The Writing Puzzle
My husband thinks I'm a liar. I talked to him at lunch and mentioned how I
cleaned the living room and the kitchen was sparkling. (I am a bad enough housekeeper that these
feats require bragging). That was at
noon. Now it is five. And the living room is piled high with
toys.
A pile of princesses is weeping in a destroyed palace of
blocks. The dinosaur pile is attacking
the Little People pile. The kingdoms are divided by the deadly Swamp of Puzzle.
Every puzzle box has been emptied into the Swamp. Dora's head floats by an alligator and
hippo. Princess Ariel's tail narrowly
avoids a crash with a loose M and a wood 3.
Train pieces and truck pieces add noise to the chaos.
I love puzzles, but this is going to take some serious
puzzle making to sort all the pieces to the correct box and verify no pieces no
left behind.
The task is overwhelming and reminds me of the puzzles I am trying to solve as a writer.
There's the social media puzzle, the blogging puzzle, the
publishing puzzle, and (oh yeah) the writing puzzle. There's a marketing puzzle too, but I
didn't buy that one yet. Each puzzle is
a good 500 piece puzzle. And when I
step back I see all the 2000 pieces jumbled together on the floor.
Do you finish the writing puzzle first and then start the
publishing puzzle?
Do you complete the border of the blogging puzzle while
putting together the twitter area of the social media puzzle?
Can you do just one puzzle, or must you do all of them?
Trixie in Mo Willem's Knuffle Bunny expresses it best when
she yells "Aggle Flaggle Kablable!"
When it comes to overwhelming tasks, I guess you do it just like I am tackling the real puzzle
pile. One piece at a time. You try a piece here; if it doesn't fit, you
try again. You say a little "yay" when you get a match. And you keep going.
Love the puzzle picture! I guess I'm working on the "slacking" puzzle piece right now. Or maybe I can call it community building/research when I surf the Web. Seriously, I try to do all the puzzles but at different times of the day because I can only concentrate on one area at a time.
ReplyDeleteOoh, the slacking puzzle. Also known as the "I'm just going to do one piece of the twitter puzzle...and then two hours disappear" puzzle. One thing I did in my to do list is to make the platform section, the research section, and the writing section the same size. I had let the platform section become filled with more things than the writing section which was not the right priority.
DeleteHa, so true! Sage observation on life in general. :)
ReplyDeleteOh no, I just spilled the "raise children" and "pack for vacation" puzzles on top of the other ones. Life!
DeleteGreat analogy! I find I work on all the puzzles at once until one has been neglected for too long. For me, those are writing and submissions. My goal next month is to get back on the horn with those!
ReplyDeleteSubmitting is an excellent activity to fear and procrastinate! I set a goal of 10 submissions in July. It has been quite painful, because I let my query muscles atrophy. However, it forced me to do away with the fear and procrastination. This personal challenge may result in a future post titled "10 Rejections in July," but I'm trying to be positive.
DeleteGreat post! I can relate to the living room being tidy at lunch time and a heap of toys by dinner time. I also love your puzzle analogy. Right now I'm trying to balance the time I spend between my writing, blogging, platform building, and subbing puzzles. I find the middle three can really take over, unless I force my self to put them on the shelf, solved or still in progress, until the next day.
ReplyDeleteYes if the writing puzzle is a little doll with curly hair, the platform building puzzle is a 20 armed sea monster who won't let go.
DeleteBut it is good to work on all the puzzles. Sometimes my brain is full of blog ideas and sometimes it is full of picture book ideas. I appreciate having an outlet for both.
I just kind jumped into all of it, writing, submissions, marketing, social media, all of it at once. I think it's easier that way, and you do get more accomplished. If i waited for the novel puzzle to be complete before starting the blogging puzzle, neither would be as far along as they are today. It's like sorting all the pieces into the right piles before starting. It can be a challenge to manage, but a lot of the pressure comes from myself. Once I let that go, it's gotten better. :)
ReplyDeleteYou are right Lara. Right now there really is no one putting pressure on me...but me! Better to train myself to handle the work now than have to figure it out when the deadlines aren't my own.
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