Dear you, whoever you are,
I love letters. I love their neat and tidy formatting. The way they look laid out on a page of beautiful stationery. The shape of handwriting snaking across the page.
A lot of people love letters. And to talk about letters. They write newspaper columns, TED talks, and radio shows dedicated to the handwritten letter. It's not hard to understand why, of course. People love letters at least partly for the same reason that people love vinyl records and typewriters. They're old-fashioned enough to be cool again. A stylishly retro form of communication. Is there a word for the sensation of feeling nostalgia for a time before you were born? (Unsurprisingly it's an ailment common to history majors).
I don't love typewriters though. I don't have the same attachment to rickety clankety machinery that I do to the far older technology of flimsy pieces of paper. You can't doodle on an e-mail. You can't cover the envelope of a Facebook message with tiny cut-out snowflakes.
Now, I may be old-fashioned and fond of impracticalities (I'm the only person my age I know who writes proper cursive) but even I am not suggesting that anyone resort to letters as a primary form of communication. I'm far too addicted to my electronic forms of communication and I refuse to believe all the depressing talk that the internet is making us into a race of disconnected zombies.
I do, however, see the letter as a good deed. I, like most of humanity, feel the urge to make this seemingly endlessly sad world of ours better. I can go out and donate money and time and fight a dramatic fight against all that's wrong in the world but some days (most days) it all feels too overwhelmingly awful. On those days, I'll settle for little acts of kindness that make the world a little bit better for one person - it's time to bake cookies, smile at strangers and it's time to write a letter. Writing a letter is the choice to focus on communicating with another person for a neat, tidy 30 minutes or so.
I'm overstating it a bit, I know. I'm not really a paragon of Polly-Anna-ish virtue. I don't really write letters as a Good Deed, most of the time. I do it because I like to. But it is a nice thing to do. And I do think the world needs more letters. So. Without further ado, for those who want to write a letter (or perhaps reply to a letter?) but would like a helping hand, here is Charlotte's Completely Unofficial How to Write a Letter (after all, the best way to encourage people to write letters to you is to write a couple yourself. And who wouldn't like a pleasant surprise in among the bills and Walmart flyers?)
1. Before beginning this process you will need to assemble the following: pen (oh, alright, or pencil. But I don't like pencil. It's smudgy.), paper (fanciness of this is up to you. I'm a dangerous woman in a stationery store, myself, but I've also written on loose leaf.), envelope, address of the recipient, and stamp. Optional supplies are almost endless but may include: glue, colourful markers, old magazines, dried flowers, glitter, lip-stick for your hot love letters, I don't know what else I can come up with...
2. Sit down. Take a deep breath. Pull the paper towards you. Write the date in the top right corner. Write Dear Whoever on the left next line down. Go down another line. Write something other than "How are you?"
3. Are you stuck already? It's not that hard, I promise.Just push that "How are you?" out of your brain. It'll make your whole letter stilted, really it will. Try telling the other person about the place you're writing from. Presumably it's different from where they are. Try telling them about a moment recently that made you think of them. You have been thinking of them, right? You're writing this letter to them aren't you? Try telling them something funny or awkward or interesting that happened to you recently. Your life isn't that boring. I have a boring life and I always have something awkward or funny or interesting to write about.
4. So. You've made it past the first sentence. I congratulate you. Now. The rest of the letter. It's easiest if you come up with a bunch of main themes to ramble around. It's sort of like writing the Dread Essay but without having to keep that formal tone and worry about how to avoid first person. In my experience there are two main types of letter (in the letters to friends category, that is. I'm not taking responsibility for your love letters. You've got to figure that out yourself): the News letter and the...hmmm...we'll call it the Rambling letter.
The News Letter is for you if you have an interesting life or at least a life that has changed in important ways since you last talked to the person you're writing to. (See, look at that preposition ending a sentence. That's how casual this letter writing gig is.) You basically just tell them about all the fun times you had moving to Paris, boating up the Amazon, getting married, moving to Alabama, working as an intern for that big magazine. Whatever it is that you interesting people do.
For the rest of us, there's the Rambling Letter. Sample group of ideas to explore: I had a really good salad yesterday, I love tomatoes, my grandma used to have this awesome vegetable garden (memories, blahblahblah), I think that's why I love to garden, thoughts about loving gardens, wouldn't it be nice to go on a gardens of the world tour - we could start at Versailles move on to tulips in Holland...blahblahblah dreams about travelling... Wishing you all the joy of a good salad. Love, Charlotte.
See, you've probably filled a good two pages by now, easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. And all you'd done recently was stuff your face with tasty tomato salad.
5. The other key to a good letter is questions. Not too many. Just enough to rid of you of the sense that you're madly monologging about tomatoes. This is easy in the News version because you can simply ask what the other person has been up to lately. In the Rambling letter, using the tomato salad example, you could ask the other person whether they did anything interesting with their grandparents (ok, potentially a dangerous topic if they've died recently but hopefully you know your friends well enough for this), what memories they have tied to food, what their dream trip would be...
The other note to make about questions is that if you reply to a letter, I don't think you necessarily need to reply to all the questions the other person asked you. They probably don't remember and it tends to lead to stiltedness - they're not interviewing you, it's not that high pressure. In fact, possibly you should read the letter, absorb the general sense of it and then put it aside while you write a reply. That way, you can respond to what was important (because that's what you'll remember) and then add a bit of interest of your own
without the crutch of just following along in the order of the other person's letter. Just a thought.
6. If you're the doodling type, doodle a bit in the margins. I don't why this makes letters better but it does.
7. Sign your name with a flourish.
8. Fold it up nice and neat and put it in your envelope. Carefully write out their address. Stick the stamp on.
9. Now it's time for the glitter if you're so inclined. Decorate the envelope as much or as little as you like. I'm personally fond of obsessive compulsive type repeating patterns in coloured pen or miniature collages.
10. Find a post box. Slip it in with some good wishes and consider a good deed to be done.
11. Wait for a response. It may or may not come. Don't let that discourage you. Just send more letters.
And there you have it. From someone who's been writing letters since her letters had a crayon picture on the front and three sentences written in gel pen on the back.
Happy Writing ( and Happy New Year),
Charlotte
