Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Writing Letters

In the first session of Writing Thru It we talk about writing letters. People who say that they don't write actually do at least leave notes for people or send emails. Some people in class say they miss the old fashioned letter that comes on paper in the mailbox.

Letters come in lots of forms and an example that I use in this class is the old song made famous by Fats Waller "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down". I heard this on NPR while I was driving the Sunday before I taught the class for the first time so I was excited. As soon as I got home, I googled the song title to get the lyrics which start like this:

I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter
and make believe it came from you.


Letters can be to (or from) anyone. When I was a kid at summer camp, in the last few days I would mail myself a letter to get it in the mail at home. Shows there is foreshadowing in real life. Now I am suggesting that other people do something similar.

The homework for this section is to write a letter or note to anyone living or dead. It can be someone you love or someone you are not speaking to anymore. It could be to an organization or a whole branch of your family. It can be nice or nasty, just write it out. The twist, and there always is a twist, is that for a follow up letter write a second letter to that entity as if you had received a reply. Do not write the reply, that's too easy. Do not plan - that might stifle you. Write the first letter, pause an hour, a day, or a week, and then write the second letter. Again just let it flow.
If you have trouble letting it flow, don't worry. We'll be discussing that here, too.

1 comment:

Sarah Einstein said...

Oh, how clever! This assignment reminds me of Ira Progoff's journalling techniques, and a little of Fritz Perls!