As the new BookEnds cohort gets underway with podwork, 2020 Fellow Colleen Curry reflects on working with her pod during the fellowship. 

By the first time I met my BookEnds podmates in person, I’d already read their works in progress. I was so impressed — and intimidated — by how good their books were. I was so nervous to meet them. When BookEnds co-founder Susan Scarf Merrell excitedly introduced us at the Southampton Writers Conference, I realized how powerful it was to be introduced to writers through their work. Something formed instantaneously around us, something like being on a team, or part of a family. These were my people. I would root for every possible success for them, and help them achieve it — not because they were helping me in return, but because their work mattered to me.

During our fall semester, we meet biweekly for three-hour video calls, and in between those meetings, we Slacked — pretty much every day, nonstop, sharing all our ups and downs of the writing life. My BookEnds work was focused on revision — I had a lot of work to do on plot and scenes — but that fall with my pod was also about learning how to be a writer. When I started BookEnds, I’d brought a lot of my anxiety and insecurity into my work, and into my pod meetings. My voice was uncertain, on the page and on screen.

A few weeks into the fall semester of my BookEnds year, I sat down to work on my revisions and decided to check Slack before I got started. There was a barrage of messages waiting for me. “Guys,” April had written, “I’m alive, but barely.” An emergency doctor’s appointment had derailed her week, and her pages were going to be late. “But how are you guys doing? Hanging in there?”

This wasn’t unusual. We were all feeling the pressure of writing as fast as we could, with every ounce we had toward our submission deadlines while balancing jobs, parenting, illnesses, and the rest of the responsibilities of adult life. And this was all as the clock was ticking down to a global pandemic that we had no idea was coming. 

Jenn was quick to respond. She’d had a time like that, when she was struggling to balance workload and life, and she promised it would get easier. The fact that we’re writing at all through these moments is a testament to us, she said. “That gives me hope,” April had written. “Thank you so much, poddies.”

Jenn had been getting up before dawn for weeks to revise her novel’s structure, and she’d just cracked open a pivotal scene between two of her characters. “Heartbreaking,” she’d written. “I’m so proud of you,” April responded.

And then there were questions from them both: “How’s it going with you, Colleen???”

I had avoided responding for a few days — and I had been avoiding my book for more than a few days. Every time I sat down to rework a scene, or write a new one, I was flooded with doubts: Was the work ever going to be good enough? Was I smart enough to actually pull this off? Had I read enough good books? Did I even know how to write?

I reread our messages a few times, noticing the effect they were having on me, the sense of comfort and solidarity and inspiration from a few brief messages. I wrote back to my podmates, and then I turned to my work, buoyed, ready to tackle my revisions.

Each time I submitted work, Jenn and April arrived to our meetings with pages and pages of notes — careful, gentle, thorough, brilliant insights into what I was trying to do and how I might try to do it more effectively. They spoke to me like friends, but also mentors who had read and written a little bit more than I had, who had seen some writing tics and could tell me how to get rid of them, who could point me toward authors who might help me figure out a better way to show what I was trying so hard to show. And they shared their struggles, their worries about their work, about their books, about how to fit writing into their busy lives. And slowly I began to see that I could write — and not only that, but I could revise, work hard, and fit writing into my life. As the weeks went by, I grew more confident. With their support, I realized: Hey, maybe I can actually do this.

Then the pandemic happened, and our already intense year received an enormous, world-altering shock. Susie and our other BookEnds co-founder, Meg Wolitzer, swooped in with heroic, superhuman support: our cohort met weekly to talk about how to proceed — and sometimes, how we just couldn’t proceed at all. And all the while, Jenn and April kept Slacking, kept texting, kept checking in with updates. Life got even crazier for all of us, writing became even harder, but somehow, we made it through our year with manuscripts that were ready for agents to read. More than that: we made it through with a new support system for our writing lives. 

It’s been nearly three years now since April, Jenn, and I first started our work together, and we just met a few weeks ago for a video chat about Jenn’s latest stories. It’s such a joy to continue reading her characters after so long. This time when we met, I wasn’t anxious or uncertain. I was excited to see my friends, and to spend a couple of hours together talking about writing. As long as we’re all writing, and reading, and Slacking about it, there’s too much to be grateful for to waste time worrying. That goes for the writing, too. I don’t show up to the page worrying anymore, at least not the way I used to. I can do this work. I have enough supporters in this program who have told me that — over and over again, for years — and I’ve decided to believe them. 

My BookEnds book is on its way. It was like a little egg back in 2019, a fragile egg I was carrying around very carefully trying not to break. It took awhile for me to realize that I had to break it in order for the thing inside to emerge, to grow into the thing I wanted it to be. There was no better nest than my little pod. It transformed my relationship with writing, and with myself. 

Colleen Curry was a BookEnds fellow in 2019-2020 and is working on her first novel.