The Power of Letters

Stephanie and I have talked a lot about the way letters can improve communication with your friends, but I want to talk a little bit about how letters are very powerful for getting the things we want. I feel like people completely forget letters when it comes to enacting change within a community, and yet they still remain today as one of the most powerful tools for getting what you want.

I was reading an article about how Michelle Obama is trying to combat child obesity through a new program specially designed to provide children with nutritious lunches, show ways to get outside and get active, and encourage parents and children both to take an active role in nutrition. It was a pretty good article, and I think Mrs. Obama’s heart is in the right place. However, one of the comments was a little sad for me. It went something like this:

Thank goodness the government is finally doing something! Last week I couldn’t find a particular healthy food item in my grocery store, and I was told to look in the nutrition section, but they didn’t have it there, either. Can you believe it? I hope things start to change now.

Really? You couldn’t find an item in your grocery store, so you’re going to sit back and wait for the government to do something? When did we as a nation begin to have this mentality, instead of taking matters into our own hands and writing a letter (or emailing, or calling)? I don’t like how many laws there are in this country, and maybe you don’t either, or maybe you do, but the fact is, it’s much more efficient to actually tell someone, “This is what I want” instead of waiting for Washington (which is notoriously slow and ineffective) to do something about it.

Letters are very powerful, and most people don’t even consider them to be an option much of the time. Dissatisfied with service? You could grumble about it, or you could wait for the government to step in and realize that this particular company has bad business practices (which will take FOREVER), or you could write a letter, an email, or make a phone call and TELL them. Want an item in your local grocery? Write them a letter and tell them. Want your community to put in a red light somewhere? Go to a board meeting, or write your mayor a letter.

It’s effective, and it often WORKS. It’s amazing because we tend to think of letters as being slow, but people do read them, and people will take into account what you have to say. Letters are effective simply because they take an effort to send – they often come across as more sincere than an email, and they’re more tangible than a phone call. Your letter can make a difference. It’s actually really cool.

Here are some links so that you can utilize the power of your pen (warning, most of these are US-oriented simply because that’s where I live):

• Urgent Action Network – Write letters to world leaders to help achieve peace in all countries.
• Any Soldier and Soldiers’ Angels’ Letter Writing Team – Write letters and send care packages to soldiers overseas
• Write Your Representative – Write a letter to your Representative to let him/her know what you want
• Write to your Senator – Write a letter to your Senators to let them know what you want

Also I encourage you to write to businesses and your local government near you. Nobody will ever know what your ideas are unless you tell them.

The Art of the Thank You

Hello all! Have you missed me? I have to admit, the more and more I reacquaint myself with the Internet world, the more and more I realize how much I’ve missed all of YOU. I’ve always said that the reason blogging is such a great outlet is because of the connections you make with other people. So, here I am, once again trying hard to establish a habit of writing.

Speaking of writing, when was the last time you thought about writing thank-you cards? Was it that time, just after Christmas, where you threw a fit when your mother reminded you for the umpteenth time that you have to write thank-you cards for all the presents you got, but you didn’t like the presents you got so you didn’t want to thank whoever gave you them? Or was it when you last applied for a job, and sent along a note thanking the interviewer for giving you a chance, as many people recommend you do? Neither? Both?

To be sure, writing thank-you cards has possibly become more of a lost art than letter-writing, as I have yet to come across a “thank-you cards” blog, but I have come across multitudes of letter-writing ones. Letter-writing is re-surging in the public interest, but thank-you cards remain something only talked about when Emily Post is brought up.

To which I say: No more! Let’s talk about writing thank-you letters. Hey, let’s talk about telling people thank-you, from your heart! What I find wanting in the age of mass communication is not a lack of communication, but a lack of honest communication. It seems to me that I only talk about important things in my classes, and then I talk about them intellectually rather than passionately. I want to talk passionately more often, with more people. I want to have a Meeting of the Minds about how I feel about stewarding the Earth over a cup of hot chocolate at a local café. I want to talk about art and creativity, and how they make you feel more alive. I want to talk about what’s in your heart.

And I want to make absolutely sure those people that do kind things for me know how much I appreciate it.

Which is why I keep a variety of blank note-cards on hand: whenever I receive a gift, or experience someone’s kindness, I like to make sure I have my cards on-hand so that I can write while I’m still feeling the initial awe and gratitude. I find that I don’t want to write a thank-you note if I have to lay out money for a new card each time, and if I have cards already I’m still so excited about the receipt of a gift that I really, really want to just write it out. Then it’s done already, without fuss and with real excitement.

Part of me wonders if my partiality to thank-you cards comes from my time spent in Vienna, a city where the people are readily characterized as “very well-mannered”. While my professors certainly acted with a degree of manners to which I am not at all used to (as a rude American), there was one event in which a couple of strangers did the kindest things for me, simply because they were asked to. I couldn’t fathom their generosity. I wanted so badly to make sure they knew how much I appreciated it, and I bought a thank-you card right away and sent it off. I’m still not sure if it was received, but I hope they know that they contributed greatly to my good impression of a certain landmark and architect in Vienna.

