2019 Fellow and Edgar Award-winning novelist Caitlin Mullen reflects on working with her BookEnds pod.
I’d applied to BookEnds because of a problem I suspect afflicts 99 percent of recently-minted MFAs: I had come out on the other side of my degree with a novel I cared about but the work the novel needed had outlasted my time in the program. I wasn’t entirely prepared for how aimless I would feel without the structure graduate school had provided: deadlines, camaraderie, close mentorship that helped me navigate through the first three drafts of my book. I was working, but deep down I knew I wasn’t doing the kind of work that the book needed: the harder, gutsier revisions that wouldn’t just improve the novel, but that would transform it.
All of this changed when I started the BookEnds program and met my pod in person. During the program’s kickoff weekend in Southampton, Sheena Cook, Mike McGrath and I bonded over one another’s work, over books we all loved, over the writer’s conference craft talks and readings. And by the time we said goodbye we had firm ideas of the goals each podmate had for their novels and a schedule of work submission deadlines and video chats in our calendars.
And we treated those deadlines and meetings as inviolable. Over the next four months we FaceTimed every week for at least two hours, sometimes longer. We stuck with our schedule even when we had to work long hours on our day jobs, when we were tired or under the weather, when we felt swamped with family obligations, when we traveled internationally (during one particularly memorable meeting I joined from Dublin, Sheena joined from Edinburgh, and Mike from Portland, Maine.) We showed up not because it was an obligation, but because the process was working. Every time we ended one of our FaceTime sessions I felt buzzed: with the pleasure of my pod’s company, with their good ideas and their own commitment to their work.
It’s rare to have readers willing to return to your work again and again, who can assess it within the context of that novel’s past iterations and the context of each writer’s strengths and weaknesses, their influences and their goals. We came to one another’s work as advocates, but respected each other enough to be honest and clear in our feedback. And reading my podmates’ novels was both pleasurable and instructive: putting my editorial brain to work in service of their drafts helped me return to my own work with a sharper critical eye. Looking at novel-length manuscripts and their evolutions over these months hastened my understanding of my own project and its needs. A few months before BookEnds began, I wondered if I should walk away from my manuscript, stick it in the proverbial drawer and start something new. A few months in, with the help of Sheena and Mike and with my brain constantly humming with our weekly craft discussions and brainstorms, I could see the novel in its most fully realized form and finally, I understood exactly what I needed to do to get it there.
Halfway through my fellowship year my book was acquired by a big five publisher. I continued to work on it with my pod as I awaited an editorial letter from my new editor at Simon and Schuster, compiling their suggestions for future revisions. When my editor sent me her notes I found they lined up perfectly with the latest round of suggestions from my pod, which fortified what I already knew: that Mike and Sheena knew my novel intimately, that their suggestions were astute and rooted in the aims of my book, in the potential they saw in it, and in their belief in my ability to get the work done.
Publishing a book is certainly a gratifying experience in many ways but it also taught me that there is truth in what people say about the necessity of finding pleasure in the process—the only part of a book’s life cycle you have any control over. For me, working with my pod was one of the most singular and rewarding parts of that process. Sheena and Mike challenged me, made me a better writer, and made the book better in more ways than I can say, but it added something even harder to come by in the long and sometimes lonely path to publication: it was a necessary source of commitment, friendship and joy.
Caitlin Mullen earned a BA in English and Creative Writing from Colgate University, an MA in English from NYU, and an MFA in fiction from Stony Brook University. She has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Saltonstall Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center. Her debut novel, PLEASE SEE US, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.
