Letter Writing Campaign

I asked my class of college freshman this week when they had last written a letter to someone. I got the same set of blank stares that I’ve seen before—on a day when I've mentioned Erica Jong maybe, or the BeeGees, or say, dangling participles. Blank stares. Dead quiet. Not that this is not a lively bunch—someone did quote Lil Wayne last week in a discussion about the election. They’re bright kids, my freshmen, and finally, someone in the back of the room offered that he did write thank you notes on occasion. And of course, he’s right. Thank you notes, a condolence note, that’s about it. Letter writing is as dead as disco.

The temptation here is to tell you why letter writing is dead and what sorts of communications have replaced it. However, I am not going to do that (though text me and I will be happy to fill you in). I have a feeling that most of the people reading this already understand these things. You are reading a blog, after all. This is not a private correspondence from me to you—it's a public broadcast. We humans of this decade are nothing if not efficient creatures, so why would we write something beautiful and heartfelt for one person when we can write something and zap it out on the internet for thousands (or maybe dozens) to see?

Well, there are plenty of reasons to write letters, but instead of listing them, I’m going to use my little piece of blog space to issue a challenge: write a letter. Write a letter during this holiday season. Write someone to say something that is long overdue or to tell a story or to deliver some everyday news.

As a fiction writer, I always tell myself that I have no need for correspondence or even a journal because most of what happens to me ends up in my fiction (in some way, shape or form). My fiction is my chronicle. However, a friend of mine recently proved me wrong when he showed me one of my own letters, written to him in 1980.

The letter was a time capsule. In 1980, I was living in Dallas, Texas. I had taken my first post-college jobs selling textbooks and moved to the city all alone. I wrote the letter sitting at the kitchen table of my tiny Cedar Springs apartment on a solitary Saturday night. I wrote unselfconsciously to my childhood (and now lifelong) friend, telling him the kind of things I would even now if we were talking on the phone.

Halfway through my letter, chatting away, I noted that my next door neighbor had returned to his apartment. “There is some high-pitched laughing,” I wrote. “He must have a date.” Thus began my account for all history of the next forty-five minutes—a play-by-play of the end of my neighbor’s date: every giggle, moan and thump thump thump that came through the thin walls of my apartment.

What I would give on any day now to write with such immediacy and fluidity. I am really grateful that my friend kept the letter. Reading it made me laugh, as I surely did as I was writing the letter, and even more, it flooded me with the full memory of this particular time in my life. “A letter is a gift,” says Garrison Keillor. And of course, it is—to both the receiver and the sender.

So here’s your prompt: Dear …

Lynn York is the author of The Piano Teacher (2004) and The Sweet Life (2007). She lives in Carrboro, NC. Her website is www.lynnyork.com.