest variations in shade and hue. It's exciting how much you can see once you set your eyes to seeing.

8. Puzzles are completed faster - and are more fun to do - when you do them with someone else. Yay for collaboration! (I owe more than I can say to my critique partners and editors).

9. Yes, jigsaw puzzles are an ephemeral accomplishment. But I've written many books that were never published, and most of my published books are now out of print. Life itself is ephemeral. That doesn't mean we shouldn't seize all the joy we can from life while we're here . . . including the joy of working on a Christmas-gift jigsaw puzzle.