Snail Mail Writing List

[whiskas]

Excellent introduction, Justin!

If you'd like to talk about video games or tell me more about origami, I'm your man.

[Smarvy]

Alright Whiskas, let's do it,

 

Thanks for the compliment on my intro, it's not often my babble is appreciated.

 

I'll send you a PM with my address.

 

Aloha,

Justin

 

 

[carlc]

Hi

 

I'm new to the network so please don't let the lack of posts put you off.

 

There is some information in my profile but maybe I should add some more.

 

I'm 41, married with three kids (7,3,and 1 - all boys) and I'm a nurse lecturer in a British University.

 

I haven't written a letter in years which is a shame - as a first year undergrad (before nursing ever entered my head) I would routinely write about 5 letters a week. In those days I was very impatient with the recipient expecting a reply within days - nowadays I'm more sanguine about this sort of thing and know what it's like with work/home pressure.

 

My interests - sadly between work and (not so sadly) my children, my time is mostly spoken for. I can always find time to read and I am quite eclectic about who or what I read. I have just bought a collection of Raymond Chandler but the book I read before that was "The Parliament of England 1559-1581" (yes my wife thought that was the most boring book she had ever heard of). I love Sherlock Holmes, Helene Hanff, The Three Musketeers and poetry (and some Fantasy writers - as in Eddings, Feist etc). My poetry choices are confined to what I know (including Haiku) and I'm always open to new poets.

 

Music wise I like (again) a wide range from opera, classical and early choral music to The Rolling Stones, Amy Winehouse and a misspent youth listening to Heavy Metal.

 

Having laid out my hobbies/interests here and in my profile I feel that I should point out that the whole issue of 'compatibility' doesn't bother me - I'd like to hear about other peoples interests and lives - so just because we don't match doesn't mean we can't communicate.

 

Anyway I would like to give a warning and make an offer - the warning is that my writing isn't beautiful - but I believe it is legible. The offer - PM me with your address and I'll write the first letter (although a little information in the PM about you would help). However if you feel like writing first then I'm happy to supply my address.

 

Here's hoping,

 

Carl

[Smarvy]

Welcome Carl,

 

I would think a book about the Parliament under Elizabeth would be an extremely interesting book, but then I can be a geek. I know a little bit about it, but not too much in the way of details, especially about how the Queen and Parliament got on considering the continual frustration (for them) of no baby. Let's write! I'll PM you my address, and you can send me yours, if you like. My little bio is posted just above here, if you want to read a bit about me.

 

Aloha,

Justin

[ShadowWriter]

Having laid out my hobbies/interests here and in my profile I feel that I should point out that the whole issue of 'compatibility' doesn't bother me - I'd like to hear about other peoples interests and lives - so just because we don't match doesn't mean we can't communicate.

I'm not ready to "toss my hat into the ring yet" but I do love your statement.

 

I was thinking about how interesting (in person) it is to hear what others are so passionate about. It is amazing the eclectic assortment of hobbies, collectibles, activities that people are drawn to, isn't it?

 

Very open-minded of you to consider corresponding with others who do not necessarily share all your interests. I applaud that.

 

[carlc]

Having laid out my hobbies/interests here and in my profile I feel that I should point out that the whole issue of 'compatibility' doesn't bother me - I'd like to hear about other peoples interests and lives - so just because we don't match doesn't mean we can't communicate.

I'm not ready to "toss my hat into the ring yet" but I do love your statement.

 

I was thinking about how interesting (in person) it is to hear what others are so passionate about. It is amazing the eclectic assortment of hobbies, collectibles, activities that people are drawn to, isn't it?

 

Very open-minded of you to consider corresponding with others who do not necessarily share all your interests. I applaud that.

 

Thank you. You are obviously a Gentleman (I presume - maybe too much?)and a scholar.

 

Enough said.

 

Carl

[Gothmeister]

Letters on their way to:

 

Johnboz

Ralphawilson

Swduncan

 

!!!

