Hey awesome,

I just picked up a new jigsaw puzzle. Are you a puzzle person? I love them. Something about it centers my brain, which is usually running through about nine things at once (messily and...not always helpfully). While I'm doing a puzzle though, it gets quiet and focused in there while I'm looking for the next piece.

By the end of my puzzle-stint, I've either realized the next thing I want to write, have clarity on some issue, or just have the satisfaction of making progress on the puzzle.

It's so satisfying to lock in that missing piece.

My love for puzzles extends beyond jigsaws. I've been looking for projects to apply to some of my beach-and-woods-treasures, and my first is this spiral of mussel shells that will eventually get glued into a shadowbox. As you can see from the picture above, my spiral is missing some pieces. First of all, I forgot that mussel shells curve two different ways, so suddenly I was making two spirals. Secondly...I just missed a whole lot of the in-between sizes in there.

How tragic that I have to go back to the beach and find more shells to fill in the pieces.

I wish the solution were a little easier in filling in the missing pieces of a plot. In my last short story I got all the way to the end before I realized it was a different sort of story than I'd planned, and I had to go back and rework the middle to fill in what was missing. Satisfying, but really pushed me to the edge of the deadline.

I took a break from writing my current 4HU story to work on the new puzzle, and suddenly realized the missing piece was a character I hadn't considered being part of Veska's story...but of course she needs to be.

When it comes to writing, I'm not entirely a plotter or a pantser (meaning I don't have detailed outlines, nor do I go entirely by the seat of my pants). That in-between-ness leaves a lot of space for missing pieces to reveal themselves...but as with any good jigsaw puzzle, the shape of those pieces only comes clear when you fill in some of the space around it.

I suppose the more I write, the faster I can shade in those pieces. In the meantime, I'll keep taking puzzle breaks and figuring it out the hard way. Let me know if you have any tips!

Til next time,

Marisa