When I first strolled through my new house with the realtor, I noticed a lot of unfinished work. For example, the previous owner painted the barn to match the house but left the tip of the peak untouched. Support posts on the covered porch were all painted, except the top of one. It baffled me. Why wouldn’t she paint those spots? Higher areas, she’d painted.

I could tell she’s creative. Painted butterflies, hummingbirds, and flowers dotted the landscape.

Did I buy the house from an emerging artist?

The support beam in the new addition (living room) has pallet wood wrapped around two sides, with the third side only painted. Gorgeous wood frames the back mudroom ceiling except for one tiny missing piece. The underside of an outside railing has new paint, one bare space, then continues to the barn loft. Four solar motion detectors line the back fence, with one blacked out with tape.

After I moved in, the closer I examined small details, the more my curiosity piqued. What’s going on here? The previous owner clearly has a fondness for 3s (as do I). Or maybe, she knows the importance of the number 3.

The number 3 often appears in nature and fundamental structures:

• Atoms: protons, neutrons, electrons
• Dimensions: length, width, height
• Cycles: birth, life, death
• Time: past, present, future
• Essential survival needs: air, water, food
• Geometric strength: The triangle is the simplest and most stable shape — it’s represented in everything from molecular structure to human-made architecture
• Monocots: many flowering plants (monocots) have flower parts in multiples of three
• Tree structure: roots, trunk, canopy
• Primary colors of light: red, blue, yellow
• States of matter: solid, liquid, gas
• Layers of skin: epidermis, dermis, hypodermis
• Types of muscle: skeletal, cardiac, smooth
• Germ layers during development: ectoderm, mesoderm, endoderm
• Circulations: Systemic, Pulmonary, Portal
• Trinity: Earth, sun, moon… body, mind, spirit
• Genetic code: DNA instructions are read in triplets (codons) to build proteins
• Sensory Perception: Human color vision is trichromatic, based on three types of cones in the eyes sensitive to red, green, and blue light
• Survival “Rule of 3”: Humans can typically survive 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter in harsh environments, and 3 days without water
• Geographic regions: land, sea, air
• Insects: adult insects are characterized by a 3-part body: head, thorax, abdomen.
• Dietary groups: herbivores, carnivores, omnivores

The number 3 represents universal patterns of stability and completeness.

Did the emerging artist find comfort in the power of 3? The mystery haunted me as I surveyed my new property.

Then one morning, I was admiring the sunrise from the back mudroom, when I noticed she’d painted only three sides of a window frame. The floor she tiled, except for one square in the corner by the water heater.

A ha! It’s an intentional act. Her creative signature, if you will.

Kind of a pain for the new buyer (me) to touch up all these spots but I also respect her creativeness — she left her signature on every improvement she made. And helped create the quirkiness I love about the property.

To her credit, she also left the supplies to finish every project. Maybe I’ll leave one or two minuscule signatures in a corner that’s not visible to others, as an homage to her creative spirit. Not the living room beam — that blank side drives me crazy. What she probably never considered was that buyers deduct money from their offer for unfinished projects. It’s automatic. The more a buyer must do, the less they want to spend.

The same could be said for readers.

If a reader runs into too many writing tics, they’ll either:

• Never read that author again
• Deduct stars for the annoyance
• Give the author one last chance; they better deliver in the next book

Writing tics could be seen as a creative signature of sorts, I suppose, but not in a good way. Readers don’t want to be yanked from the story. They want immersion. They want you to sweep them away, to transport them into the scene and hold them captive. Writing tics do the opposite.

Even in my new home, some might look at the unfinished spots in a negative way. Not me. Though I’ll complete most of the projects for continuity, I love the quirkiness of the understated ones. With the mystery of why she did it solved, I appreciate her creative spirit.

The same cannot be said for writing tics. If you made no other writing resolutions this year, add this: Tighten your prose, TKZers!