anything goes: on fan mail

Every time I check my email, I thank God that I'm not JK Rowling or Stephenie Meyer. (Every time I open my checkbook, I kind of wish I were, but that's a different topic for a different day.) A few times a week, there's an email from a reader waiting in my in-box, telling me what she thinks of Story of a Girl or Sweethearts. And because I'm not JK or Stephenie, I can actually answer these emails personally.

Fan mail has come to mean more and more to me - not because it's an ego boost (though there's no denying it is) but because for me the process of writing a book isn't complete until someone reads it, and responds. It's true that I "write for myself" in that I would never even start a book unless it was a story I wanted to explore, but I'm not one of those writers who would write and write and write even if publication wasn't a possibility. A book is a conversation, an interaction. For me, a book isn't a book unless and until it evokes a response, and hearing some of the responses directly makes the process feel whole.

And the absolute best thing about teen readers who write to me is that they have no agenda (usually). Reviewers are writing a review for an audience, so the conversation is no longer about the book and the personal response. A review becomes another work and the critic, rightly, thinks on a broader scale about the work and the audience for the review and her own career as a critic and possibly her relationship with an editor waiting for that review. So, good reviews are great on a career level and they give your publisher something to stick on your book and press materials, but they generally don't move me. And, while mail from adult fans of YA or other authors is also great and opens up a different kind of conversation, the responses from teens are 99% about the story and the characters in the book and how and why they spoke to the reader. There are a lot of exclamation points and pleas for sequels.

It's a magical thing to know that the characters are as real to the readers as they were to me when I first decided to follow their story. Direct reader responses take a book out of the philosophical or academic or critical ether and bring it in close.; the relationship between a book and a reader is such a personal, intimate thing and it's an honor when a reader shares that experience with me. And I love how the Internet has made the link between reader and author so immediate. Some authors aren't crazy about being so accessible, but so far, I'm for it. Especially since it can take publishers months and months to forward reader mail sent the old fashioned way. How about you? Do you make yourself accessible to fans? Or, if you're a reader, what is it about a book that impels you to write to an author? Discuss.

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