[ParkerBeta]

Hi all,

 

I've been a member of FPN since last October, and have been corresponding with a fellow FPN-er since the New Year, but didn't know of this Writing List until I found it today after following up a hint from my correspondent! Anyway, here's my pen-bio (and a bit of the other aspects of my life too):

 

I was born in India and was clearly fascinated by fountain pens from an early age, given that I used my baby teeth to chew and crack the barrel of my father's much-prized Sheaffer (I think it was a PFM). Broken-hearted by this loss, and one that was very difficult to replace in India in the 1970s, he retreated to using ballpoint pens, but I got to (actually, had to -- it was compulsory) use fountain pens in middle school (mostly ED with a couple of Hero aero-fillers). College was mostly a time for cheap ballpoints, but in my senior year I unearthed my father's Parker 45 that hadn't been used for years and used it a little (and stopped using it soon after, when I realized that the M nib was way too wide and just got even wider when used on the cheap paper that was all I had access to).

 

Next came graduate school in the US, and in my first semester, I bought a Sheaffer Imperial (F nib) in black with gold trim (the start of an enduring love affair with black pens with gold trim), which I used all through grad school. It was my only fountain pen, if you don't count a couple of Sheaffer 'cartridge pens' that I bought at the University bookstore. That changed in 1997, when I began working (so had access to more funds) and my friend gave me a Tombow Havana as a gift, which caused me to resume pen collecting again. I mostly bought cheap pens, rarely spending more than $60 on any. By October 2008, when I discovered FPN, I had about 40 pens, of which only 2 cost more than $100 (and those were gifts to me from my wife). Joining FPN, however, burst the dam and ended the frugal phase, and when I last looked, I had 70 or so pens (actually, when I looked again just now, I had managed to sell about 29 of them and given away another 3, after having gone through the various post-FPN-joining phases of euphoria, mad collecting, experimentation, a better understanding of my own likes and dislikes, and finally a desire to cull my collection that was as strong as the desire to acquire more pens). Today, I feel that in terms of satisfaction, I'm happiest with the pens I paid about $150 for (regardless of their list price), and buying from the FPN marketplace lets me maximize the bang for my buck.

 

I work in a high-tech company in Silicon Valley, and love to join the Pen Posse in the Bay Area whenever I can. I'm trying to pass on the FP bug to my 4-year-old son -- I gave him a Pelikano and have seen him use it regularly to scribble and doodle. However, my 22-month-old daughter, whom I have been taking to Posse meetings since I joined FPN (you'll find her in the Posse photos), still doesn't know the difference between an FP and a BP: it's all 'pencil' to her!

 

That's quite enough about me -- if you've waded through all that and would still like to correspond with me, PM away!

 

Sayan

Edited March 3, 2009 by ParkerBeta

[liapuyat]

More lovely letters received today, from:

 

luciahwang

Strang

Fp_Writing

Mauro

Wildoaklane

 

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, you make my week

[Mauro]

More lovely letters received today, from:

 

luciahwang

Strang

Fp_Writing

Mauro

Wildoaklane

 

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, you make my week

 

 

Mauro

 

[carlc]

Letters posted today to:

 

Smarvy

Prosaic Paradise

 

Just to warn you guys - the paper I used does not do justice to the ink!

 

 

 

[ShadowWriter]

*** Jane_K ***

 

A real letter is on its way (as opposed to my reply that there will be a delay in replying).

 

Can you hear the Postal Service Eagle's wings flapping your way? <---- I need an animated bird emoticon.

 

I've already thought of a couple of things that I wrote that I need to amend, delete, edit. For the others reading this, I suppose that is part of going back to the old days of the old ways where you just have to wait to clarify or correct your comments.

 

If email, I could just "fire off" another quick email, correcting the first one.

 

ShadowWriter

[ShadowWriter]

More lovely letters received today, from:

 

luciahwang

Strang

Fp_Writing

Mauro

Wildoaklane

 

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, you make my week

How do all of you correspond with so many? Do you write very short letters? Perhaps, merely a paragraph or two? I am amazed how many of you are able to keep up with so many "snail mail exchange" friends.

 

[Gothmeister]

More lovely letters received today, from:

 

luciahwang

Strang

Fp_Writing

Mauro

Wildoaklane

 

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, you make my week

 

And I received my first letter from you today, liapuyat! Many thanks. Unfortunately, a post(wo)man somewhere along the line decided to scribble allover the nice stamps with a red biro, in their infinite wisdom!!!

