When you write a letter...

[Lord of Crocodiles]

When you write a letter, the person reading it is doing nothing else.

 

They are not multi-tasking on a screen, checking email, spreadsheets, or watching video.

 

They are reading the words you wrote to them.

 

When the machines go off, your words are still there, written on a page that does not require batteries. They can feel the artefact of creation, enjoy its tactility.

 

Those words may remain long after you or the recipient.

 

They are personal, with greater value in the effort.

 

That's why I write.

[inkstainedruth]

And they won't be lost when you have to upgrade your system, either because they didn't get saved to a hard drive/backup drive, or because the updates aren't compatible with the older format.

I'm not much for writing letters, but I write poetry, and have been trying my hand at writing fiction.  And while I can edit on a computer screen, my typing skills are just not good enough to compose the stuff in the first place.  While, with a pen and paper?  I can stick in "caret" marks (these things: ^) if I want to edit on the fly, or write something in the margin and draw an arrow pointing to where it needs to go.  And if I get on a roll?  I can write several pages (double lines per line) in a composition book in a few hours -- there's no way I can write that fast on a typewriter or keyboard.  And of course I'm constantly crossing out words and sticking others in their place (either by misspelling them or by by changing my mind about what I want to say (heck, I do that even when journaling) -- because I just can't get stuff out of my head and onto the page fast enough sometimes otherwise.

I suppose I could be like a friend of ours, who took classes in doing illustration on a computer, but for me it's also the tactile feel of a pen or pencil or brush or oil pastel crayon in my hand.

Plus, I was just reading something about Phil Foglio (an artist/illustrator/comic book artist) finding out that his work is now being used to train some AI program (and apparently he is NOT happy about it).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[LizEF]

2 hours ago, ThinKingProductions said:

When you write a letter, ...  That's why I write.

Beautifully said.

 

I wish I could convince more people to try it and note the difference in themselves as they write - the brain starts to think differently, memories and words come.  It's a much more intimate experience than sending an email.

[Sailor Kenshin]

That's what I always tell people, @inkstainedruth and @LizEF... write with a real pen and real paper.  It's good for you.

 

This year I got sidetracked a lot.  Really should get back to it.

[PAKMAN]

I can't even remember the last time I wrote a letter. I still have letters from my parents and girl friend that I got in college and notes my parents wrote to each other.  I know how much they meant to me and wish I could convince myself to get out pen and paper and write someone.

[Misfit]

I really need to get back to writing to my pen pals. I got a Rhodia notepad with a spiral at the top and perforated sheets to help get back to writing letters. 

[mail_snail]

A lovely thought, @ThinKingProductions. Thank you for sharing. 
"Write for Your Life" by Anna Quindlen is essentially a love letter to writing and letters. It is short and worth a read. Below are a few quotes on the value of letters which stood out in particular (but frankly, the whole book is quotable):
 

🖋️Something written by hand brings a singular human presence that the typewriter or the computer cannot confer. There's plenty of good writing done that way, but when you simply glance at the page, it could be the work of anyone. But when you've written something by hand, the only person who could have done it is you. It's unmistakable you wrote this, touched it, laid hands and eyes upon it. Something written by hand is a piece of your personality on paper. Typed words are not a fair swap for handwriting, for what is, in a way, a little relic of you. 

🖋️Letters are different today than they were when they were a necessity. In the twenty-first century I do not send a letter because I want to tell you something. I do it because I want to give you something, something personal and long-lasting. There's a reason why we always envision a cache of letters tied up with a ribbon. It's because they are a gift. 

🖋️[A personal letter is] also an exercise in something we rarely credit anymore, and that's deferred gratification. We are all used to things happening quickly, almost instantaneously, in modern life. 

🖋️[On writing by hand during the pandemic] Like bread rising in a bowl on your kitchen counter instead of in a plastic bag from the supermarket, like a scarf lengthening beneath your hands instead of pulled off a store rack and placed in a shopping bag, writing, expressively, at length, became invaluable handiwork. It allowed them to feel the real when the real was precisely what they wanted and needed. 

🖋️That cellphone, and its big brother the laptop computer, made the personal letter seem obsolete in many ways. Why write a letter if you can send an email? Why would anyone knit a sweater when you can buy one online, or bake a cake when you can get one from the supermarket? Why read a book if you can watch the movie? Yet people still knit, and bake, and read, perhaps because in each case there is something slow, satisfying, and personal about it. If you think of letter writing as a mechanism simply to pass along information, then letters and email are fraternal twins. But in an age when we can pass along information with the push of the send button, a letter, especially a handwritten letter, becomes something different. It is something uncommon, something that arrives and makes its recipient feel special. It may even become an artifact. 

[Estycollector]

"The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory". author unknown

 

To my surprise I found out one of my granddaughters kept all the handwritten letters I sent when she was 6-7 years old.