Looking for a direct line to your character’s innermost thoughts? In our world of digital noise, it can be overwhelming all the time, never mind when you need a quiet moment to tap into the voice of your writing project. In our guest essay this week, Amy Shearn, author of the forthcoming novel, Dear Eda Sloane, discusses how writing in letters can unlock creativity for the writer and offer the reader a sense of intimacy and connection.
Our lives are, these days, epistolary. We text; we message; if a phone rings we wonder, did I really leave my ringer on?, and, dear god who died? While I’ve heard people complain about the app-messaging elements of modern-day dating, personally I enjoy it – finally, a social setting in which writers can shine! Because for all of our hand-wringing about the decline of literacy, we’re awfully, well, literate these days, aren’t we? (Or perhaps that’s just me being overly optimistic. <Thinking face emoji>)
I’ve always been epistle-forward – the type of teenager with literary pretensions who wrote florid long-hand letters to similarly missive-minded friends; the kind of adult who corresponds via postcard with a dear friend who lives, well, in the same city as me. Often we can express things in letters that are too much for text, too little for literature, and too hard to communicate in person. It’s one reason we – okay, I – love to read collections of letters written by favorite writers: that intimate glimpse into how a fascinating mind works when it’s not dressed up for public consumption. Think of 84, Charing Cross Road, the novelist Helen Hanff’s charming collection of letters with a bookseller, which should by no means work as a page-turner (or film!), but absolutely does.
And yet, before I started writing my novel Dear Edna Sloane, I never planned to write an epistolary book. This story just kind of came out that way. Really it started with a voice – Edna’s voice – so clear and ringing in my head I had to write it all down. I even started an email address for her, and emailed parts of the first draft to and fro, on my commute to my day job at a publication, or (apologies to my former colleagues) during particularly mind-numbing meetings. The character of Edna – a battle-weary author writing about her escape from the publishing trenches – was like a wise but no-nonsense imaginary friend, during a moment in my life when I felt so creatively parched and personally withered that I desperately needed someone to pop in and say, “Hey, look, it’s not just you, other people feel this way too, have felt this way before, have gotten past it…”
This is what strikes me again and again about the epistolary book – whether you’re writing one or reading one, it is literally (almost) a form that grabs you by your collar and talks right into your face.
As a bonus, because it is so much about voice, the epistolary novel can also be the funniest kind of book there is. There aren’t many novels that have made me actually laugh out loud, but two of the few are epistolary: Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go Bernadette and Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members. The form lends itself to horror, as well – Frankenstein and Dracula are both epistolary (who remembered that, right?), as are sections of Stephen King’s Carrie. It’s a connection that’s maybe not as weird as it sounds. I’ve often thought that horror and comedy are quite related – it’s that business of turning reality on its ear, transgressing norms, seeing things in a skewed way.
Maybe this urge to look at reality in a slightly altered light is why some of the earliest novels were epistolary – Aphra Behn’s saucy Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister is a kind of ur-romance novel, titillating 17th-century readers with the titular taboo dalliance; Pamela, that 1740 banger by Samuel Richardson, is preoccupied with transgressive sexual desire and/or nightmarish sexual harassment, depending on your perspective.
There are lots of lustful men corrupting innocent women in these early epistolary novels, which, now that I think of it, is a plot point in mine, too. As scholars have pointed out, early novels, especially this “amatory” genre, were a way to explore women’s senses of curiosity about themselves, romantic relationships, and sexuality; the epistolary form is primed to express inner, private thoughts. As I was writing mine, I hadn’t really thought about the uniquely female elements of the form, to be honest, but yes, I am interested in (is that even the word? “Fascinated by” maybe, or “obsessed with”?) in women’s innermost thoughts about love, sex, and self. And it’s not just me – this continues to be a lot of what novels plumb.
The epistolary form generally gets us closer to the heart of the matter than a more mediated, artful narration. Don’t get me wrong, there is art in the epistolary novel, and like with any text that seems breezy and effortless to read, that smooth surface is hard won – it takes a lot of crafting to get to something that feels uncrafted. But there is also an immediacy that can allow the writer – and therefore, the reader – a unique way into the story. The more traditional novel is a magic trick, wears a costume, plays with smoke and mirrors. I’m not being critical; I love them, too! But let’s admit that they try to cast a spell, to spin an enchantment. Not so with the epistolary form – it’s always text on the page, speaking plainly, calling attention to its own simple word-ness.
