Does anyone write letters anymore? The question got me thinking and attending to what we actually do write to one another. But it also got me thinking about the difference between a conversation and a letter.
I have a notepad full of messages my daughter and I left for each other when I was working in a restaurant, and she was in middle school. They were short, direct, and full of everyday announcements: “There’s more macaroni in the fridge.” “Please clean out the cat box after you finish your homework.” “I’m over at Leanne’s—be back in an hour.” Each were also signed with love and funny little bits of news and drawings. They brought me back to when it was just us two, each doing our best to span distance made by necessity.
Those messages answered the question. We do write letters to each other all the time. Some people still write pages and put them in an envelope with a stamp. Most of us now write emails of one sort or another. We text and write on social media. We use emojis by the bucketful with as much meaning as any telegram or 1930s missive on thin blue airmail paper. The oldest known complaint letter is 4,000 years old, Babylonian, and stamped into stone. We write letters to the editor, postcards, Post-It notes, and letters of reference.
All these types of messages answer the second question: a conversation is an immediate exchange, but a letter is a message written when alone and focused, usually, to an audience of one. It is intimate and directed. A letter or message allows the writer to concentrate on only one reader and on themselves: What is it that most needs to be said? What can’t be said face to face? The thing about letters is that they instantly have a point of view, and they offer the writer an opportunity to choose a voice and tone. The message is internal: one voice speaking uninterruptedly to another.
Jane Austen first wrote Sense and Sensibility as letters between the sisters Eleanor and Marianne. Anne Frank wrote to her diary in the attic hideaway. Celie’s letter to God in The Color Purple wrenches the heart. And then there is Harry Potter’s acceptance letter to Hogwarts from Minerva McGonagall that changes everything. Letters are a literary genre unto themselves, from Biblical epistles to archival war letters to messages left on the moon: To Whomsoever Finds This. We are a letter writing species.
So, perhaps, when trying to help a character puzzle out a conundrum or if they find themselves needing to say the most important thing they will every say, try giving them pen and paper, or an electronic tablet, or a stick in the sand, and see what pours forth from their heart. Letters communicate so brilliantly because they reveal the voice within.
Upcoming Events
Fantasy Workshop Online. July 6th & 7th 2024, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m EDT
When you daydream, what world are your characters in? Where are they in time and space? What forces are they up against? Who are their allies? Who are the agents of challenge? What are their resources? And what in this fantastic universe are they wearing? Join me for two days of generative writing to examine, explore, answer, and develop world building, conflict and tension, character development, dialogue and more!
We will write together in the workshop, listen and support each others’ work with respect.
Spaces limited. Cost: $400. Contact: maureen@maureenbjones.com
Prompt Photo
What I want, more than anything, is a reason to write a postcard
from someplace not here. To spin around a tall wire rack of cards, select a few, tote them back to a rented room and scribble messages on them that vary from trite to cliché.
—Jan Haag from “Postcards”
