One of the challenges I’ve had in my writing is battling the feeling that I need everything to fit together.

Not in the sense that I need a perfectly-solved puzzle, but more that I at least need complete coverage. In my dreams, this would be a grand personal philosophy of life. Today, I was again reminded this is futile. For such a monumental effort, I would need an idyllic writers’ retreat, rather than how I currently write what I can, when I can.

So, I today reframed this project. While my grand ideas remain nebulous, I can still notice some areas where the little ideas coalesce. These are the anchor points for some eventual big ideas.

I picture this as beads on a string. Someday, the beads might form a beautiful, logical pattern. Right now, there are some pretty nice beads, and some placeholders. Some beads will need to be unstrung and reworked, maybe discarded. Some beads are just in the wrong order.

In the end, I’m not losing out by writing daily instead of constructing the big idea. I’m just working on my beads. As I finish them, I’ll occasionally know where they fit in the overall pattern, but usually I’ll just string them on as-is.

Someday I might be able to tie off the string, my work complete. I doubt it.