Because of the Viennese rubbing off on me, and my own desire to make people feel appreciated, blank cards for thank-you notes are an important tool in my arsenal of stationery. They may not be used extremely often, but they are there for the times when I realize I need them, and I hope I have convinced you as well of their utility.

Remember to enter Becky’s giveaway! Enough entries and I might host one of my own.

Why I am quitting Nanowrimo

I have been doing Nanowrimo since 2002 – that’s eight years if you count this one. But first, a history of my writing career. I’ve been writing since I could read – in second grade I was the first person to get a book “published” under my teacher’s “publishing” system. I don’t remember too many achievements in elementary school, but I definitely remember that one. From then on that’s all I did. I talked with my dad about writing and I wrote like crazy. None of my stories were very good, of course, but they were mine.

Then I hit junior high and wrote my first novel. It was short, of course, and badly written with a terribly obvious “twist” at the end. I remember telling my friend about it and she decided to write one with me. It was a big secret. I wrote longhand, and during class, and it was a constant thing. I loved it to death.

Then I moved to Texas in high school and many of my stories got lost in the move. That didn’t deter me. I wrote on an old Windows 3 machine in elementary school and I continued writing on an old Windows 95 machine in junior high. In high school I got my own computer and kept going from there. Then I learned about Nanowrimo when I was 14.

Keep in mind this was “before it was cool.” This was before the Internet was mainstream, back when everyone made their websites on Geocities and Facebook wasn’t invented yet. There weren’t a whole lot of people doing Nanowrimo at this point. But there it was and I was so excited about it. So I wrote my book, stopped at 10,000 words, and essentially forgot about it for awhile. But I didn’t stop writing that year. I kept going, writing for fun, almost every single day. I wrote my second novel.

Then I remembered Nanowrimo again right before 2003. I made a new username and there I went. And I won. And I won again after that. And I won every single year including this year. And this is where I’m going to stop.

I believe in Nanowrimo, but I believe in it for the thing that it originally stood for – a way for people who want to be writers to finish their writing. Well, I know I can finish my writing. I know I can keep going. I know I can churn out a novel and finish it. But Nanowrimo has changed, and with it, I have changed.

Nanowrimo is now about “how many words can you get?” It’s about not getting 50,000, but going beyond that and writing a million words in a month for a lot of people. Nanowrimo has never been about quality of writing, but it was meant as a tool for writers, and so it’s one of those things where it’s assumed you’re writing because you love to write and want to get something published or share with your friends. But now there’s no expectation of that. It’s ONLY about word count now. It’s ONLY about getting “as many words as you can.” I’ve even read multiple people who count their blog posts–or essays written for school, or random tangents in the middle of their story, or journal entries–toward their word count. That’s not what Nanowrimo is about to me, and I cannot support that.

But it’s more than that. I have more personal reasons, of course. I pour all my creativity and effort into one solid month of the year and I don’t have any energy to write after that. I save it all up for Nanowrimo – I don’t have any energy after it. Now that I’m starting to get pretty serious about my writing, I’ve realized that this is unacceptable. I need to write every day, instead of barfing out a hastily crafted novel one month out of a year. The only serious things I’ve done outside of Nanowrimo in the past few years have been short stories. I want to write a novel, dang it!

So I’m quitting Nanowrimo to regain my creative sanity, to have more time and energy during the year, and a little bit because I don’t like what it’s becoming. Nanowrimo is a networking tool that helps get some words down, but I can get these words without it. I want to love writing again instead of thinking of it as a chore every November.

As a side note, what’s up with all these weird Nanowrimo spin-offs, like National Novel Writing Year and National Blog Posting Month? It’s baffling to me…

Ten things

Ten things I wish I knew how to do:

1. Avoid headaches (major one tonight)
2. Dance
3. Sing
4. Make paper and bind books
5. Draw
6. Paint
7. Read Tarot cards
8. Design cool-looking web sites
9. Imagine 5 years in the future
10. Cook well!

Review: Quo Vadis Equology Textagenda (Part 1 of 2)

A few weeks ago (time. it’s trying to kill me!) I received a Quo Vadis Textagenda Equology for review from the generous Karen Doherty, VP of Exaclair, Inc. I wish I had her job — all the free stuff she gives out to people to review! I see it over and over: “A package from Karen at Exaclair! Look at the cool stuff she sent me to review!”

Now I’m a lucky recipient, and I’m not breaking any laws by telling you that I’m definitely biased in favor of the free swag just by its being free. I am going to try and judge this planner as best I can according to my standards for planners.

There’s a long post ahead. (more…)

Why do you write?

Becky, Chris, and I began our Nanowrimo adventures yesterday, sitting in a café and pretending to be the literary genius of fin-de-siecle Vienna. Oh wait, that was probably just me. (My area of expertise is a lot different than anyone else I know. I feel like a walking German encyclopedia.)

