A Jigsaw State of Mind
in which I talk about wasjigs, as well as the shift in my creative process
The post I wrote a few months ago talking about jigsaws and the creative process was very popular, so I thought I’d revisit the concept!
I’ve been taking a “sabbatical” for the last year or so.
This meant thinking about what I wanted the next stage of my professional life to look like - erm, I mean, my life, while not putting pressure on myself to set up a new “business”.
I’ve been going backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards on whether to become a “writer”, or a “podcaster”, which are both terrible options because finding audiences, paid or unpaid, for those has become very hard. (It’s always been hard, but when I first started self-publishing and podcasting, there weren’t that many of us doing it, so it was easier for readers or listeners to come across your work by chance.)
But even if it’s hard, I’ve decided there’s too much I want to create, so I’m going to see what happens if I become “a creator”.
In order to do that though, I need to put out more books - I’m terrible at marketing, so the more products out there, the higher possibility that ONE of them becomes successful - I’ll decide what that “successful” looks like at some point…
I’ll talk about how I’m planning to finish books faster in a future post, but first, I have to finish the two books I already have on the go. So I’m training myself to stick to one project at a time.
And when new ideas pop up, I’m training myself to play with them for a small while, just long enough to see whether they have potential or not, and then I’m putting them away for later.
Basically, I’m learning to stop the impulse to follow an idea THERE AND THEN as I have it.
I’m learning to focus on ONE CREATION AT A TIME.
It’s hard.
But I think I’m learning.
Pilar, Where Do the Jigsaws come In?
I’m getting to that now.
In my other post on jigsaws, I showed how the process of putting a jigsaw together mirrored my creative process - one that was all over the place.
But, if my latest jigsaw “task” is anything to go by, it looks like my neurones are learning to fire in a more orderly fashion.
(Small clarification here: it’s all right for a creative process to be all over the place, in fact, it’s necessary, but not when, in my case, it becomes a small source of stress…)
Before I show you the jigsaws (Pilar, you’re killing us with the suspense!), let me tell you about the type of jigsaws they are. If you’re into these things, you’re in for a treat.
I have discovered the absolute fun of the WASJIGs.
(Yes, that’s jigsaw spelt backwards.)
These are jigsaws for which you don’t have a reference picture! (Cherry, if you’re reading this, this one’s a challenge for Paul!)
I’ve come across two different types of wasjigs, and one of them involves time travel!
One type is the “flipped point of view” puzzle.
The reference image (that on the box) shows a picture of the people who are looking at the picture you need to build. You get to put together what they are looking at - and so, apart from one or two clues, you don’t know what you’re putting together until you start, and you discover the different elements as you go along.
The second type of wasjig presents you with the picture of the NOW and asks you to create a picture of the future. These are also great fun, and you can take more clues from the original picture.
I totally recommend these… In working on them, I’ve also learned to put together the normal jigsaws by barely looking at the reference picture - which increases the sense of accomplishment by a few percentage points!
Back to the Creative Process
Doesn’t that look tidy?
My previous one (again, see previous post), was an absolute mess, with lots of half built motifs in the middle of the jigsaw. Now I’ve learned to build fewer things in isolation, and when I absolutely have to do that, I've started building them on the side until I know where to put them in.
Ok, I think that’s enough self-analysis for the week.
Now, for your pleasure (as my clowning teacher used to say), here’s the full monty:
I hope you enjoyed this post - let me know if you want to know more about Wasjigs, including if you’d like me to post the reference image to this one.
Next post: Building a New Way of Writing Fiction, with the help of genAI.