Here is a link to a recent ABC news story that I think is touching and inspiring.

A soldier in the war started keeping a journal for his infant son. Six weeks after his son was born, 1st Sgt. Charles King was killed but through the words in his journal he’s left a legacy of learning.

Go check it out. For you journal writers out there it will inspire you to keep writing. For those of you who haven’t gotten around to starting a journal you wanted to begin, maybe this will be the little push that heads you in the right direction!

If you love this story, there is also a book published by the mom (Dana Canedy) called A Journal for Jordan, available through our bookstore.

(If you know of any other great books about journaling, please leave your recommendations here. I’d love to add more to the bookstore!)

Tags: journal, legacy, letters to children

Jake at Zoomdoggle is a guy who loves fun. He’s decided to spread the love by sending 1,000 love letters to total strangers. Randomly. And with verve!

Check out this news story about his project. It’s way cool. (Does anyone say “way cool” anymore or am I just really unhip?)

And to get Jake to send you a love letter, you can go read his post and leave a comment at Zoomdoggle.

Is there something wild and wacky you can do today by mail? What kind of letters can you send out to friends and family and strangers that will make someone smile.

Try at least one today. Just one!

Tags: fun, love letter, mail to strangers

My family gets Netflix and love it. The only really aggravating thing about Netflix is this little flap of paper you have to tear off and throw away leaving a reusable envelope you return your movie in. First of all, I have to say, “Yay, Netflix” for not double-enveloping in the first place. However, wouldn’t it be cool if there were something you could do to completely utilize ALL the pieces?

Sure you can recycle that extra piece of paper, but why not turn it into an envelope? You help save the environment and you can buy less envelopes to send your mail in.

My hat goes off to the clever folks at Netflix Origami! They’ll show you how to make the envelope I’m talking about. The next batch of movies we get in… you know what I’ll be doing!

Tags: clever, envelope, how-to, netflix, origami

The lovely and kind Mama Jamz pointed out to me the heartwarming program called Chemo Angels. This organization connects chemo patients with “angels” who send them weekly letters and small gifts in order to support them through the difficult experience of fighting cancer.

One must apply and be approved to be an angel, but what a fabulous program. If you’ve got the time and resources, I’d encourage you to apply. Think of the difference you could make! If you CANNOT join, then go over there and at least read the program and tell ten friends. Or send them a note of encouragement to tell them how awesome they are.

There is also an additional program you can find out about while there — the Senior Angels. This is the same type of program, but you would be writing people in nursing homes or those who are housebound. I wish I had known about this program when my grandmother was in the nursing home!

Mama Jamz, thanks again so much for telling me about this!

Tags: chemo angel, good deed, letter writing program, senior angel

Well, I recently read an article in which letter writing has been put on the endangered species list along with pit toilets, phone landlines, VCRs, swimming holes, honey bees and bowling alleys (among others).

They’ve listed hand-written letters as #9, but it’s interesting to read the whole list.

Now, you know what happens when something gets on an endangered list. People get nostalgic and rush out and start movements to create awareness. Can we be bold and energetic and keep letter writing alive? Can each of you influence one or two friends to write more letters? Let’s do it, let’s keep it alive.

Tags: death of letter writing, endangered species, letter writing, letters, lost art of letter writing, vanishing tradition

Do you have a New Year’s letter writing tradition? I’ve talked about Thanksgiving notes, Christmas newsletters and now it’s time to move on to what we can all do for the end of the year.

On New Year’s Eve, gather around with paper and pen and some drawing material for the kids. Have everyone sit down and write a letter to their future selves. You can talk about what your goals and ambitions are for the year, what you’d like to accomplish and, for fun, add some predictions in your letter about yourself (or others).

Put each letter in a separate envelope and mark them, “To be opened on New Year’s Eve 2009″. Pack the letters away with the Christmas ornaments so you won’t forget about them. When you get your Christmas stuff out for the following year, there they will be! Keep them on the mantle or somewhere handy until New Year’s Eve when you can open them and enjoy looking back through this handwritten portal to the past.

This is a fun exercise for family and friends to talk about what you accomplished in the future and to laugh over your “predictions” and to see what came true and what didn’t.

