When I was in the Netherlands, I read a newspaper story that introduced me to the idea of
email bankruptcy. The idea is this: With the inbox just becomes too full, you announce bankruptcy. You make an effort to repay your creditors, but many debts are forgiven, and then you start over from scratch. You're embarrassed, of course, and your credit rating will never be quite the same. But at least you won't stay up late at night thinking about how many emails you owe
Daniel Biss.*
Going through my inbox these past couple days, it seems that I have failed to reply to around 2,300 emails that deserved replies in the past year. I know we are all busy, and that it is exceptionally poor behavior not to reply to emails--and yet, somehow I have let it happen. This is not an "I'm oh-so-famous and all my millions of fans flood my inbox" problem. Many of the unreplied emails ARE about my books, but many are also about other things, including:
1. Very important correspondence about the "Looking for Alaska" screenplay.
2. Three dozen emails from my parents. (I'm sorry, mom and dad. I don't know what happened.)
3. Also several from Sarah.
4. A lot of emails about school visits.
5. A very intriguing email from my cousin Braxton in re. to the series finale of "The Sopranos."
6. At least two different emails from former girlfriends.
Friends, you know it is bad when I am not writing back my exgirlfriends. I ALWAYS write back my exgirlfriends. In fact, the only person I know who I DONT owe an email to is Hank, and that's because
he is not allowed to write me. So anyway, if I owe you an email, take solace in this: You are in the company of such great Americans as Maureen Johnson, David Levithan, and my mom. Also such great Australians as Justine Larbalestier.
So, here is what I have decided to do:
1. Over the next three days, I'm going to reply to as many of the 2,300 emails as possible. Obviously I will not be able to reply to all of them. And then...
2. As of Monday morning, I will officially be bankrupt. This means that if you are waiting for a reply to an email, you are strongly encouraged to resend the email. (More on that in a moment.) I'm very sorry about this, but it seems to me better than all the other potential solutions.
3. As part of the email reorganization, the contact page of this web site will be changed to reflect a new, more organized, more direct emailing system (also, I will update my bio for the first time in three years). The new email addresses will be by far the best way to reach me.
4. Moving forward, there are going to be emails that I just can't reply to. Not because there are so many emails, but because I am such an incredibly slow emailer. I am very sorry about that. Hopefully I can make up for it by devoting that time to writing books, which hopefully will suck less for having more of my typing time spent with them. Thanks for understanding.
* At least eleven.
POSTSCRIPT: Four seconds after posting this, I received an email from
Lindsay with the subject line "URGENT YOU MUST REPLY." It read, "What are your 20 favorite things about our friendship?" A minute after that, another email from Lindsay: "What is your personal philosophy on life (in 2000 words or more)."
