I was recently reading this post on the postal service rate increase coming up. Personally, I always hate to see it, but know it’s a necessary evil of the times.

However, this article in particular was really depressing. They said the effects of the rate increase are a “drop in the bucket”. I own my own business and it’s second nature to me to automatically think about how I could improve and optimize anything related to my business and this habit also slops over to other people’s businesses too. (And unfortunately results in me handing out a lot of unsolicited advice much to my husband’s dismay.)

So, I was thinking, what could be done to save the post office in this changing world of mail? There is an evolutionary turn happening in that industry and I thought about several things — first of all the future of letter writing if the post office is in serious trouble and second, what would I do if I was in this type of business? It’s not a simple fact of just changing some business practices… the real problem is that if you don’t have a crystal ball, how do you know how to evolve your business when your entire industry is flipping on its axis?

It’s a really tough question! Maybe we need to come up with some of our own ideas. We can march to Washington with our list and wait outside the Postmaster General’s office. It may take letter writers to save them.

What should they do? How about:

1. Celebrity endorsements like the “got milk?” campaign. Good grief, if drinking milk can be made to look cool, how hard could it be to make letter writing cool?
2. Create a more profitable division of the USPS such as a product division where you can have a lot of low wholesale cost, high profit merchandise. This has been done to a small extent, but not done nearly as well as it COULD be.
3. Have you noticed how well the U.S. Mint is doing? Take a clue from the Mint and capitalize on the needs and desires of collectors.
4. Hook the children early. A snail mailer’s club with quarterly or monthly newsletter. Get kids excited about sending letters and chances are it’s a love that will stay with them all their lives.
5. Encourage and promote mail art. Support mail artists and their showings. Marketing department needs to highlight more interesting things that go through the mail.
6. Grass roots campaigns. Utilize passionate local citizens to do your marketing for you. Enthusiastic volunteers can teach letter writing classes through local libraries — from nuts and bolts how-to classes to more creative and free-spirited methods of communicating by mail. This one has limitless possibilities and could be a good money maker since the only investment would be in coordinating the program. The cost on a local level is nearly nothing since it’s all done on a volunteer basis.
7. More school outreach, also on volunteer basis.
8. Form an unpaid advisory commission of passionate and enthusiastic and knowledgeable letter writers to meet 2-3 times per year to help plan and design low-cost, high return programs.

Okay, those are my ideas… please add your own in the comments section. If you will do your part and help brainstorm ideas I will put them all in a professional format and petition to Postmaster General to heed our call for change at the USPS. Let’s do it in time for the rate hike in May. Let’s get to work!

Tags: letter writing, marketing, post office, postal service, postmaster general, rate increase

I think this might be a first. The composer Brett Dean has created a violin concerto called The Lost Art of Letter Writing. He, like all of us, lament that letter writing is less-and-less a part of our daily lives. This concerto utilizes real letters which are read and integrated into the beginning of each movement.

You can read more about it at the Boosey & Hawkes web site At the bottom is a link that says “audio/visual”. You can click that to go to a page that has a sample of the concerto.

Photo credit: Kaitlin M.

Tags: brett dean, fresh link, letter writing, letters, lost art of letter writing, Music, violin concerto

I ran across this web site recently: Printable Paper

This is a great web site if you’re looking for something new and interesting to write on. It has 450 different types of lined papers that you can print for free. They have the traditional lined paper and graph paper. They have weird log paper that I have NO idea what it’s used for… maybe mathematics or geometry? Polar graph papers (write in circles)! Hexagons! Octagons! Isometric! Music papers, dot papers! Penmanship paper! (We use this for our son who is learning to write.)

One of my favorites is the “story paper” which is the penmanship paper with blank spots. Your kids can draw in the blank space and write on the lines at the bottom. My son has a journal like this and he draws and I write in his words for him at the bottom.

Another neat one is the Cornell Note Paper which has lines in one section and then a blank column and blank bar at the bottom which would be really fun for doodling.

So, go check it out and treat yourself to some fun and free printable papers!

Tags: letter writing, letters, paper

I ran across a great post written by someone from India. He describes what letter writing means to him, but the most interesting thing was describing waiting for the postman in India. It’s an interesting view of letter writing in another culture.

Go check out: Forgotten How to Write a Letter

Photo credit: opendemocracy

Tags: india, letter writing

I spend a lot of time looking for cool letter writing stuff to share with you. Since it’s New Year’s Day I was off work and spent time catching up on my online reading. Mostly in the blogosphere people were talking about either their resolutions for 2009, their hopes/dreams/expectations for the upcoming year and there were many retrospectives of 2008. It was interesting to read what people found important. For me it underscored the beauty of the diversity of the human population — there were people focused on health, money, success, parenting, spirituality. Such variety! And all the posts were filled with optimism and hope. It was a good day of browsing.

The cherry on top was discovering how many people listed “more letter writing” as one of their goals for the new year. Right now there are people who want to write more letters. It’s not just you. They are out there waiting to strike gold on their next trip to the mailbox. Let’s not disappoint them.

What about you? Did you make any letter writing resolutions? Those kind are way more fun than vowing to lose a few extra pounds! So what are your letter writing plans for 2009? Let’s get this party started!

Photo credit: a.drian

Tags: goals, letter writing, new year, new year's resolution

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

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