 

[GreenVelvet]

More lovely letters received today, from:

 

luciahwang

Strang

Fp_Writing

Mauro

Wildoaklane

 

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, you make my week

How do all of you correspond with so many? Do you write very short letters? Perhaps, merely a paragraph or two? I am amazed how many of you are able to keep up with so many "snail mail exchange" friends.

 

All right.

 

I've snarked about this in four snail-mail letters this week, so in the interest of being up-front, I'll just add my two cents right here to the direction this thread is going.

 

How we correspond with so many is a different answer -- and I may jump off into that tangent some other time. [The quick skinny: I write a lot of letters. Writing letters with my fountain pens is one of my favorite things to do. Some of my letters are 2 paragraphs long, and some are 12 pages. It depends. It's an important part of my life, so I set aside a large proportion of my precious free time for doing it. I even blog about letter-writing. I've been a letter-writer since I was a child, so it doesn't take me a lot of time to figure out what I'm going to say. I just write. (HA! Maybe I should think more about what I write. Ask my correspondents. )]

 

But what I'm really trying to say here is...

 

Folks, if I posted updates on everyone I wrote, and all the letters I received, I'd be posting here every bloomin' day. (And that's what my blog is for. Visit if you want, ignore it if you don't.) If all my correspondents did so, they'd be posting an awful lot too. And then there are all the other people who subscribe to this thread that write all the other people who subscribe to this thread. I bet at least 8 FPN members write letters every day to other FPN members. (Interesting statistics, these would be.) I don't want to put a damper on anyone's anticipation -- it's kinda cute, for the newbies -- but maybe we could have a separate thread for that... I don't know, outgoing and incoming? Letters I've written lately? The happy snail-mail anticipation thread? Heck, I'd probably read and subscribe to it myself, though I would resist posting all of mine, and I wouldn't really want anyone shouting out to everyone when I'd written them. (As I wrote to one person today - I don't always respond in strict order. I have a constant rotation of at least 10 letters in my needs-response pile, and sometimes the one I received yesterday strikes me so much that I'll have to write them tonight, and leave the one that arrived 6 days ago to wait for a few more days, when I have more time.) I enjoy the romanticism of privacy.

 

I know I'm a curmudgeon. And I know I'm happily ensconced in the warm fuzzy place of my snail-mail addiction where I have more correspondents than I know what to do with. It rocks. It took me a long time to get to this happy warm fuzzy place. I worked pretty hard to sniff out correspondents and to seduce friends and relatives into becoming letter-writers themselves. However, I still really enjoy seeing new people who are interested in jumping into the snail mail fray. I read every new poster with happy anticipation, even though I don't write to most of them. But I do write to some of them, and in the midst of all the public "I wrote to you, did you write to me?" buzz, I even picked up a pretty groovy new correspondent in the past couple weeks. But lately I've been seeing the emails that there's a new post on this thread, and popping over here only to find that it's a reference to who got letters from whom, and how many letters they wrote in response.

 

Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely tickled pink - tickled magenta, even - that people are writing letters. That rocks. Write more letters! Bring it on! Snail mail joy is like no other happiness on earth, and it deserves to be shouted from the mountaintops! But part of the special joy of letter-writing is that it is its own private medium. If y'all want to PM each other and say, hey! I got your letter! And I wrote you one! ... then more power to you. But do we all need to hear about it?

 

That being said, I think that many of the folks who are posting the letter tally chatter are really interesting. Two of them are on my mental list to PM about letter-writing soon. (I am about to have a long vacation from work, and I'm gonna write a tsunami of letters. If I catch up on "THE PILE," I'll send some new ones out.)

 

This is the first time I've ever stuck my neck out to start a potential controversy here in the wonderfully bright and opinionated world of FPN. I'm putting up my shield and preparing for all the rocks that are going to be thrown at me for posting this. I've been crafting my words here for far too long already, and this is the last thing I do on the computer before I retire for my mid-evening session of...

 

...writing letters. Off I go.

 

Whom I write, nobody knows... except the recipient.

 

Hoping I am coming off as kind yet firm,

Ilona / GreenVelvet / The Missive Maven / Ms. Curmudgeon

 

[liapuyat]

More lovely letters received today, from:

 

luciahwang

Strang

Fp_Writing

Mauro

Wildoaklane

 

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, you make my week

How do all of you correspond with so many? Do you write very short letters? Perhaps, merely a paragraph or two? I am amazed how many of you are able to keep up with so many "snail mail exchange" friends.

