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My Dearest Ms. Austen –
I hope this letter finds you well. Of course, you are dead,
so I’m not really sure how “well” you could be. But for a dead writer, I do
hope you are well. I hope your eternity is full of ink and quills and social situations
to poke fun of.
To start, I would like to comment on a hero from my favorite
of your beloved novels, one Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Good God, woman, could you have
created a more perfect man? You might already know this, but countless readers
have lusted after your Mr. Darcy…particularly when he’s portrayed by Colin
Firth on film. Yummy.
But I digress. Thanks for the high expectations. No woman
deserves less than a passionate, stubborn, very-nearly-insulting, and
intelligent man like Darcy, and no woman should settle for a man who brings
forth less passion within her. I have my own irritating and adorable Mr. Darcy,
and I wouldn’t trade him for the world.
More important than the dead sexy and very real Colin Firth
or the dead sexy and very fictional Mr. Darcy, I would like to mention the
nature of your words and your storytelling ability and how both of these things
heavily influenced the direction my life has taken.
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As a little girl, I loved to read and be read to, not unlike
many children; however, as I grew, I found that my passion for words stretched
far beyond just reading them. I had a writer’s heart: first kindled in a grade
school poetry competition, catching fire in an eighth grade reading of The
Diary of Anne Frank, and consuming my soul in high school with the works of
Hemingway, Lee, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, and, a favorite, Ms. Jane Austen.
Ms. Austen, you are just one of my many literary heroes.
Your words are just a few of the words that have touched me and molded me as a
writer over the years. I collect characters and phrases from you and others,
tucking them away like pieces of sea glass…to be used later, shining and
sparkling again in my own words and worlds.
And so I dream of you, of having an ounce of your talent, of
wielding a quill and a pot of ink as cleverly as you do. I dream of writing
words that move millions, that leave a legacy, that still have life centuries
after my death.
And of course, I dream of Mr. Darcy…
Sincerely and with great respect,
Ms. Kathryn Ross
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This letter was hand-written for the Lightning and Lightning Bug prompt: Letter Writing Campaign. We were charged to write a letter in 700 words or less to someone we'd never met. I was inspired to write to one of my literary heroes.
Which of your literary heroes would you write to if given the opportunity? What would you say?
If you'd like to join the Letter Writing Campaign, you have until Wednesday to linkup. Hope to see you there!
