Come one. Come all. My friends Melissa and Samara (yes! there’s another Samara and we know each other) invite you to tell us your letter-writing stories. We’re hosting an essay contest for all those who love to write (and talk about writing) letters. The rules are as follows:

* Write about a special letter you’ve written someone. When did you write it and who did you write it to? How did you send it? What was the situation surrounding this letter?

Or!

* You can tell us about a letter you’ve received from someone else. How long have you had it? Who sent it to you? What makes it worth holding onto?

* No more than 500 words, please.

* Email submissions to snailmailcampaign(at)gmail(dot)com by April 1st.

We’re excited to hear your responses - and very excited to announce our first-place winner after the entries have been reviewed. The winner will receive a signed copy of my book, For the Love of Letters: A 21st-Century Guide to the Art of Letter Writing . . . and I think there might be some sweet stationery in there too.

Happy writing!

Ah, the art of rejection. It takes a great wordsmith to say “Thanks but no thanks” or “Fuck off” with propriety and eloquence. It also takes a good sport to develop a sense of humor about being rejected. The mastermind behind Literary Rejections on Display has done just that. He was kind enough to stop by my site the other day and I gladly send you to his. Visit if you’re ever feeling professionally rejected and want to know you’re not alone, or if you happen to have a rejection letter that needs to be hung out to dry on the Internet, or you’re just scouring for the right words to blatantly reject someone with. Beware! If you hang out at Literary Rejections long enough you might start to think being rejected is cooler than being accepted. Case in point: I had completely forgotten about this rejection letter I received from The New Yorker a few years back. As a young college lassie I was foolish enough to send them some poetry. Now I proudly display the rejection I most certainly deserved (click on image to read).

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

I have a confession: I had absolutely no idea that April was National Card and Letter Writing month. A friend of mine at Crane & Co. informed me last week. Oh well, now I know and am passing along the good word. My friend also informed me that Crane is sponsoring “The Letters You Keep,” which is a contest celebrating memorable handwritten letters treasured over time. . .I think I’ll enter the Summer Camp Letter I’ve held onto for 13 years.

Through April, Crane hopes to receive meaningful letters of all types in order to select one winning letter. The keeper of that letter will be announced in May and be awarded $500 toward building a Crane & Co. stationery wardrobe. The winning letter will be featured on Crane’s website! You can read more about it here: http://crane.com/CraneContent/CSTM_LettersYouKeep.aspx

Today, I had originally planned to give my insights into the letters written to the police during the “Autumn of Terror”—when Jack the Ripper was sprinkling his special brand of horror around the city of London. Then I realized I couldn’t talk about the Jack the Ripper letters without discussing the Zodiac letters as well (coincidentally, two of the most famous serial killers in history who have never been caught both wrote taunting letters to the police on a regular basis). I’m not saying that means anything in particular, I just found it interesting. I then realized that I am not well equipped to comment on either of those (although, I did see Zodiac the movie and it was very good), so I put this topic on hold until I can research a bit further.

What I will do today is point you in the direction of one of my favorite web sites: SoThere.com. This is where the break-up / good-bye letter lives on. SoThere has posted a fresh break-up letter everyday since 1998. If you need to wallow in your sorrows, this is a great place to do it. If you’ve got a great break-up letter you want the world to see then they can accommodate you—anonymously or not. It’s not about the other person seeing it as much as it’s about you saying what need to in order to move on. Full disclosure: I did contribute a letter to this site once. I won’t say which day it posted, but it has been in 2007. . .

Tomorrow’s Blog: Love Letter Friday