 

Hi there

 

For each letter I use 8.5 x 11" (letter size) 80gsm cream or white smooth paper, cut in half. That's two 5.5 x 8" sheets, used on both sides. Sometimes I use three sheets. The envelope is a 5.5" baronial size. It depends on how much I want to write in response to the other person's letter. Some of it is about our pens, my local FPN group activities in Manila, some about other hobbies and interests (books, food, music, cinema, etc.) I don't send the exact same letter to everyone although the topics covered may be similar. I guess I'm just a chatty writer?

 

The first letter I send to a new correspondent isn't very long, it's mostly an introduction, and about the pens I used in the letter. It becomes easier to write each other as we go along.

 

One person I write to really enjoys different ink colors, so for that person I switch pen and ink for every switch in topic. I actually bought ink based on the writing samples I received!

 

And if you worry that what you write about is just regular, ordinary stuff - why, we're all the same. People are kinder than you think. If you worry about whether your handwriting is not beautiful enough, that doesn't really matter as long as it's legible. I think the letters should express more about who you are rather than what you have (in the cases where you are writing to someone with pricey name brand pens and you yourself just depend on some favorite inexpensive daily writers).

 

Another thing I try to remember is that letter-writing is supposed to be fun. One of the people I write to reminded me of that. When you feel pressured to write sometimes what comes out doesn't read well. So when that happens, just put your pen and paper away for a time when you feel more inspired. By "inspired" I mean enthusiastic and willing.

 

Once I apologized to someone for responding quite late to their letter. This very, very nice person told me, "I write and try not to expect too much from other people. Things may be happening on their end that I don't know about. But when they reply I'm happy." I try to keep that in mind too.

[liapuyat]

More lovely letters received today, from:

 

luciahwang

Strang

Fp_Writing

Mauro

Wildoaklane

 

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, you make my week

How do all of you correspond with so many? Do you write very short letters? Perhaps, merely a paragraph or two? I am amazed how many of you are able to keep up with so many "snail mail exchange" friends.

 

All right.

 

I've snarked about this in four snail-mail letters this week, so in the interest of being up-front, I'll just add my two cents right here to the direction this thread is going.

 

How we correspond with so many is a different answer -- and I may jump off into that tangent some other time. [The quick skinny: I write a lot of letters. Writing letters with my fountain pens is one of my favorite things to do. Some of my letters are 2 paragraphs long, and some are 12 pages. It depends. It's an important part of my life, so I set aside a large proportion of my precious free time for doing it. I even blog about letter-writing. I've been a letter-writer since I was a child, so it doesn't take me a lot of time to figure out what I'm going to say. I just write. (HA! Maybe I should think more about what I write. Ask my correspondents. )]

 

But what I'm really trying to say here is...

 

Folks, if I posted updates on everyone I wrote, and all the letters I received, I'd be posting here every bloomin' day. (And that's what my blog is for. Visit if you want, ignore it if you don't.) If all my correspondents did so, they'd be posting an awful lot too. And then there are all the other people who subscribe to this thread that write all the other people who subscribe to this thread. I bet at least 8 FPN members write letters every day to other FPN members. (Interesting statistics, these would be.) I don't want to put a damper on anyone's anticipation -- it's kinda cute, for the newbies -- but maybe we could have a separate thread for that... I don't know, outgoing and incoming? Letters I've written lately? The happy snail-mail anticipation thread? Heck, I'd probably read and subscribe to it myself, though I would resist posting all of mine, and I wouldn't really want anyone shouting out to everyone when I'd written them. (As I wrote to one person today - I don't always respond in strict order. I have a constant rotation of at least 10 letters in my needs-response pile, and sometimes the one I received yesterday strikes me so much that I'll have to write them tonight, and leave the one that arrived 6 days ago to wait for a few more days, when I have more time.) I enjoy the romanticism of privacy.

