Have
you ever thought you had finished a jigsaw puzzle, only to find one piece left
over? That happened to me this past week.
The
leftover piece had been driving me insane because I kept trying to figure out
where it fit. It had black on it, and the only areas I hadn’t completed were
yellow with minor amounts of blue. Or that’s what I thought, anyway. But after
I had finished the rest of the puzzle, I ran my hand over the entire thing and
found the hole and a place where I hadn’t been looking. Yes, there was black
there, but I had thought everything was filled in.
Obviously,
the problem wasn’t an extra piece that was left over but simply one that was
left out.
Like
jigsaw puzzles, novels must be carefully crafted so that every piece fits.
I
was halfway through my current work-in-progress when I woke up in the middle of
the night because my subconscious told me my timeline didn’t work right. As I
lay there, I came up with what I thought was a good solution, and I got up and
went into the office to write it down before I forgot it.
When
I looked at it again in the morning, I realized that it solved the timeline
issue but created new problems. Now fully awake, I came up with a better solution.
Unfortunately, it required me to make changes throughout the manuscript. Still,
the extra work was worth it. The new solution fit into the hole exactly, both
as to shape and as to color.
Because,
like jigsaw puzzles, novels need the right pieces to complete them.
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