Who is Mrs. Dogood?

The original Mrs. Silence Dogood is a pseudonym used by Benjamin Franklin. He created this character, a middle-aged woman of moral virtue, expressly for the purpose of writing letters to the editor of the New England Courant.  Franklin wrote as Mrs. Dogood, “I am not without hopes that communicating my small stock in this manner, by peace-meal to the publick, may be at least in some measure, useful.”

This Mrs. Dogood is Erin Foster, also a middle-aged woman (but if 40 is the new 30, then I’m a young woman). I strive for moral virtue, but readily admit to falling short of the mark with alarming regularity. I will chronicle here my attempts to communicate to the public in the form of letters to the editor. I hope you find it, in some measure, useful.

Here are the ground rules:

1.    My letters to the editor must be real, or at least real-ish. I’m not going to make up opinions or take a stand in order to facilitate publication, though I may, from time to time, exaggerate for effect, just a little. And unlike good old Ben, I have to use my real name. Most places won’t publish anonymous or pseudonymous letters.

2.    I must actually send the letters. The goal is to get as many letters published as possible. I’ll be exploring the criteria that different types of publications use to select the letters that they print (or not print, as the case may be).

3.    Letters to the editor will only count as such if there actually is an editor. Posting random comments on a website doesn’t count. There has to be a human reading the letters and making a selective decision about what to publish.

4.    I reserve the right to digress. Along the way I expect that I’ll explore the history of letters to the editor, share some favorite letters I happen upon, and discuss general strategies for letter writing.

Why Write Letters to the Editor?

There’s two-pronged answer to this obvious question, one noble and one not so much:

-    Noble: Writing letters to the editor is a time-honored way to communicate with the world at large. Notable figures ranging from George Bernard Shaw to Barack Obama have used letters to the editors of newspapers and magazines to correct the record, take a stand, show support, protest, or praise journalistic content. The US Constitution protects the freedom of the press, but the letters to the editor serve to protect the freedom of the people by keeping the foibles and follies of the press in check.

-    Not So Noble: Getting letters to the editor published is fun stuff. Seeing your name in print, um, yes please.

So how did I get here?

At various points I have been gainfully employed, or at least gainfully occupied, as a writer. In my junior year of college, the Publisher of the well-respected daily campus newspaper, a male friend of mine, asked me if I wanted to be a senior editor of the paper. Prior to this invitation, I had only ever written two articles, so I suppose it should have occurred to me that this friend might have had an ulterior motive or two, but at the time all I thought was, “I must be the most happening writer going. Of course I should be an editor.” This male friend is now my husband, so I suppose his tactics worked, but that’s a story for another day. (We’re going to set aside the ethics of all this for now.)

Being an editor gave me license to publish just about anything I wanted in my section, Arts & Entertainment. So I took this license and decided to publish plenty of articles by my favorite author, me. I had modest success with a weekly column called “Fostering the Arts.” My last name is Foster. Get it? I went from being a totally unknown figure around the quad to an moderately, sort-of known figure around the quad. People would stop me to talk about my writing. Professors would ask ME questions. Seeing my name in print was woooo who whooo awesome. I had the bug.

And, yay me, out of college I was hired as a writer for my first real job. Only this particular writing was not nearly as satisfying as printing whatever the heck I wanted for the school paper. My job was to write marketing materials, brochures and catalogs, primarily for firms in the financial services industry. Hey, if you happened to get a loan from the Prudential Home Mortgage Company in the late 1980s, chances are that your welcome packet was written by yours truly. That’s OK; you can hold your applause.

Long story short, out from under the wing of my main squeeze, my writing career crashed hard. I didn’t understand financial services. I didn’t like writing about financial services. I was bad at writing about financial services. Really bad. And I got fired.

Let’s just say that I didn’t handle the rejection very well. To save face, I moved on to other opportunities (a job, grad school, another job, another grad school). But that writing bug wouldn’t die. Several years later, I started hanging out in the periodicals section at Barnes & Noble, flipping through titles like Writers Market and Writers Digest. Purchasing these magazines was vaguely embarrassing in a those-who-can’t-do-read-about-it-instead way. Eventually I started purchasing said magazines, buried in a stack of respectable choices like The New Yorker and Consumer Reports. I finally figured out that I could just subscribe and only my mailman would know what a poseur I was.

I practiced the writing guide helpful tips: use punchier verbs; edit, edit, edit; write what you know. Most of this was useless, but one suggestion did resonate. It was in an article about building your confidence as a writer. The suggestion was to write letters to the editor of your favorite publications. Doing this would give you experience writing succinctly, plus there would be the added boost of confidence you get if your letter published. The theory was that it is easier to get a letter published in a decent publication than it is to get an article or short story published. They seemed to have a point, and really, who couldn’t use an ego boost. So I gave it a shot, and what a boost it was.

My first attempt was published in the New York Times Magazine.

The article I read was “There’s No Place Like Work,” by Arlie Russell Hochschild. It ran in the April 20, 1997 edition. My letter ran on May 11, 1997.

Other letters and other publications followed. I was hooked.

Anything else?

When I’m not Mrs. Dogood, I’m a stay-at-home mom of three preteen daughters and am an active volunteer in my community. In my not-so-spare time, I do freelance writing for the website of a Great Big Media Company. Said Great Big Media Company is quite keen on making sure that people know that while I do some work for them, I do not actually work for them.