doing

or, the Tao in all things; or, FRICTION: a working theory - part two

Last night, my aunt texted me that she had just finished the puzzle I gave her.

My eldest son loves puzzles. Absolutely bananas for them. Because of this, it came out that my aunt also loves puzzles. I find this sort of thing interesting for reasons that are possibly of no interest to anyone else, but any difference or contrast pokes at me.

I am not a puzzler. I could go on about why but this isn’t really about puzzles.

The puzzle was of The Great Wave by Hokusai because if you’re going to gift someone a puzzle, it should be both beautiful and challenging.

Consider the blue. How many blue pieces are there in this puzzle? Consider the sky? What features distinguish one piece from another? Consider all that white at the crests of these waves?

In spending hours with these thousand pieces, fine distinctions emerge between what at first glance might appear to be identical pieces. And it is in this time spent, the duration of the act, that knowing occurs. And this knowing is really the whole of the joy of a puzzle.

Yes, it’s quite nice to have a finished picture and some people frame them when they’re done, but most of us simply leave them out on the table for a few hours or days, perhaps a week or two, before disassembling the puzzle and returning it to its box where it may remain for the rest of your life or until you give it away.

The result is not where pleasure resides. The finished product is simply the end of enjoyment. The game is over. We may leave the game out as a matter of pride, to honor the time spent, the beauty of the game, the bliss of doing, but a completed puzzle’s value only exists to the one who spent that time, to the person responsible for the doing.

A puzzlebox is an invitation. It tells you of the beauty you will eventually bring forth. And so you open the puzzle and find perhaps the least inviting sight possible: hundreds or perhaps even thousands of small irregularly shaped pieces. You dump the pieces onto your table or counter and spend some amount of time making sure they’re all face up. And then you begin the slow hunt.

A relationship forms between you and these pieces over the hours, the days, the weeks you slowly work away at this puzzle. You find connections first almost by accident, by sheer coincidence, and slowly these connections make more connections until the puzzle begins to emerge. But something deeper happens as well. You come to see the pieces. They stop being merely fragments of a whole but tiny characters in their own right. You begin to see the difference between two white pieces, between two blue pieces. Perhaps the shade is slightly different or perhaps one has a subtle gradient or perhaps, even, one shows the contrast between water and sky right there in the middle of the piece.

This is a knowing and it is a powerful experience.

No, not simply powerful.

Intoxicating.

This subtle seeing and knowing is what we hope to find and what you will find, when looking back upon such an experience, is that you have awoken what might be termed your sleeping mind or your unconscious, if we’re feeling Jungian or Freudian, assuming you know the difference.

You enter a different state of consciousness. An altered state. One where everything beyond the puzzle becomes other to you. Thoughts bleed and drift while your attention is pulled into the hunt. The inherent boredom of filtering through hundreds of puzzle pieces of indescribable shape opens you to this other state of existence.

It is a state of being and you got there through doing.

My aunt also informed me that the puzzle had a guide on the back of the pieces. She could not believe this and was very glad she did not discover it until she was nearly finished with the puzzle. You see, the puzzlemakers color coded quadrants of the puzzle to make it a bit easier. Presumably, to reduce friction and frustration, to speed up the time for completion.

It is a curious thing and I was surprised by how much my aunt was put off by such a thing. I was more surprised, however, by my own reaction to it.

Abhorrence.

It did not strike me all at once, like some emotions do, but was more like a swelling wave. The slow realization, the gradual accretion of loathing and revulsion.

You may be surprised by this reaction but I can only guess that you’re not much for puzzling.

It was as if the puzzlemakers did not even understand the point of the puzzle.

A puzzle is not a race. It’s not a task to complete.

A puzzle is the task.

While completing the puzzle fills you with satisfaction, perhaps pride, it is also where the fun stops. Where knowing and doing dissipate and dissolve and you are instead left with an object.

It is the manifestation of effort, of all this knowing and doing, but it also where all things cease and you return to your life, where the many responsibilities and anxieties return, where relationships tug on you, where time once again keeps its careful count of all your days, of all that must be done, of all that’s late or past doing.