Anyway, it’s The Big Month, just two days in and none of us are behind yet. I’ve been reading all the buzz about Nanowrimo while procrastinating on schoolwork today, and I came across a post on Twitter that seemed disinclined to take part in Nanowrimo, but felt that s/he must anyway. Which made me wonder why DO people participate in Nanowrimo? It seems like a very far-spread phenomenon, and I assume many of our readers are slogging along with us*, so I put you all to the question: Why do you write?

Is it a slog through thousands and thousands of words? Do you write to say that you wrote a novel? Is it something you do to hold as a badge of honor? Or do you write to pursue the craft? To hone your skills? For the sheer joy of the story-telling process?

It seems to me that far too many people write a Nanowrimo novel for the prestige of it, to simply vomit words on the page, to say they’ve done it. Which is part of the process of it, but for me isn’t the reason to do it. I only have one completed Nanowrimo novel under my belt, but what an experience that was! I now know how awful my writing can be under pressure. My ideas are half-baked and with my lazy attitude toward planning (what’s that?), my characters and plots are appallingly simple.

But the experience! After writing like that I just wanted to keep writing (and why did I stop?) Suddenly words came easily when I sat down to write. Maybe not perfect words, but words and plot twists nonetheless. I still don’t know what planning is, but the experience of writing so much helped me at least put it on the page, and doing more of that makes you an even better writing. As with all things, it’s all about practice.

So my goal this Nanowrimo is to write a 50,000 word “novel”, but then keep writing afterward. This is my art, after all. I want to sharpen my skills, not let them fade.

What about you?

* Although I realize that at least one of our regular readers isn’t taking part—but she’s prolific in her fanfiction writing, so I have nothing against her.

I’m a Notebook Addict

The blog Notebook Stories sometimes features a “Notebook Addict”. Now I may not currently be at the level of most of the other Notebook Addicts, since most of my notebooks are at home, but I’ve noticed recently that my school-use notebooks have increased… by a lot more than I write.

These are the notebooks that have come to live with me since school started:

It doesn’t seem like a lot until you consider that I brought five with me to begin with:

The upper left-most journal is the one I’ve used consistently since the beginning of September and got as a “half-birthday present” in July. Next to it, a small Staples notebook for lists, and a blank Goethe-covered journal from Germany in January or February, and the cat notebook directly next to it is from a few years ago in Japantown. The cat journal at the end is probably from before that, from Target.

Speaking of cats:

Notice a theme? Current journal, next journal (that I bought in September), and notebooks from long ago? I think I’m going to be the Crazy Cat Lady.

One last picture, of the sketchbook I got in Germany with some watercolours:

Yeah, I just figured I had to use it if I bought it.

Hopefully I’ll do a lot more writing and ’sketching’ this weekend because I’m flying off to visit Becky in Austin. She visited San Francisco in July and now it’s time for me to return the favor! So everyone will get some pictures of her city next.

Writing

For the past week I’ve been writing every day. It’s not for any reason than the fact that I love to write and I want to work on a story and I’ve been so busy with projects at work and moving and such that I haven’t been able to. It’s been a leisurely amble – a bit here and there – and it’s been working out really well.

When I started my writing group, the Scribble Society, months ago it was because I wanted a writer’s group for encouragement and critiques and whatever else. I spent hours putting everything up, finding the right plugins, creating a forum and a blog, figuring things out, and so on. Then everyone got busy, myself included, and I didn’t have time to write let alone update it, and so it died. But I feel like I need something like a writer’s group again, now that things are less hectic. Is it too late to resurrect the Society? Would anyone be interested in a serious writing group?

Even if it is too late I’ll keep on writing because writing is what I was born to do. Despite feelings of inadequacy and some issues I’ve had in my past with some pretty harsh criticisms, I’m ready to go again and this time for real. I may never get published and my stories may never get read, but the important part is being happy and doing what I love.

P.S. – new layout up soon!

Autumn

Fall is my favorite season. I love the changing of the winds, the turning of the weather, the rain, the leaves. Fall in Austin isn’t nearly as epic as it was in my hometown in Pennsylvania, but it’s still wonderful here. It hits you so suddenly, the chill of the wind, and you feel as if we skipped Fall and went straight to Winter. After months of drought, we have nothing but rain. So here we are, and the temperature is 65F, the skies thick with rain, and when you walk outside you can smell Fall.

Dear Lunsh.net readers,

Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want a postcard.

I made a few postcards last week for the people who requested them, but there’s still time to request (see this post). I mean, I just bought bunches of new postcards, too. The Postcard Collection Continues!

So you might not even get views of places I’ve been: you might get cats or drawings inspired by life in Japan. Doesn’t that sound like fun? I order you to request a postcard from me!

I might even decorate the front.

I’m sure you could use some fun in your mailbox, and I have a postcard collection to get rid of. So what do you think? Want a postcard now?

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