Related Video: When To Take Down Your Online Dating Profile

If we applied the rules of acceptable online personals etiquette to three-dimensional behavior, the world would be a rude and confusing place. Imagine walking up to someone in a bar, or at your local gym, saying hello to them, then having them look you up and down, turn their back on you and start talking to someone else. Of the 19 men I contacted over the course of the past year, eight of them simply didn't respond to my messages. At first it was hard not to take the rejections personally. But, as I gained more experience and the tables began to turn (of the 135 men who contacted me, I simply didn't respond to 90 of them), I came to understand that the reasons for ignoring someone online range from non-attraction to just being too busy to take down an outdated profile. I didn't disdain any of the men I ignored; I simply didn't feel that elusive two-dimensional spark. And given the choice between sending a polite rejection letter and simply not responding, the latter seemed like the more sensible thing to do.

Over the next few months, I went on seven first dates that went nowhere fast. I received four "winks." I ignored six men. Four men ignored me. Then, as winter gave way to a glorious spring, I experienced my first sustained epistolary romance. I received a lovely note from a fellow writer. Within nine days we had exchanged 57 emails.

Letters have always been my preferred literary form. As a reader, I've gobbled up numerous collections, from Jack Henry Abbott's letters to Norman Mailer, to The Letters of Kingsley Amis, to the legendary courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. As a writer, some of my best work is nestled within the hundreds of letters I've written over the years to my teachers and friends. Freed from the constraints of narrative structure, letters are places where we can experiment with our writing styles, make passing cultural observations, and record personal thoughts without regard for a wide readership.

The sheer volume of the correspondence between Barrett and Browning was inspiring to me when I first signed up for online dating. Over the course of a 20-month courtship, these two poets exchanged 574 letters. (The Victorian penny post was remarkably efficient, creating an effect not unlike modern-day email, with one to three exchanges taking place on a daily basis.) Barrett and Browning corresponded for four months before they ever met.

Their intimate, detailed letters created a deep and abiding love that was impervious to the obstacles the couple might face in reality. The writer I began corresponding with was newer to the personals than I was. He was protective of his anonymity, and interested in exploring the medium for as long as possible. "I can't quite resist the possibility of meeting first this way," he wrote. "The first time I see you, I'll already know something about you that everybody doesn't, and you about me. The dramatic possibilities are infinite." I couldn't have agreed more. For three weeks we kept our correspondence confined to Nerve's anonymous little message boxes.