Try it out and let me know how it goes. Do you have any holiday letter writing traditions? Share your ideas with me!

(I also ran across a web site called FutureMe where you can do something similar, only by email.)

Tags: exercise, family, futureme, letter writing, letters, new year's eve, party game, time capsule

We’ve made it through to the last day of our ten-day challenge! I hope you found some of these challenges useful or interesting or helpful. After today we’ll be back to our regularly-scheduled programming.

This last challenge is dedicated to holiday thanks. It’s very easy in this busy time to forget to properly thank those who are generous to us. As I have said before, much of making letter writing easy is having some systems in place to create an environment that encourages jotting a note here and there.

For your holiday unwrapping, you use the standard trick that people use at bridal and baby showers. Have a designated note taker to record the gifts as they are unwrapped. Jot down the name of the person giving the gift, who it was given to and what the gift is. Add to the list all the money you received from cards that came before Christmas as well.

With this information you can quickly compile your thank you notes. Here is a very easy formula for building a thank you note. Modify this as needed:

Dear [Giver],

Thank you so much for the [name of gift]. I really love it. [insert one sentence to indicate how you'll use it or why you love it]. I appreciate your thoughtfulness and generosity.

Happy Holidays (or whatever expression you like here),
your signature

Here is why I recommend doing thank you notes this way. First of all, putting in the actual name of the gift and what you like about it personalizes the note so people don’t think you’re just sending the same canned message to everyone. Second it makes it look like you’ve taken time to actually think about the gift. You’re completing the circle of giving. You give a gift to me (an act of generosity) and I give something back to you (an act of sincere gratitude). It’s a closed circuit that leaves everyone feeling good about the interaction. Have you ever gotten a great gift that you didn’t write a thank you note for? I think it makes people feel a little crummy on the inside, so don’t let that happen to you!

Now for the big Christmas quandary. How do you thank someone for a gift you don’t really like? No problem. The thing about gifts is you’re thanking the person for their thoughtfulness, not so much for the item. So you can say, “thank you so much for the purple sweatshirt that’s two sizes too big and has battery-powered talking dinosaurs on the front that makes my hooters look twelve sizes larger than they actually are. It makes me so happy to know you were thinking of me.” Don’t ever, ever, ever say you love something if you don’t, but DO express how you feel about the person caring enough to buy or make you a gift.

Try to get your thank you notes out by the end of the year, but remember… it’s never too late to say thanks. Better late than never.

Tags: challenge, Etiquette, holiday mail, thank you notes, thanks

Letters are a great way to focus our thoughts and express our feelings in the calmness and comfort of our own environments.

Do you have an issue with someone that is unresolved? Something that should be said that hasn’t been said? Take today’s challenge as an opportunity to do just that.

Take a quiet hour with paper and pen and pour yourself out on paper. Don’t censor yourself. Commit to saying everything you want to say, but get it all out. This is not a letter to mail, but rather an exercise to focus your thoughts into a coherent message.

Later if you really do want to express yourself to the person, you can use this letter as an outline. Pull from it the important points for your “real” letter. Take this emotionally charged letter and draw from it the thoughts you want to express with tact, compassion and an appropriate level of energy. Remember that words on paper cannot be undone. Never send mail when you’re upset. Always wait 24-48 hours before sending an emotional letter on its way.

Some people say you should never put negative words into a letter, but I say it’s an important and vital part of our nature to communicate the good and the bad. The trick is how you do it. If you can follow the basic principals of human care and kindness, you won’t write a letter that’s a scathing diatribe to your mother-in-law. You’ll remember she is a person just like you and me (only louder and more bossy and opinionated and overbearing and superior to you in every way).

We’re nearly at the end of our challenge and it’s the season to be jolly! Is there anything weighing on your mind that will keep you from enjoying your holidays to the fullest? Explore this idea of making peace with yourself or with others.

Below are a couple of links for web sites that are in the spirit of today’s challenge. These can also be utilized in lieu of the challenge as described above. The point of these challenge days is to step out of our routines and try a few things that might be new to us. Enjoy!

