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Puzzles

PuzzleNo doubt I’m not the first to compare writing a novel to working a puzzle. The difference between a jigsaw and book, however, is that a jigsaw comes in a box with a picture to guide you, and someone has provided the precise pieces to fit together. The puzzle of a novel, by contrast, is a wild amorphous thing that rarely lies flat on the table and is just as like to have a piece of cheese mashed in where a corner piece belongs.

I feel, these days, like a puzzle maker and a puppet master combined. I’m looking at the sections I’ve written already, trying to see how they fit together, and knowing I need to invent new sections that exist currently only as foggy, lurching, recalcitrant entities around my ankles.

Still, I’m happy. It’s my puzzle, mine alone, and I can tinker with it as the daylight fades and the leaves outside blow their wistful, golden shapes about the yard.

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Caragh's Latest Favorite Reads

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Every Day
The Dog Stars
The Reinvention of Edison Thomas
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
The Fault in Our Stars
Two of a Kind
Until It Hurts to Stop


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Book Trailer for Promised