How To Not Write An Email

To send the email or not to send it, that is the question

Illustration by the author.

Everyone has a used book store tactic, right?

Mine, ordinarily, is to scour the shelves for books of letters. Anyone’s letters will do; I don’t care if I’ve ever heard of the person. I fell in love, first, with John Steinbeck’s, and moved on to love Virginia Woolf’s and Flannery O’Connor’s and Anais Nin’s (duh), then started reading weird dusty old religious relics that NO ONE COULD UNDERSTAND.

The thing I love most about letters is when they’re accidentally brilliant. Letters aren’t trying in the same way as things designed for earnest publication. Letters are trying just for one person. And since their aim is so narrow, the writer of the letter is usually passionate, and does not, for the most part, hold back. This is charming to me, and it also feels sort of deliciously voyeuristic.

I am guessing that my early love of epistolaries turned me into a certain kind of emailer. You know my type without me having to say it, right? OK fine, I’ll say it: I send you emails that you either hunger for or dread, depending on your (usually gendered) disposition. I am of the 1,200-words sect. I say “I love you” for the first time via email; and “I hate you” for the first time via email; and for most of my life, I’ve tried to deal with all…