Puzzling Out Mosaics
I stumbled across a beautiful café, featuring the owner’s mosaics. Even the tables were inlaid with her gorgeous work. That’s when I realized the artist had done what I do as a writer: create a variety of different pieces (her, art; me, story) and put them together in a creative manner.
I had always envisioned those pieces of a story as puzzle pieces. As writers, we take the time to create each piece (character, plot, setting, etc). Then we work on how they’ll fit together. It’s a challenge, of course, since we don’t often have a finished picture to work from.
But what if our story-building process is less like a puzzle and more like a mosaic? A puzzle suggests there’s one right way. All the pieces have their place. A mosaic suggests the possibility of multiple ways of making meaning. I’d always liked the puzzle analogy because of the idea of “fit”. For example, you can’t jam two characters together who aren’t supposed to be in the same scene. But if you think of moving mosaic tiles around to create your image, you have more flexibility.
Writing is all about shifting perspectives—and it’s not just for the reader. Mosaics are beautiful; my writing process can be, too.