As a Man of Letters, I Have Strong Opinions on Newspaper Editors

I remember it well. It was during a leisurely cycle to the Phoenix Park one sunny morning in 2010 that a perfectly formed "letter to the editor" arrived unbidden into my head. When I got home, I typed it up and sent it off to one of the national newspapers. It was the first time I had ever done such a thing.

I checked their letters page for several days afterwards. Even though my letter remained unpublished, a dam had burst. What prompted me to take that road I still don't know, but my urge to opine became insatiable. Before I knew it, letters to the editor were hatching in my head at all hours of the day and night.

Following more attempts over the next few weeks I finally had a letter published. It proved a thrill to see my viewpoint in print. My mildly contrarian missive set me on course to become 'Disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells' (via Dublin). It was in the early stages, but I was well and truly bitten by the letter-writing bug.

In the early stages of Saul Bellow's novel Herzog, the eponymous hero - in the throes of a mid-life crisis - exists in a feverish state, constantly composing letters in his head to friends, family and famous figures. Herzog is an unhinged creature, babbling in his addled brain all the livelong day.

Let it be a warning to others: this is how you will end up if you acquire a taste for writing letters to the papers. You'll become opinionated on all manner of topics, a jack of all subjects. And what a Herculean task it can prove to be. Not all letters arrive perfectly formed. You'll sweat blood at times to voice your views.

There's a scene in Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway where Lady Millicent Bruton with the aid of Hugh Whitbread, "who possessed the art of writing letters to The Times", sets about writing a letter on emigration. The scene takes place postprandially, and the pair do indeed make quite a meal of it.

As Lady Bruton makes clear, one letter to The Times costs her more to organise than an expedition to South Africa. And even after all his efforts "reducing Lady Bruton's tangles to sense, Hugh could not guarantee that the editor would put it in". Later in the novel it is caustically remarked by another character that letter-writing is all Hugh is fit for. On my bad days, I have the same opinion about myself.

While I haven't been keeping count, I must have had at least 50 letters printed in newspapers since my first attempts in 2010. It's a compulsive activity which if you're not careful can become all-consuming. And here I must reveal what I believe is the frequent letter-writer's dirty little secret: for every letter published, he or she has sent numerous missives that did not make the cut. In my own case, the brook in my brain keeps on babbling whether my letters are printed or not. Editors clearly have different tastes. One man's meat is another man's poison. On one occasion, a letter I had rejected by one newspaper became letter of the week in another, framed in its own special box on the letters page.

The lesson is, believe in yourself and never give up. Otherwise, don't write that first letter, for you may never be able to stop. Happily, I note epistolary novels are generally well received with some selling by the bucketload. On my good days, I tell myself that my letters to the editors are simply the groundwork for my magnum opus.

© Brian Ahern 2015