[2023-06-28] Epistolary writing
When I was in elementary school (or perhaps it was high school), I had a pen pal somewhere in Europe. I don't remember much about the arrangement, as our correspondence consisted of one letter—the one I wrote to her. I don't believe that I ever received one in return. Perhaps that was the original form of ghosting—an unrequited letter.
When I went to university and met a friend through a summer job, I started exchanging letters with her. She wasn't strictly a pen pal, since we did get together face to face; however, during the school year, when I was busy with classes and assignments, letters became our primary means of communication. It suited us. Like me, she had studied journalism. Like me, she loved to write. Like me, she was willing to pour out her thoughts on paper, whether in a journal or a letter to a friend. But unlike me, she was older, almost 20 years my senior. She was of a generation that wrote letters, in flowing cursive. I was inspired (even if I typed mine).
And then came years of working and raising a family. I had little time for letters, to say nothing of journaling. But 20 years into my career, with my children now in their mid-teens, I once again found a few hours every week to write. This time, it was in the form of blog posts that were originally written as a means of communicating with my staff. Over time, they evolved into articles about how to succeed at work. Almost ten years later, however, my workload became all-consuming and Café Jen went on a permanent pause.
Four years after that, cancer arrived in my life. Once again, I turned to blogging as a means of keeping my employees informed of my treatments and progress. As with Café Jen, my second blog evolved. Increasingly, I thought of my Jenesis posts as letters to my children, tagging my associated social media posts with #legacy in addition to #OvarianCancer. The focus of my second blog expanded to include ideas about how to succeed in life.
What I have found is that blogging offers distinct advantages over having a pen pal. The posts can still be personal and even written with a specific person in mind, but they can also be shared with many people at once. Even if 99% of my readers never respond to a given post (like my European pen pal), there is always that 1% who do. I put my thoughts out to the world, and someone sends a thought back to me. It's like launching a paper boat on a stream and having another paper boat come back in its place. Sometimes, a whole fleet of paper boats arrive. Figuratively, I tuck a thank you into every boat and send them back the way they came.
What's more, the 1% of people who respond is always changing. Some readers write often, others on a fixed schedule, and others still when they are moved to share a thought. One friend writes every month or two, and always sends the most delightful, compelling and fresh emails. I said to him today:
It's no wonder that people's letters make such good books. When you write for a specific person, you can be more authentic and focused than when you try to write to satisfy a large audience. Your letters (ok, emails) to me are so beautiful and thought-provoking. They're like a really good song that gets into my mind and body and makes me feel good for having absorbed it. It's so intimidating to think about writing a book (I haven't started my book yet), but it's much less daunting to think about writing one letter to one person. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it's in that freedom that we often find that what we've written is perfect, or darned close to it.
My friend's letters to me are the kind of correspondence that would be at home in an epistolary novel or work. I didn't know a word existed for such creative outputs until I looked it up tonight and discovered epistolary ("of, relating to, or consisting of letters"). My friend's letters are filled with personal stories, observations on life, and cool cultural references. Today, for example, he asked "do the dead know they are dead, or is it the living that suffer in the afterglow of their absence?" Secretly, I hoped that my reference to books containing a series of letters would inspire him to write. The world needs to hear the things he has to say.
Perhaps the kind of writing one can do when communicating privately with one person is so raw and personal as to leave the author exposed if such letters were published in real time. Maybe publishing letters, texts and diary entries after the author is gone or when the author can remain anonymous strikes the right balance between exposing the naked writing while protecting the naked writer.
When I have quoted others in Jenesis, I have made efforts to protect the person behind the pen. When they sent me their views or chatted with me, they were not expecting that I would share their thoughts more broadly, at least not attributed to them. Often, I'm captivated by a touching story or an original turn of phrase. Today, for example, our Uber driver used an expression that made me laugh. (I know—it's not in the form of a letter, but I really like this story.) He told us that he had been in Canada for only six months, having accompanied his wife on an educational sabbatical. I asked him what he thought of Ottawa's winter. He said he loved it because he likes the cold, in contrast with the unending heat and humidity of Bermuda. He explained that he took full advantage of winter, going skiing and skating. "And I shoveled my driveway like a five-year old," he added. I could immediately picture the childlike glee with which he shoveled snow.
To the bloggers, diarists, poets, essayists and letter writers—to all the chroniclers of life—I salute you. And to the aspiring writers, I encourage you. Writing a letter to a friend (real or imaginary) may be the easiest and best writing you've ever done.
