letters

As of late I've been reading the letters of authors I like. I like it a lot. It shows the author in a more personal light, while allowing said light to be in the literary voice that I've come to know them for. I read excerpts of J.D. Salinger's letters and have thus become obsessed. I picked up a copy of multiple letters Steinbeck's written to people. When I have enough money I'm going to get Chekhov's book of letters as well.

I like the act of writing letters. I think it's very lovely.

Written correspondence is something I want to engage in but cannot, unfortunately. I mean, what's the point? There's emails and facebooks and phones that zip messages at the snap of a finger, so who wants to wait for weeks on end just to see how someone is doing? It's hard to correspond electronically though! I tried email but that died when facebook came out. My long long long emails were rendered useless with an "lol that's nice" response in return. It's disheartening. Facebook as well. It's not like you're going to write a three page essay on someone's wall. It's all about succinctness in this digital age.

There's a much deeper emotional connect to a letter I feel. Because when you write to someone on paper you get to see the way in which they wrote their words. The hand is affected by the words it writes, and it shows in their handwriting: scribbled in frustration, sloppily in sadness, frenetically in excitement. Handwriting allows one to see the emotional impact of a writer's creation through the ink they impart on the paper.

On top of that, it's a creative project, and as such, you're going to make sure it's not going to suck! You start to have fun with it. It's not a business memo or a formal email or whatever but something very personal. It's a mini art project involving yourself. I don't know it just seems to me to... allow someone to invest more of themselves in the art of writing than one would if they committed their correspondence to email. I don't know.

I want to write letters to people but I don't know who. :(