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I was speaking with the only writers I speak with on purpose and they were telling me how deepseek is much better than chatgpt and that they have found a use for this in outlining. He uses it as a tool, or a potential one since I don’t believe he’s yet used one of these AI outlines.

But he uses it to save himself time, to complete the aspects of writing that he has no interest in. He doesn’t use it to write any of the story, no. But an outline. And then he picks and chooses what ideas, what prompts, actually seem worth pursuing.

I’m working on a longer article about AI with a more provocative title than this one and I’m also working on a book length nonfiction essay¹ which I keep forgetting to send out to publishers, but receiving my aunt’s texts about the puzzle crystalized something for me that I was not able to articulate properly with my friend via text.

I was talking with Stephen Graham Jones about this obliquely a bit yesterday for an upcoming episode in my podcast. I told him how I cannot outline because once the outline is finished, there’s no reason I can find in me to actually write the novel. Eight years ago, I wrote a very detailed outline with 30+ pages of worldbuilding notes where I described the geography, the cultures, the religions, and so on in minute detail. I was planning an epic fantasy trilogy and thought an outline would be the best way to begin.

Eight years have come and gone and I’ve written not a single sentence of that trilogy.

For me, writing is an act of discovery. If there’s nothing left to discover, I simply cannot bring myself to write.

This is a strange lesson to learn but it was an important one for me. You may outline and find great success in it.

We are simply not the same.

Neither is better since the only real measure is what works for you to get the words out, to get them down. Whatever works for you personally is the correct path to follow. I believe this firmly. It’s partly why it can be so difficult to give people advice about process.

What works for me may be the absolute worst process for you.

And so the use of AI, with all its promises and conveniences, simply has no interest for me. In truth, I’ve not used chatgpt or deepseek. I’ve never even been to their websites, and possibly even writing that sentence that way betrays how little I know about how to use these programs. I also just find their existence repugnant, but that’s neither here nor there, though I may explain someday soon.

But to me, the act of writing is the joy. Even the little things. Even the boring things. The pleasure of writing is in the doing. And if not for the joy, I would not write at all. It is found in the discovery, which is a type of knowing. And I do enter a different space, a different state of being while I’m writing.

I dissolve and disappear.

I’m not here.

I’m not anywhere.

All I am is these words, these visions, the images that I try my best to translate, that I try to keep up with, that I try to wrestle into words, into phrases, into language.

This is the ecstasy, the indescribable pleasure of writing.

It is not in the completed manuscript.

I have known many writers who will say some variation of, I hate writing but I love having written.

There are few things I understand less than this sentiment. Completing a story or a novel has its pleasures. There’s great satisfaction felt in the realization that you’re finished with something like this, sure. But when I finish writing a novel, after the too-brief moments of pride and satisfaction, I feel a holy emptiness.

This is a different state of being and one I actually do not much care for.

There is a silence within me.

It is a silence I crave. One I chase after ceaselessly. Yet one I cannot bear.

And the salve for this unbearable ache within me, this vast chasmic yawning, is to begin again with a new novel.

You may not believe me that I do not care about the result, the finished product, the book as product. But I don’t. I really and truly do not. To the extent I bother at all is because I would prefer to write than just about anything else and I would very much like many people to read what I have written and I would especially like for some day to no longer require a job outside of writing.

And so I go through the process of turning a novel into a book that you can hold in your hands.

But there is, quite honestly, no joy in this part of the process for me. But it is a means to an end, and that end is something I want.

But it is not something I need.

Writing, I need.

And I long, almost always, to return to that doing, to the beautiful instant when knowing strikes like lightning, when I become the fire itself, when I collapse into that other state of being.

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Consider this part two of my working theory of FRICTION. Read part one here:

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Free novels:

• Strong Female Characters

• The Hero’s Dilemma

• Dark SF

• Book O’Clock

• The Occult and Supernatural

• My Bloody Valentine

1. You can find fragments here and here