On Penpals and Letter Writing!

Saturday, February 3, 2018

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In honor of the Month of Letters Challenge and International Correspondence Writing Month, I decided to write a post about penpaling!

I met my first penpal when I started this blog. She was a fellow book blogger and we hit it off right away. We only exchanged a couple letters but have remained friends on Facebook. I missed writing to her and to my best friends who have long since graduated from their far away colleges and have come back home. I missed writing to penpals, but didn't know who to write to!

Then NerdCon: Nerdfighteria happened last February. I joined a Facebook group of attendees and near the end of March, a woman posted there asking for penpals. Well, she got so many responses that the people who commented started to write each other and TADA! Suddenly, I had found my people! That led me to posting on Instagram a photo of my outgoing letters and I discovered a low-key sub-culture of snailmailers!

I have 10 penpals from around the States. I adore them all and they all amazing! 10 penpals is sometimes a lot for me to handle. Because no matter what I do I always get at least half of their replies during the same week! I feel forever behind in responding, but they never mind. I do have a system though. I reply to the letters in the order in which I receive them!

But how do I keep every one of those 10 people straight? Besides them all being different people with their own style and lives which makes it pretty easy, I also keep a notebook of everyone's favorites, their hobbies, birthdays, pet names, and things like that! Before I send out a letter I jot down the highlights of what I wrote to them so that when they reply back I remember what it was I even said in the first place.

But what do we write about? Everything! At the beginning it's introducing yourself and getting to know your new friend. I've been writing for almost a year now so a lot of my penpals are not so much penpals as they are friends that live in a different state. What do you talk to your friends about? Everything. We catch each other up on school and work and what we did that month or last weekend, what our pets did, our family, holidays, bad days, good days, everything! And the letters don't have to be long, they don't even have to be letters at all! During school some of my penpals may send a postcard every couple months just so I know they are just stuck in academic hell and will write whenever they can!

Why even write a letter? Because it's important to not let something die just because it isn't as "easy" anymore. Written correspondence was the only way for people to communicate for such a long time that letter writing was commonplace and incredibly important. History shows that the most remembered figures are remembered more clearly through the letters they wrote (and journals they kept, but journalling will be another post one day). Some of my favorite letter writers are Alexander Hamilton, Queen Victoria, and Vincent Van Gogh! Sitting down to spend an hour using your hand to write a letter also helps you relax and reflect on your day, week, or month (depending on how often you write back and forth). It helps you see what your life looks like from another perspective. My life can be boring to me but different and exciting to someone else. It's a chance to get to know other people and keep a lost art going!

Nowadays, writing letters is much less common and sometimes even confuses people. Like my big brother who was extremely confused as to why I was writing a 10 page long letter when I could have just texted. He didn't get the point at all. But this past Christmas I sent out cards that included a wax seal to close the envelope and several of my friends flipped out! I got so many texts about how cool the seals were and that they'd never seen one of those outside a Hogwarts letter. It also prompted a bunch of people to send their own Christmas cards back to me and on to their family and friends as well, thus spreading not just the holiday cheer but the love of posted mail, too!

 It's also really fun! Stamps and post marks are something I never thought would be so exciting, but they are! Seeing a letter in your mail box that is post marked from across the country and thinking about everything it must have seen on it's way to me is extraordinary! And don't get me started on stamps. Philately is COOL! Stationary and cards, rubber stamps and washi tapes are all things I did not care about but do now! But what's great about writing letters is that it doesn't have to cost much more than that 50 cent stamp because you can get envelopes in bulk and regular notebook paper is always pretty cheap. You can buy stamps at your local grocery or pharmacy usually! And just shove the letter in your mailbox and your postal carrier will take it with them when they deliver your mail! Easy peasy!

So in summary, all this to say: penpalling rocks! Writing letters, sending snail mail, buying stamps, postcards and stickers, and mail art is just cooler and longer lasting than sending a text. That's why I'm so excited to take part in my first Month of Letters Challenge where you write and send something in the mail every day the post runs!

Write more,
Text less,
~Laura!

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