Letter Writing

One thing I have been missing lately is letter writing.  I didn’t do much of it when I was younger and I never do it now, but I am thinking about starting.  To me letter writing is more intimate and genuine.  There’s something that brings the emotions of the person who wrote the letter off the page and into the reader’s mind and body, more than when you’re sitting in front of a monitor, scrolling through an e-mail wondering why they wrote so much.  With a letter you know the person cares about the content and the receiver of the letter because they took the time to write out their thoughts and used penmanship easily legible instead of just sitting in front of their laptop banging on the keys until a rough form of what they are trying to say is flashing in front of them.

I’m not picking up the torch to carry the light of letter writing, I’m just thinking about taking the time to create hand written letters to those I truly do care about to show them what they mean to me.  Sure I can do it in an e-mail and of course it’s always better to hear the words from those close to you, but sometimes knowing the person took the time to grab the needed utensils to construct a letter makes a person feel that much more loved.

Another thing about writing letters is how great of a tool it is for writers to work out kinks in their stories by sharing what is frustrating them in the pieces they are working on.  Many of the great writers of the past have used letter writing to answer their questions they had about a particular piece by writing the problem out for the recipient and seeing it in a different light as they jotted the note out.  One example I can give is with John Steinbeck who would write a couple of letters each morning before beginning work on his stories.  He said it opened up his mind to the writing process and got the juices flowing.  I think this is another reason I have decided to start writing letters.  Unlike many people out there who can sit down in front of a computer and start bashing at the keys and get a rough draft of a story idea I have to write all my ideas, beginnings, and rough drafts in long hand in the journal I have with me.  So sitting down to write letters to knock my creative mind awake, sharing with those I write to my dilemmas with my stories will probably be a good thing for me, so if you happen to receive a letter sharing the struggles I am having that particular day, don’t be afraid to grab a sheet of paper and pen and ink back whatever is on your mind.  I would love to share a chain of letters discussing how the world is treating us.

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