Letters in the Mail

I have always loved reading. When I was young, I read all the Little House on the Prairie books, the Boxcar Children series, Narnia.  Book order days were my favorite in elementary school. Then when I was about 12, I got into the classics, Great Expectations, Moby Dick, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In boarding school, I spent most of my days reading. In college, I used Literature classes to fill as many of my course requirements as I could. It was in these English classes that I learned to write. Before then, I had always considered myself a terrible writer. And through this past year, I have really developed a love and appreciation of writing.

I do want to be a writer one day. It's why I started this blog and it's part of the reason I read so much. Being in PA school means I spend the majority of my time studying medicine. (I want to be a PA too) But in my spare time I do everything I can to further my literary education.

My sister told me about this subscription from The Rumpus called Letters in the Mail. You pay five dollars a month and you get a letter every week from an author. The author also includes a return address if you want to respond. For the past few months, my sister has been passing a lot of her letters onto me to read but I finally signed up for my own subscription. Letters are a completely unique style of writing. They are unbelievably personal and who doesn't look forward to getting a letter in the mail? Letters are truly a lost art and they are great for people like me who communicate better through writing. If you are interested you can sign up here.

There is such a thrill from getting a real letter in the mail. I have had pen pals almost all my life starting at age seven when my best friend moved to Germany.  I remember staying up in the middle of the night to write her letters. In my closet, I have boxes full of letters from when I was in boarding school. Maybe I wasn't such a bad writer growing up. Maybe I just didn't enjoy what they required you to write about in school. I need a new pen pal but in the meantime I am looking forward to receiving these letters.

Loved the illustrations in this letter.

"For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fiber of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver." -Virginia Woolf