Letter Writing Challenge

Happy 2019, dear readers! If you are wondering how we are almost at the end of January already, I’m shaking my head right beside you in disbelief. At least we are a few days away from February, which starts off “International Correspondence Writing Month” (InCoWriMo). The concept involves putting pen to paper and writing a letter a day for each day of February, resulting in 28 letters or postcards in total. I’ve signed up for my second year of this challenge and you can still sign up until January 31st right here.

For a stationery lover like me, I look forward to not only revisiting my own handwriting style, but also sending out cute stickers, postcards and illustrations along with my letters. While there are many different ways to choose your 28 recipients, I’m treating this as a way to make friends in countries that I love and virtually travel to my favourite cites. I hope you can join me in this InCoWriMo challenge for a much needed step away from technology and back to traditional ways of corresponding.

For the love of Snail Mail

I have a confession to make. Apart from owning my own stationery label I’m also a massive stationery fan with a stash of postcards, cute stickers, patterned washi tapes, greeting cards and funky envelopes all waiting to be used up when an opportunity presents itself. Luckily for me I absolutely love the art of writing letters and usually end up using store-bought items as well as my own creations in my outgoing snail mail to friends.

We live in a technological age where it has become the norm to send instant text messages, emails and social media posts out into the world. This simplifies our fast-paced lives and ensures we’re always connected. Everything happens in the blink of an eye. For me there’s something so special about sending out a message in the old form of a letter. I love spending my spare time just sitting down with a cup of tea in the garden, pen in hand, filling the page with all the events of life that occurred in the time since our last correspondence and describing everything there is to look forward to in the future. There’s a great deal of therapeutic value in the art of handwriting your thoughts on paper to a friend half way across the globe. Have you tried it yet? It’s truly so much fun!

Thankfully there’s still plenty of love for this tangible form of communication. On Instagram there are great hashtags such as #snailmailrevolution and #sendmoremail going around. Indeed many of my penpals and I still rely on the instant messaging service within Instagram to communicate to each other when we send or receive a letter. I don’t think I could’ve ever had the patience to write letters in the good old days.

In many ways we are fortunate to live in the 21st century but I just hate the thought of imagining email replacing handwritten correspondence the way the keyboard I’m currently typing on replaced the classic typewriter and the way in which e-cards are slowly replacing actual greeting cards in the mailbox. We can’t let this happen.

I encourage you (yes YOU!) to help us revive the snail mail movement. I can’t vouch for the online post-crossing websites many people use because I managed to find all my penpals via Instagram, but if you’re passionate about putting pen to paper, send someone a letter today and you’ll know just how good it feels to send as well as receive one back. It can be a simple thank you card, a declaration of love for your better half or a creative masterpiece to a friend. Have fun with it!

Oh and if you’re so inclined to buy your stationery from me and support my small business, I’ll be eternally grateful. Visit our brand new Online Shop here.

Happy mailing!