Mo' letters

This winter was a little lighter, despite the weather, thanks to LetterMo.

Maybe you've heard of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, when participants pledge to write a 50,000-word novel in a month, sharing ideas and support online.

Month of Letters began a few years ago when author & blogger Mary Robinette Kowal extended a challenge: For the month of February, send one piece of personal mail every day that the U.S Postal Service is in operation. That's 23 pieces of mail, excluding four Sundays and one U.S. holiday.

It's a little treat to find something in your mailbox besides unsolicited junk. Plus, the act of hand-writing even a short note is a very different process from composing an email or a text. For me, it's easier to visualize the person receiving the letter, to write as if I'm speaking to her, when I'm putting pen to paper, rather than pounding a keyboard.

For my third LetterMo, I offered to include any Facebook friends who wanted to receive a letter from me. This felt a little heretical, using social media to reference a pre-Internet mode. But the results were pleasing. Our handwritten notes became another point of contact, a small way to know each other a little better.

I mailed postcards, birthday cards, thank-you notes, just-thinking-of-you notes, and a fun flurry of Valentines. Some people wrote back just to say "Thank you for writing!"

Try it yourself, one letter at a time. Imagine the face of your loved one or friend, when he sees your small gift.

My Second Annual Month of Letters

February always sneaks up on me, but I'm going to participate in the Month of Letters 2013, even though I'm off to a late start.

Here's the challenge: Send one piece of postal mail per day, every day that the U.S. Mail is in service. That's 23 letters, notes, packages or postcards. And respond to every piece of personal mail you receive.

Author, blogger, voice actor and puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal isn't just trying to support the postal service. She initiated the challenge last year, to brighten up a dreary month and remind people about the special pleasure of getting something in the mail. More than 700 people participated in the 2012 challenge.

"Email is all about the now. Letters are different, because whatever I write needs to be something that will be relevant a week later to the person to whom I am writing… It is relaxing. It is intimate. It is both lasting and ephemeral," Mary writes in her blog about the challenge.

Follow the Month of Letters on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/LetterMo) or Twitter (#LetterMo, or follow @LetterMonth).

If you'd like some mail from me, let me know in the comments. (If I don't have your postal address, I'll message you.) Or just send me a postcard!

A month of letters

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One handwritten letter, every day, for a month. That's my plan for February; it's the Month of Letters.

I have always admired a different writing project, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), although I 've never participated.

NaNoWriMo members pledge to write a book during the month of November. They set word-count goals, cheer each other on, and get advice from published authors. It's a spirited group effort to take that novel you've always meant to write and get it off the ground, out of your head and onto the page/screen.

This seems like a great way to combat the isolation of a writer's life while circumventing all-too-easy procrastination.

I'm pretty sure that I don't have a novel in me, but the Month of Letters has an appeal.

A friend pointed me to this blog post by writer/puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal. The challenge for the Month of Letters is straightforward: Post a letter a day.

I will mail at least one item -- that's actual, physical mail, not email or blog posts -- on every day that the U.S. Postal service delivers mail. That's 24 pieces of mail. (There are four Sundays and one federal holiday in February.)

I may go beyond that commitment. A list of potential recipients quickly numbered 29.

Do you have a box stashed in your closet or attic, full of treasured letters from relatives and friends? I do, but if you're younger than me, than you probably don't. I doubt I've added an item to the box in the last 10 years. I'm looking forward to changing that.

Want to join me? Want to get a letter from me? Leave a comment!

Shaping these images to make them stay

Muir Woods National Monument, California

An Event

As if a cast of grain leapt back to the hand,
A landscapeful of small black birds, intent
On the far south, convene at some command
At once in the middle of the air, at once are gone
With headlong and unanimous consent
From the pale trees and fields they settled on.

What is an individual thing? They roll
Like a drunken fingerprint across the sky!
Or so I give their image to my soul
Until, as if refusing to be caught
In any singular vision of my eye
Or in the nets and cages of my thought,

They tower up, shatter, and madden space
With their divergences, are each alone
Swallowed from sight, and leave me in this place
Shaping these images to make them stay:
Meanwhile, in some formation of their own,
They fly me still, and steal my thoughts away.

Delighted with myself and with the birds,
I set them down and give them leave to be.
It is by words and the defeat of words,
Down sudden vistas of the vain attempt,
That for a flying moment one may see
By what cross-purposes the world is dreamt.

- Richard Wilbur, American poet, 1921-
from New and Collected Poems, © 1988 by Richard Wilbur

I was delighted when I found this poem because it states so eloquently some of the reasons why I've kept a journal since seventh grade, and why I began this blog. Capturing an experience in words makes it more real, somehow. At the same time, writing about the event shapes it subtly. Inevitably choices are made, one description where another might have done. Sometimes all I know when I start is that there is something important that I want to remember, to better understand. Often, the act of choosing the words and reading them over reveals what the meaning of the story really is for me.

Datelines

When I started my first job out of graduate school, as a writer at a group of medical trade newspapers, I posted this list of cities on the cubicle wall above my typewriter.*

Atlanta Baltimore Beijing Berlin Boston Chicago Cincinnati Cleveland Dallas Denver Detroit Djibouti Geneva Gibralter Guatemala City Havana Hong Kong Honolulu Houston Indianapolis Jerusalem Kuwait City Las Vegas London Los Angeles Luxembourg Macau Mexico City Miami Milwaukee

Minneapolis Monaco Montreal Moscow New Delhi New Orleans New York Oklahoma City Ottawa Paris Philadelphia Phoenix Pittsburgh Quebec City Rome St. Louis San Marino Salt Lake City San Antonio San Diego San Francisco Seattle Singapore Tokyo Toronto Vatican City Washington

* Yes, a typewriter! We used electric typewriters and actual carbon paper for the first few years I worked there. Cut-and-paste was meant, and done, literally. No, I am not that old. It was an antiquated office.

The list comes from the style book of the Associated Press, an industry standard. These cities stand alone in the dateline of a news story, without being followed by the state name or country. Presumably these cities are known well enough that the average reader doesn't need any more information

Every time I visited a new city on the list, I'd check it off. I wondered how many of these cities I would ever visit.

Nearly 20 years later, my updated list shows that I have been to 30 of the 57 cities. If you just consider American cities, it's 23 of 30.

I would like to check off at least 5 or 6 more.