 

I know I'm a curmudgeon. And I know I'm happily ensconced in the warm fuzzy place of my snail-mail addiction where I have more correspondents than I know what to do with. It rocks. It took me a long time to get to this happy warm fuzzy place. I worked pretty hard to sniff out correspondents and to seduce friends and relatives into becoming letter-writers themselves. However, I still really enjoy seeing new people who are interested in jumping into the snail mail fray. I read every new poster with happy anticipation, even though I don't write to most of them. But I do write to some of them, and in the midst of all the public "I wrote to you, did you write to me?" buzz, I even picked up a pretty groovy new correspondent in the past couple weeks. But lately I've been seeing the emails that there's a new post on this thread, and popping over here only to find that it's a reference to who got letters from whom, and how many letters they wrote in response.

 

Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely tickled pink - tickled magenta, even - that people are writing letters. That rocks. Write more letters! Bring it on! Snail mail joy is like no other happiness on earth, and it deserves to be shouted from the mountaintops! But part of the special joy of letter-writing is that it is its own private medium. If y'all want to PM each other and say, hey! I got your letter! And I wrote you one! ... then more power to you. But do we all need to hear about it?

 

That being said, I think that many of the folks who are posting the letter tally chatter are really interesting. Two of them are on my mental list to PM about letter-writing soon. (I am about to have a long vacation from work, and I'm gonna write a tsunami of letters. If I catch up on "THE PILE," I'll send some new ones out.)

 

This is the first time I've ever stuck my neck out to start a potential controversy here in the wonderfully bright and opinionated world of FPN. I'm putting up my shield and preparing for all the rocks that are going to be thrown at me for posting this. I've been crafting my words here for far too long already, and this is the last thing I do on the computer before I retire for my mid-evening session of...

 

...writing letters. Off I go.

 

Whom I write, nobody knows... except the recipient.

 

Hoping I am coming off as kind yet firm,

Ilona / GreenVelvet / The Missive Maven / Ms. Curmudgeon

 

Oops, sorry if posting what I receive or send here makes people anxious. People keep sending me PMs about whether I've received their mail already. I just thought it simpler to message everyone in one post. I had no idea it was going to be a potential controversy... isn't this thread meant to encourage more letter-writing?

 

I'll just keep on writing, and if people have concerns about it, or want to write me, well, just send a PM over.

 

(It's like Rachael Ray being too perky for some people, I know )

[FP Writing]

Thank you i have received quuite a few letters and post cards from FPN friends .

Now i am quite hooked to writing letters and cards. :roflmho: Really it is the thought that came with every little card and note that is worth treasuring.

 

 

I hope to expand to more FPN friends in writing.

If you are interested to write and receive from SIngapore.

Please PM me a line..with your address and name

 

Profile: Married with 2 kids

Enjoy writing and reading _FP of course

cycling too.

Watching historical drama

 

Now think of making own postcards for all corresponding friends

 

thank you all

[Dave S]

K, guess I'm also throwing my hat in.

 

Hi, my name is Dave and uh, you can write me if you want to. I'm a single twenty-something with just the appropriate amount of interests to turn this into an a spiralling, page long run-on sentence.

 

Things about me. I work in retail, hardware specifically. I've always liked working with my hands, tearing things apart to see how they work. I do electrical repairs for fun. Wiring computer networks is one of my new hobbies. I'm very much into technology, though having the newest, shiniest, fastest never was that important to me.

 

I love music. I love good audio equipment. I write music too. I'm in the process of building a home studio to record my songs. Not much of a performer though.

 

Photography. Love it. Haven't shot anything in ages though, and can't afford anything digital with a level of functionality I'd be satisfied with.

 

Most of my creative writing is in song, though some is in the form of (chronically unfinished) short fiction. I've had the urge to write a memoir lately but haven't the foggiest what story I'd want to tell.

 

I started into fountain pens sometime last year. I don't recall when. The memory is terrible. I've currently got two Waterman Phileas in fine point, and a triad of Hero pens. My paper and ink collections are building slowly. Funny thing is that ever since I was a teen I felt it very important to save any old notebooks that went unused, perhaps because I believed they signified the potential to fill them up with something interesting. I haven't...yet. My writing instruments then too were important to me. I had a thing for fine point rollerballs as I recall.

 

Yeah, that's all I can squeeze out at this late hour. Thanks for reading.

[Ray]

Just a quick reminder on the purpose of this thread: it is to indicate interest in snail mail correspondence, telling everyone a bit about yourself in the process if you like. Any other chatter doesn't really belong here. That'll keep this thread much easier to navigate.

 

Ray

Edited March 6, 2009 by Ray