I write a lot of stuff. A LOT of stuff. We’re talking about 30-40 pages a week. This includes all the tweets and blog posts to my three public blogs and my secret blog, my Daily Herald articles, Zillow posts, and essays I have collected on my hard drives for what purpose I have no idea, and the novel(la) I’m writing for my daughter. Every word, except for my journal and the Pontificating Potty Post, is electronic.
That’s not a problem, if the purpose of the writing is to be read. And it is. At least most of what I write has that purpose. I do a fairly good job (could be better, obviously) of making my writing available, and of making what I write useful and interesting to people. I love creation, and adding value to people’s lives is an act of creation.
However, its occurring to me that the greatest acts of creation take place one at a time, or at the very most in small groups, and that electronic media is not necessarily the best way for that creation to occur.
Working on a hypothesis here. I watched The Lake House over the weekend. It is a movie, more than anything else, about writing letters. One of my favorite movies is The Shop Around the Corner (remade fairly well as You’ve Got Mail), and it, too, is about writing letters. My wife tells me I would like The Wednesday Letters, which obviously is about the same thing.
Here’s the hypothesis: if I want to have closer, more meaningful relationships with people, I need to be writing letters on paper with a pen.
That’s it. I think I shall start with my wife, with whom my relationship is excellent, but also the most rewarding. My kids would like a card periodically, too, I bet. And there are others with whom I would like to have a relationship that means something, but we never seem to have the time that good relationships take.
I shall test this hypothesis between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and I shall report back. Predictions? Is this going to be a good idea?
Tags: letters
Posted on Thursday, 7th May 2009 by chrisjones
Posted in Blog & News, General | Comments (12)
May 8th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
I’m not sure that it’s the pen to paper part that actually does the most (although it may, mostly due to the the fact that it takes so much longer to write by hand than it does to type so you must really mean what you’re saying to make it worth that time) but the fact that you’re writing to that specific person rather than to “the masses” (you know, the masses of people who read your blog) there are things I would say when writing something specifially to my husband (or say, brother) that I just wouldn’t include in a blog post or essay. (Although if the time spent argument ends up winning I’d like to point out that I made this comment from my I-touch and that takes even longer than writing by hand.)
May 18th, 2009 at 10:19 am
This is a great wp theme – did you do it yourself? If not, could you let me know who did? I’d be interested. Perhaps you would be interested in making me one for my blog?
May 18th, 2009 at 11:16 am
@ George Hahn
Thanks. If you truly are interested, you can e-mail amyjo at amyjoyates.com. She is the one that configured this blog site and can help you.
June 4th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Really great concept. Where did you get this content? Do you write everything yourself?
June 5th, 2009 at 12:48 am
A few weeks ago I found this blog and have been following along steadily. I decided I would give my opening comment. I dont know what to say but that Ive loved reading. Nice website. I will keep visiting this site very often. I have also grabbed your RSS feed to get any updates.
June 5th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Tonya, welcome to the blog. Yes, I do write everything myself. I’m compulsive. There are pills for it, but they don’t work.
June 7th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I’ve been lurking about so just wanted to let you know I enjoy your blog.
June 7th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
It sounds like you’re creating problems yourself by trying to solve this issue instead of looking at why their is a problem in the first place.
June 7th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
I thought you were going to say something decisive.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Hi, I found your blog on google. Very nice layout and info.
June 11th, 2009 at 4:45 am
Hey very nice blog!!
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:12 am
What type of RSS feed do you use here, because i can’t seem to get it working with my reader…
hopefully I’ll figure it out because I like this place!