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

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

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

I’m not a very good traveler, but I do love going places so I can send the postcards to my friends. It’s a little wonky, I admit, but… hey, it makes me happy.

For today’s challenge you don’t even have to go anywhere. The postcard blitz is fun for several reasons. First of all, the postage is a lot cheaper for a postcard, only 27 cents! Second, you have a very small space to write in so it’s quick and easy to jot a note and send it off right away. Third, many people like to collect postcards from many different places so your note will probably end up being saved, or at the least will stay on someone’s fridge ’til it’s manhandled by greasy chicken fingers.

At the place I buy postcards, I pay about 20 cents per card, then 27 cents for postage. I can do ten cards (domestically) for under five bucks. Think about it… that’s TEN FRIENDS you can surprise for less than five dollars. What else can you do for ten friends for that little money?

Even in that small space, some might feel intimidated about what to write. I hear this excuse a lot, “My life is so boring, I have nothing to say that’s interesting.” Wait, I’ve used that excuse myself! No worries, if you feel uninspired today and nothing new is going on, how about an inspirational quote? Pick a quote (you can find many on the Internet via search engines) that you think will inspire, delight, amuse or intrigue your friend. Jot it on the card, attribute the source and send it off.

The point is to communicate, build relationships and make something interesting happen for your friend.

Here are other fun things to do with postcards:

1) Make your own if you’re creative in that way
2) Alter a ready made card by putting a silly caption on the picture or adding cutouts from a magazine or drawing something in on top of the picture
3) Draw a silly cartoon or stick figures on the back
4) Doodle around the edges of your message or quote
5) Send two postcards with a riddle. Send the riddle the first day and send the answer a couple days later. (Please don’t tell anyone I am responsible for you being so aggravating.)
6) Try a rhyming note or haiku
7) Write your note backwards so they have to hold it up to the mirror to read it (again, see non-disclosure request in #6)

Just play… ’cause some days life is tough and troublesome. Experience some wonder through letter writing. Brighten someone’s day. I always feel better when I do something for others and I bet you do, too.

P.S. If for some reason you’d like to send postcards to strangers or guarantee you’ll get postcards back for your effort, try postcrossing.com.

Tags: challenge, cheap, frugal, letter writing, letters, Postcards

I dig philanthropy. I often find myself wishing for barrels full of money because it would be so much fun to give it away. There are so many clever ways for people to be philanthropic now and it doesn’t cost a lot of money.

One way you might not think of immediately is the 42-cent donation you can make to those who really need it, like soldiers or people in the nursing home. There are many people who could really use a lift because they are isolated, alone or away from home. I can’t think of a cheaper way to do a good deed!

On the Letter Projects page, if you scroll down you will find several links to places where you can write soldiers. (The Red Cross just finished one and we missed that deadline!)

What will make this challenge more fun (and more philanthropic) is if you will get a friend to join in. Why not do it as an office project or if you’re a social person, make a party of it. Gather a bunch of friends over for dinner, pizza, snacks, whatever, and then sit down at the table and start writing. Even if you set a small goal such as three cards per person — if you invite 10 friends that’s 30 soldiers who get a note of appreciation.

If writing soldiers isn’t your thing, contact a local nursing home, senior day center or Meals on Wheels and ask the administrators if there are people who would appreciate notes.

How about joining a letter writing campaign for a cause? Or start your own campaign. You can find many of those if you just google “letter writing campaign”. That might keep you so busy you miss the last five days of our challenge.

Speaking of which, we’re halfway there… how are you doing?

Tags: challenge, good deeds, letter writing, letters, letters to soldiers, philanthropy

Some years ago I worked with a then fairly well-known author. We’d slave day and night to work on his books and while the work was gratifying overall, it was an extra-nice day when he’d get fan mail. Sales are great, but personal acknowledgment for work pumped us both up and reminded us that the effort made a difference for someone somewhere.

I don’t care WHO you are, if you’re a human being you’re prone to your moments of weakness, your insecurities and even the most confident person will occasionally be plagued by self-doubt.

Maybe it’s because of my past experience, but I really like writing fan mail when someone makes a meaningful impact on me. Mostly I write authors and artists. I’ve actually gotten a couple of replies, which is fun too. I never expect a response, so when I’ve gotten one it is great treat.

Okay, I must pause here to tell one anecdote so you can learn from a bad experience I had. Back when I was a teenager I was a rabid fan of Phyllis A. Whitney, a romance writer. I had read just about every one of her books because for some reason our school library had a gazillion of them. They were very mild and “teen safe”. I decided I would write her some fan mail and picked out my best paper, wrote a very earnest (and in retrospect probably highly amusing) letter. I sealed it up and at the time thought it was very cool to write my return address on the back flap of the envelope. (I have no idea why I thought that was cool, but remember I was 13 or something and not in my right mind.) The unfortunate part is the back of the envelope had a picture of a field of flowers on it so when I wrote my address there it was not easily readable.

A few weeks later I got a strange-looking envelope in the mail. Mrs. Whitney had ripped the back flap off my envelope off and taped it to the front of her envelope and then scrawled a note around it that said something like, “I can’t read this illegible address, so I’m putting it here because maybe you can figure out where it’s supposed to go.”

My embarrassment turned to horror after I opened the letter to find that not only did she chastise me in front of who knows how many postal workers, but she wrote me one very stern paragraph advising me that if I write a letter to someone I need to make it easy for them to write me one back. I think she probably said some nice things in the letter too, but, honestly, I can’t remember what they were.

Is there someone out there you admire who doesn’t know you but who has made a difference in your life? Today’s challenge is to drop them a note and tell them what you admire and appreciate about them.

Just FYI, my pick for today is John Walsh, the anti-crime activist and host of America’s Most Wanted and one of the directors of the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. It was announced recently that the cold case of his son, Adam, was finally solved after nearly 30 years. In the aftermath of his son’s disappearance Walsh has made a difference in so many lives by helping catch criminals and find missing children. He deserves way more than my little note, but remember… if you put enough tiny drops in a bucket, eventually the bucket fills up!

Tags: fan letters, fan mail, john walsh, letter writing, letters, writing to strangers

Who is your best pal? Who gets you through the days, weeks, and months of life? Today is the day to reward that special person with a handwritten note. Yes, even if you talked to them five minutes ago on the phone. Even if you are about to see that person in two hours for lunch! Distance should have nothing at all to do with writing a letter.

What do you love most about your friend? What qualities inspire you? What comforts you? What do you appreciate? Has your pal gotten you through a tough time or changed your life? What would your life be like without your friend?

Start with a memory of jump right into the mushy stuff, but however you do it make this all about your friend. Declare “Best Friend Day” on one (or more) of your favorite people. (No love letters — that challenge is coming up later!)

Imagine what a nice day it will be when the letter arrives. Often in our lives we show our affection for the people we care about, but how many days of the year do we get truly and deeply into what they mean to us? Make “Best Friend Day” the day to do it up right!

Tags: best friend, challenge, friend, letter writing, letters, Practice