Are you missing THIS piece in your storytelling puzzle?

During the winter pandemic lockdown, I decided to try something I hadn’t done in years: a puzzle.

I picked a 1000-piece puzzle filled with books, and (of course) cats. It was a challenging puzzle, the tiny nuances of the book details making it extra mind-boggling.

I wasn’t sure if I would even like it, but shortly after starting, I was hooked. Leaning over the puzzle trying to make the tiny pieces fit might have been a bit tedious at times, but every time I added a new piece, I got a little jolt of pleasure.

Once in place, each piece egged me onwards.

It reminded me, actually, of the storytelling process.

The process of writing, editing and reworking material can be kind of tedious at times. It’s not always what you’d call fun, but I also find it deeply compelling. I can get lost in it for hours at a time, continually pulled back by the desire to find the right way to make the words work.

When I’m looking at the page, or even the project as a whole, I know there’s something there. It’s just something we can’t quite see yet.

But if we keep rearranging the words and ideas long enough, eventually the vision we’ve had—the one our gut was telling us about, the one we can almost feel and taste—comes to life.

And this is what I find fundamentally compelling and exciting about storytelling work: slowly making that vision appear.

Anne Lamott is often quoted for her fantastic term “the shitty first draft,” which she coined in her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

Less often quoted?

The title!

The title phrase, Bird by Bird, essentially means “word by word.” It refers to taking the process one word at a time.

As Lamott writes, “Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look honey, all we’re going to do for now is to write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry. That is all we are going to do for now. We are just going to take this bird by bird. But we are going to finish the one short assignment.”

Bird by bird.

Word by word, step by step, and piece by (tear-your-hair-out-wtf-is-it) piece.

Puzzles are like this.

Writing is like this.

Depression is like this.

Climbing mountains is like this.

Life is like this.

And as we slowly put the right pieces in the right place—one by one—the image starts to come to life.