Newsletter #2
| Excerpt from Colum’s second newsletter, January 2020: Of course there are no real beginnings—just as there are no actual endings. Most of my days are taken up with getting ready for the release of my new novel, Apeirogon, teaching at Hunter College (though they have generously given me this semester off), and working with my global non-profit Narrative 4. The novel is done and dusted. Just a few weeks ago I got my final pass pages and went through them with my editor, Jennifer Hershey. And that was it. All she wrote, as the saying goes. You can’t go back to the country that doesn’t exist anymore. It was odd to let the novel go. It will belong, soon, to someone else. I’ve been working on it for over four years and it feels like the only thing I’ve ever really done. Of course all novels should feel this way. You try to pour your heart and soul into them. You try to exhaust yourself. You come out on the far end and you think you’ll never be able to write another word again. And you also feel that you’ll be found out, you’re a charlatan, you never really knew anything at all. This is all part and parcel of the process. |