PostSecret
Letters We Never Sent

Tags: emotional letters, healing, letter writing, letters, making peace, peace

As I wrote the title of this post I broke out into a little bit of and unladylike sweat. You might have broken out in a sweat reading it if you’re like me… miserably disorganized and lost in a whirlwind of swirling papers mixed with broken pens and crumpled candy wrappers. Hopefully you’re better than that and if you are I certainly admire you for it. (That is not to say I will not mock you now and again, but it’s really all in good fun and I don’t mean anything by it.)

I must say, though, there’s one thing I organize well — my letter writing stuff. I have a great setup for my writing stuff and also for letters I have received. Today’s challenge does not involve writing letters, but creating the best possible environment for letter writing. Doing that will make it easy for you to dash off notes on the fly, elegantly and easily.

All you need for this challenge is a small plastic tub or a storage box. It can be a shoe box, but I prefer one that will at least have an interior space of about 9×12. You can go with something smaller if you don’t use 8.5×11 paper for your writing. It’s nice to get something that will fit on your bookshelf for easy access. If it’s pretty all the better!

In the box you need to assemble the following things:

• 1-2 notepads
• handful of quarter-sized envelopes (4.25×5.5) and a handful of #10 envies
• a selection of blank or any-occasion cards with envelopes
• a selection of specific occasion cards if you like to use those
• 2-3 of your favorite pens
• an envelope containing a sheet of first class stamps and a sheet of postcard stamps
• a handful of attractive postcards
• address book or a sheet with a list of addresses
• optional: stickers, rubber stamps or other little goodies for decorating envelopes

This is everything you’ll need to write a letter at any given moment. The trick is to keep the box in a place that is easy to pull out and use. The other important thing is to keep the box stocked up! If you run out of anything in there, the system breaks down. You don’t want to have to go find something in the middle of writing. It breaks the flow.

The second thing I like to do is a mini-organizer that you can use as your traveling correspondence kit. What I personally use is a small canvas zippered notepad case that’s about 6×9. Inside it has a yellow notepad and a pen holder. There are pockets on the inside and outside. Be sure whatever you get has a zipper or very secure enclosure so nothing can fall out. It needs enough pockets for stamps, stickers, 2-3 quarter-sized envelopes, and 2-3 postcards. In this I also have a printed list of a dozen or so people I like to send postcards to when I’m traveling. I don’t like taking my address book with me on trips in case I lose it. The whole thing is about the size of a large-format paperback book, but thinner and fits great in a backpack or carry-on.

Once you get used to having both of these things, you’ll love it.

I like hearing how people organize the letters they want to keep because if you get lots of mail it quickly becomes a chronic problem. Many people use storage boxes and stack their letters in those which is fine. It keeps the dust out and they stack nicely. I personally don’t like that system because I like to periodically go through and look at letters I have received. (Like a pirate running her greedy fingers through that trunk of gold doubloons!) With the first system mentioned you have to open all the envelopes and unfold the letters to find what you’re looking for. To me it’s just an annoyance.

The letters I keep go into plastic sleeves (archival quality). I unfold them flat and staple the envelope to the back of the letter so that when I look at the sleeve the letter is face-up on the top and when you turn the sleeve over you see the FRONT of the envelope with the address, stamp and postmark showing. The great thing about this system is you can scan the first page of the letter without having to do anything. And if your correspondent didn’t put the date on the letter you can flip over to the back and see the date on the postmark.

I put all these in binders and keep them on the bookshelf. You can organized the binders in whatever way is comfortable for you. I keep Dad in his own binder and Mom in her own. Miscellaneous family members go in one binder together. Friends go in another binder and when those build up to multiple volumes they just end up being chronologically organized. If one friend writes enough she’ll eventually break out to her own binder and I’ll pull all her letters out of the group binder and keep them in chrono order in her new “home”.

You know, when I write it all out like this it sort of makes me sound a little bit compulsive, but it’s actually not as fussy as it sounds. If only you knew how unfussy I am. In fact, any friends of mine who might be reading this are probably laughing their heads off right about now. Like I said, this is the ONLY thing about me that is organized.

How do you organize your letter writing environment? I’m always looking for great new ideas. I hope you will share them with me!

