A creative lady named Gina, left a comment on a blog I was reading and it was such a good comment about letter writing that I had to share it.
My good friend and I (she lives in another city) decided to write a letter once a month to each other for 6 months. We divided the letter into: what I’m thinking about right now….something interesting I heard lately…what new sensual experience we had (a bubble bath…a great dinner…some interesting recipe) …what we were reading or what piece of art we had stumbled upon we really liked….and a few other minor categories…. The only rule was, of course, we had to hand write it. It was a wonderful experience…my friend and I first off discovered we had never seen each other’s handwriting because we always email, message etc. As time went on…we often doodled or even colored the borders around the paper…just because it seemed it brought out the creativity in each of us. It was a wonderful friendship project and we learned so much about each other too.
One of the reasons this idea is so great is that it creates a structured environment in which to write a letter. Often people think their lives are boring or that they have nothing to say. This method actually tells you what to write about. It’s a perfect jumping off spot.
Why not try Gina’s cool idea? Get a friend to do it with you. Set up your categories to write about and then try it for a few months and see how it goes.
[photo credit: soartsyithurts]
Tags: idea, structure, suggestion, writing help
You know, it’s funny. I’ve been doing a lot of research lately because I have dedicated part of this year to bolstering my friendship with friends who now live all across the globe, but in a personal manner. Email is incredibly efficient, but nothing beats the feeling of pulling a personal letter out of the mailbox.
Finding good information on letter writing is incredibly rare! The best information I’ve found was from an old Dear Abby column, with verbiage and advice from when the thought of women wearing pants was titter-worthy.
I would LOVE to join the ranks of those battling to save the lost art of the letter.
…but it’s so hard to know what to write about in a letter! It’s surprisingly difficult to know what to talk about and how to say it – how do you write a letter without it rapidly turning into a long series of ‘me, me, me’?
I love this post – it helps answer that question admirably!
And I love this blog – I’m very lucky that I’ve found it, and thank you very much for your wonderful posts!
Tami’s last blog post..Once Bitten, Twice Shy
Hi Tami! Thanks for visiting! Keep coming back, there will be lots of letter writing fodder to come in the future. Have you seen some of the letter writing resources? If you want someone to send you mail, go check out PostCrossing or Send Something. You’ll find both of those in the resource section. Or if you want a traditional pen pal, try LEX!
I’ll definitely be coming back – I’ve got you on my feed reader so I don’t miss anything.
We’ll see how well my “year of sending letters to friends” goes – if I don’t get a penpal out of that, I will almost certainly be trying the sites you mentioned.
I’ve had a fun few days going through your site and your links. Now it’s time to put it into practice!
Tami’s last blog post..Letter Writing
Let’s all chant… GO TAMI, GO TAMI, GO TAMI, GO TAMI…
I’m in love with your site! I’m not even sure how I ended up here, following some random set of links, but I’m so glad I landed. I’m writing a blog post today about the dying art of letter writing. I’ll be back again and again!
Peggy’s last blog post..Feast of Color