After all, an epistolary novel speaks directly to the reader, broadcasting directly from the character’s interiority. Maybe this is why I was drawn to write one in this particular moment; things were such in my personal life that I felt capable of nothing less subtle than a primal scream. And perhaps I’m not the only one who feels this way? My novel joins a smart contemporary cohort: Rachel Cantor’s Half-Life of a Stolen Sister; Nicholas Binge’s Ascension; not to mention the loads of romance and YA books that play with the form.
Sometimes, as readers, we need a book to tell us, “Hey, look, it’s not just you…” Right now, in our media landscape of 80,000 voices all shouting at once, in our days teeming with feeds and branding attempts and scatter-shot announcements, we just want someone to talk to us. A friend sharing “personal news” hits different when encountered communally, posted online rather than told to you across a table or scrawled upon a sheet of paper written for an audience of one.
There’s such intimacy in the bespoke message, an intimacy we don’t often encounter these days (even in, I admit it, dating apps, where you can get the sense sometimes that someone’s vaguely dusty-feeling banter might have been cut-and-pasted from an earlier attempt). Perhaps this is why, despite the preponderance of written language in contemporary life, the epistolary novel feels, to me anyway, more necessary than ever.
Talk to me, novel. Characters, tell me your secrets. Let’s curl up together and pretend it’s just the two of us.
Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the novels How Far Is the Ocean from Here, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and Unseen City. She has worked as an editor at Medium, JSTOR, Conde Nast, and elsewhere, and her essays have recently appeared in the New York Times Modern Love column, the anthology The Lonely Stories, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Amy has an MFA from the University of Minnesota. She lives in Brooklyn with her two children.
Note: We have a new workshop that has begun on our other Substack! It’s a personal essay workshop with Andrea Firth. First four lessons are totally free, with two out already:
And here are 6 Indie Presses Looking for New Writers (I think most of them are open)
The Unnamed Press
The Unnamed Press is a leading independent publisher of fiction and non-fiction, based in Los Angeles and founded in 2014. Our books represent a diverse list of voices—ones that challenge conventional perspectives while appealing to a broad general audience: exciting, radical, urgent. We nurture emerging talent and partner with more established authors to help their platform grow.
Moonstone Press
Incorporated as a 501©3 non-profit corporation in February 1983, Moonstone Inc. was established to manifest the Robins’ belief that learning is a life-long activity and that art stimulates both cognitive and effective learning at all ages. The Moonstone Press publishes poetry anthologies from our group readings, poetry books and chapbooks by emerging and established poets.
Copper Canyon Press
Founded in 1972, Copper Canyon Press is a nonprofit, independent poetry publisher based in Port Townsend, WA. We believe poetry is vital to language and living. Copper Canyon Press publishes new collections of poetry by both revered and emerging American poets, translations of classical and contemporary work from many of the world’s cultures, re-issues of out-of-print poetry classics, anthologies, and prose books about poetry.
Broadstone Books
An independent press based in Frankfort, Kentucky. While specializing in poetry, we publish works in a variety of genres, from both established and emerging writers.
Tupelo Press
An independent, literary press devoted to discovering and publishing works of poetry, literary fiction, and creative nonfiction by emerging and established writers
Green Ink Poetry
Started in 2019 as an entirely digital free press, Green Ink Poetry has been an escape from the regular world, focusing on the depth of natural environments - and how they form the background to our core memories. In 2021, we started a regular print collection that follows specific themes, and have been honored by the trust placed in us by our community of outstanding writers. We aim to be the home for celebrating wild weather, deep roots, and green hearts, where the inherent magic of green spaces is put on a pedestal - as well as featuring new and unheard writers exploring connections to their environments.
Thank you for giving this piece a home! Let's all write epistolary novels, they are so much funnnn
Loved this and I learned stuff!