On Letter Writing

Going to him! Happy letter! Tell him–
Tell him the page I didn’t write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow-
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.
—Emily Dickinson

DEAR FRIENDS, Thank you for stopping by. Emily Dickinson and I are here to remind you that there is nothing—not a text message, not an IM exchange, not a MySpace comment—that competes with the emotional connection made through a letter. Handwritten or typed, snail-mailed or handed over—doesn’t matter. It’s the time you take to choose your words carefully and write them down that becomes a tangible testament to how much the other person means to you (or how angry you are, which is still a verification of how much he or she means to you).

Don’t worry, I’m an advocate of technological advancements (hence this website and my MySpace profile)—they are great for speed and creating large communities. A letter, however, establishes an intimacy these other media can’t mimic, and (bonus!) if you write fairly detailed letters, you automatically keep a record of the events in your life. “Letters show the direction of a person’s life,” writes Dorothy Lobrano Guth, in her introduction to LETTERS OF E.B. WHITE (Harper & Row, 1976). “They capture, in an informal, but immediate way. . .sometimes in a way that is embarrassing to the letter writer. . .his character, his relationships with others, his hopes and disappointments.” “Like all letters,” write Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner in their preface to MARY TODD LINCOLN—HER LIFE AND LETTERS (Knopf, 1972), these have far greater value as evidence than the most candid diary or autobiography. Each one was written on a particular day under a specific impulse, with no thought that it would be judged in a larger context, or, for that matter, read by anyone other than the person to whom it was addressed.”

I feel so strongly about this that I decided to write a book about it: FOR THE LOVE OF LETTERS: A 21ST-CENTURY GUIDE TO THE ART OF LETTER WRITING. I’m hoping you’ll take a look and allow it to inspire you to pen a letter or two—there are countless types of letters to write. Almost every emotion makes an appearance. You can write a letter whether you’re happy, sad, pissed off, or turned on. If you’re out of practice and need assistance, then let me help you. Happy writing!