Tags: challenge, letter, letter writing, Organization, simplify your life

Today is a big exciting day! It’s love letter day here at A Passion for Letter Writing. Sweep all those papers off your desk, roll up your sleeves, spritz a little bit of cologne behind your ears and get ready to go crazy. (Or as we say here in the south, “hog wild” but somehow saying it like that doesn’t really inspire the romance.)

For this challenge I have enlisted the help of a love letter writing expert: Edward, over at Love Letter Lane. Today he will be writing about the benefits of writing frequent love letters. I hope by the end of his post you will be inspired to write a love letter of your own for today’s challenge.

Here’s Edward:

It is amazing that such a simple gesture as writing a love letter could have such a profound impact on you and your true love. Not to mention all those that are watching you, observing your commitment to love.

Writing Frequent Love Letters:

• Builds excitement that’s not easily quenched. Each letter, when prepared with care, is like a surprise gift, tucked behind the couch just out of sight, that appeared out of nowhere on Christmas morning.
• Instills a joy that can endure the storms of life, and that can even place an upward curve on sweet lips that have been crying all day. A couple heartfelt words on a sheet of paper can work wonders.
• Recovers happiness lost during the clutter of busy days, screaming kids, yelling bosses, traffic jams, spilled coffee or whatever the crazy episode of the day happened to be. All the worries of the day melt away when you know someone loves you, no matter what!
• Creates hope even where hope never existed. A word of encouragement – a simple “I support you,” “We’ll get there together,” or “You can do it…” in a love letter can make you a believer.
• Produces a forgiving spirit out your commitment to write frequent love letters – a habit that will result in a desire to keep your relationship pure and free from bitterness and grudges.
• Encourages communication that results in a closer more intimate relationship; more meaningful conversations, more talking, joking and more laughing.
• Stirs passions resulting in more nights out together, more flowers with a note two pages long, more mornings with breakfast in bed, and more hugs and kisses with no prompting whatsoever.
• Cultivates trust and commitment that keeps growing stronger as you establish this excellent habit – writing frequent love letters.
• Promotes romance… more alone time, more tenderness, more compassion, more concern, more fun, and more tiny surprises for no reason at all.
• Dissuades wickedness by filling your heart and mind with love, tenderness, and compassion; leaving little and eventually no room for anything bad.
• Relieves stress by helping you to relax, laugh and maybe even to cry happy tears.
• Reduces fighting and tension by replacing those horrible, kill-joy, stress-creating parts of every relationship with patient loving conservations, prompted by a love letter. Who wouldn’t want to reduce or even eliminate, if at all possible, fighting and tension?
• Abolishes sadness with a few genuine words like “I love you,” “I’m here,” or “Just wait until you see…” – words that can change your mood instantaneously. Telling them you love them, sharing a happy note, or hinting to a fun surprise works every time.
• Eradicates loneliness with communication that’s sincere and hard to challenge. Commitment to sharing deep thoughts, concerns, worries, hopes, and dreams can only result in a closer relationship – not one that’s more distant.
• Dissolves boredom because writing and reading love letters is a fun and exciting activity that never gets old. You can easily spend a lifetime pursuing your lover’s ever-changing wants, needs and desires.
• Sets a good example for all those around you, who are watching you and your commitment to love. Your friends, relatives, neighbors and your children are watching you. This is your chance to be a good role model. As it’s been well said, “… good character is caught, not taught.”
• Endorses faithfulness by filling your heart, mind and soul with love for your one and only true love. And by committing to keep filling your heart, mind and soul with things that are lovely, and everything good.
• Deters deceit because it is hard to genuinely move in two separate directions at the same time. Perhaps some can, but even so, writing frequent love letters with words of love, compassion, hope, joy and happiness will eventually tug on the conscience, suggesting change.

If writing a love letter truly could produce that list of benefits, then why not invest even just 5 minutes a day and bring back the lost art, one letter at a time.

I made a personal commitment to write frequent love letters to my darling wife; to warm her soul, nourish her heart, to make certain she knows and feels my love, to add excitement, surprise, joy, hope, and everything good to her life.

I challenge you to do the same for your true love.

Tags: challenge, letter writing, letters, Love Letters, romance