The Lost Art of Letter Writing

How often do you receive a letter in the mailbox? A blue envelope sits inside addressed in ink to you from someone sharing thoughts and feelings. Maybe a greeting card springs from the box?

With cell phones and email so handy, we have lost the art of letter writing. Many college students today do not even know what a fountain pen can do.

I love to share my life in letters to family and friends. My affinity for correspondence began when my father pushed me to write thank you notes for birthday and holiday gifts. How does one write about a tea cup and saucer with "gratitude"? Whatever use is a demitasse set to a nine year old anyway?

I didn't play with dolls or invite them to tea. I did find a use for the cup. Its design of green vines and trumpet flowers looked better filled with earth and a seedling. Did I dare explain in a letter to a Great Aunt how an antique adapted?

My father understood and encouraged my sharing of thoughts and feelings after the initial line of thanks. "Write what's outside the window," he'd say. "Go outside and sit for awhile under the magnolia tree. What are the birds doing? What sounds and scents do you observe?" He always pushed for the sensory details and to name everything. It's not just a bird. It's a red-tailed hawk or mourning dove.

Off I'd go with pen and pad and a grumble or two. Soon my pen flowed in turquoise or emerald across the page with ideas and stories.

Creative Write: Craft a thank you letter for an undesired gift you received as a child. Or, write your thoughts and feellings from the present moment to a friend. What's outside your window to follow?

Spring Simple

Spring arouses thoughts about renewal in writing. Take an opportunity to consider how to prepare for writing rejuvenation.

Keep it SIMPLE:

S:   Savor the growth around you in daisies, daffodils, crocuses, and tulips. Watch nature’s daily progress. See how the birds and insects prepare for spring.

I:    Invest in your imagination. Forget the Stock market and the world’s concerns. Imaginate each moment. Make discoveries, connections and write. write. write.

M:   Meditate in your own way. Observing your breath creates awareness and relaxation. Focus on it for one or two intervals during the day. Sit comfortably, breathe in six times and out six times. Gradually extend your exhalations. Try for a fifteen minute period where you erase the jumble from your mind. Let thoughts flow by like clouds.

P:    PLAY. Distract yourself with fun and frolic.

L:    Let go. Enjoy humor and spread it around.

E:    Eat healthy foods and Exercise.


Spring into YOU!    Believe in yourself and your writing. It will grow stronger when you add your own spring fervor.

Creative Write: Find a word (sycamore, pelican, dandelion, salmon) and create your spring renewal with suggestions for each letter. Have FUN!

Patience, Perseverance and Play

The object in life is to find that undertaking, that occupation with which you have infinite patience.   - John Ruskin


When you think about writing projects, which approaches have you discovered work the best when confronted with setbacks and frustrations? Do you wait with patience and drive the words with persistence?  Or, do you relent and turn the ideas into fodder for use elsewhere?

Do you notice that the writing returns to you in a different form when left alone?  Each piece of writing has its time to bloom.

What writing have you abandoned you might return to today?  View the writing in a fresh light. Push away judgments.  Let yourself play.

Find a story, essay or poem hiding in a file or molding in a drawer. Search your computer files for one also. Look for the most deserving culprit; one that has defied you for too long.

Print one of its pages or shuffle hard copy and choose a page. Read through the page and begin a new train of thought. Circle the sentences or words that appeal. Do a freewrite and see where it travels.

Discover a fresh metaphor or add sensory imagery like sound and taste.

Explore the sentences from upside down. Transmogrify. Translate into them into another language. Throw the words in the air and laugh when they land in a heap. Tease them out for rejuvenation.

Share your insights with us.  What results did you achieve?