999 Pieces

Ever been window shopping in the mall one weekend with the family, when you're young son or daughter spots one of those stands that sells puzzles. Immediately its "Mommy...Daddy...let's do a puzzle!" You think, what a fun family activity to do together, so you tell him/her to pick one out. After a few moments they come back with one that's a thousand pieces, black and white, with a picture of stampeding horses. You try desperately into talking them into the 250 piece puzzle of snow white or a power ranger, but their hearts are set.  Stampeding horses it is, all 1000 pieces of it.

So you take it home, set up the card table, microwave some pop corn and pour some lemonade, and you're ready to go.  Your son/daughter pours out the pieces and they're assigned the task of turning all the pieces over so they face up, which they do willingly with a tip of their tongue protruding from the mouth.  Once that is accomplished everyone knows what comes next...find the edges. Almost an hour later you've found all the edges, but the popcorn and lemonade is gone, and so is the rest of your family.

But you can't walk away, because this is where you demonstrate to your children that you finish what you start. So hour after torturous hour passes until you've put all the pieces in the correct position. All 999 of them.

Yep, there's one piece missing. I think puzzle makers do this on purpose to get you to buy another whole puzzle just to complete the first one.  Who wants to work that hard on such an arduous task, only to leave it unfinished. Because no matter how pretty the puzzle picture might be, the only thing anybody ever see's is the missing 1000th piece.

What's your point, you ask? My point is that in some ways every aspiring writer is an assembled puzzle missing the 1000th piece.  All our real friends, family, and acquaintances ever see is what we don't have, not what we've accomplished. You've not finished a book yet...you don't have an agent...you don't have a published book...you don't have multiple published books. But here in the blogosphere, especially with the Alex J. Cavanaugh's IWSG, we see things differently. We focus on the other 999 pieces and celebrate those just as equally as the 1000th.

If you haven't voted in Round 1 of WRiTE CLUB, you can do that here, and don't forget that Round 2 goes up tomorrow! :)