Date of Award

2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts in Writing

Department

Creative Writing

First Advisor

Michael Castro

Second Advisor

Eve Jones

Abstract

This thesis is a creative nonfiction piece, which uses e-mails between two people to create its text. It is in an epistolary style, which historically is a style in which letters, diary entries or newspaper clippings are used to construct a story. Epistolary (which comes from the word "epistle," or letter) novels often are used to show a developing relationship between people, which is precisely what the proceeding piece, See You Soon, aims to do.

The following document is constructed out of thousands of e-mails between the author and her now-husband. The e-mails were weeded through and woven together to create a singular piece, which ebbs and flows throughout almost two years of the characters' lives.

At the onset of the recorded online communication, the couple is in a long-distance relationship, after only dating for a few weeks. The piece ends with the letters written by each character to the other on their wedding day. The e-mails that bridge that great divide also bridge being on different continents, different careers, living situations, and emotional states of being.

The author of the piece worked for months gleaning the most pertinent and poignant information from thousands of e-mails from four different e-mail servers, in an attempt to create an epistolary story that not only dealt with romance, but the growing pains that come with graduating college and entering the real world.

As a result, this novella is a close look into the lives and minds of a young man and a young woman attempting to find their way in life and with one another. The following pages offer those candid inner-workings of a growing relationship through the medium of e-mail, which is unique in its immediate and constant communication between the two writers. This is a love story between two writers, and a glance between the lines of a young relationship.

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