What do you put in your letters?

[WendyNC]

I'm currently enjoying a letter correspondence with another member who's only about an hour's drive away. We haven't even come close to exhausting the subjects of paper and ink in our initial exchanges.

Edited May 24, 2009 by WendyNC

[pen2paper]

Oh, and I'm Russian and I talk about the weather constantly. Plus, since I moved to the desert recently, and my friends are back east among the trees, I get to describe the dust storms and tumbleweeds and the (very occasional) times it rains here.

 

How Japanese of you.

 

In Japan, it's standard form in a personal letter to include a note on the weather or the season. I would start today's letter with a note about the cherries and tulips coming to bloom.

 

English seems to lack guidelines about form beyond the level of the sentence. That can make things difficult in cases like these.

p2p comments..In the letters that passed between my grandmother, and mother..both ladies originating in the US mid-south.. weather, and seasonal changes were a constant. Covering approx late 1930's to the 1990's, so perhaps this form was generational, as well as cultural?

My grandmother was the gatekeeper for all the family letters, so we would recieve pages from family, far-flung across the globe.

I do miss reading these newsy personal pages from loved ones.. certainly did not appreciate them nearly enough, when I had the golden opportunity.

[PacificCoastPen]

If you're lucky to pick a snail based on the bio, that helps. I have a snail I met over a year ago...we have been writing letters just about every two weeks for a full year. Art, music, books, families. We ALWAYS insert something about the ink, the pen, the paper. Paper has gotten exhanged. Ink samples have been wrapped and sent. Photos and art work, music CDs. We finally met each other this month. I live in CA but flew to MD to see family and met a snail in WV and the other snail above in the tippy top point of the finger of Michigan. I used my bad influence on her to buy yet another pen...heh heh. We have talked about politics, religion, the gamut. It's been great!!

 

W

Edited May 24, 2009 by PacificCoastPen

[Bookman]

Within reason, writing a personal letter at all is more important than what you write. So few people take the time to write thoughtfully, in complete sentences, and without the use of computerworld abbreviations. Even fewer take the time to write by hand.

 

No one can tell you what to write; no one can tell you how to structure your letters. Your letters are yours; they're personal. Personalize them. Write from your heart and not just your head.

 

I can't tell you what to write, but I can tell you what I do. I write "stories." Almost everything that happens in life can be turned into an interesting story, whether comic or tragic. I write the truth and get most of the facts straight. But in telling a funny story, if I have to choose between getting every detail correct and getting a laugh, I go for the laugh.

 

I used to loathe reading those once-a-year family letters some people wrote back in the 70s, usually at Christmas ("Billy graduated from high school last May. Yippee! Sally wanted to go to the ceremony but had to stay home with a cold. Boo hoo.") The Golden Rule: I couldn't do that to others. When I write a 10-page letter, which is about average these days, between 9 and 9-1/2 pages will be pure storytelling and the remainig 1/2-page to full page will be comments responding to my correspondent's last letter or questions as an entree to his/her next letter.

[Kabe]

I kinda follow the stream of conciusness approach, as I have learned thru my last two (and only two) letters, but I do make a short and quick list of subjects. Problem is, the stream of conciusness leads to blunt endings.