Other people

Week 2 : writing to someone else

Hello friends

How did you find the first week? The school holidays are getting on top of me a little. For all my talk of taking time to write and finding space; time and space were extremely limited last week! Teenage meltdowns, camping, 70 bazillion snacks and meals made, packing for camping, unpacking after camping, “working” from home all got in the way. Such is the nature of August eh?

I though we would try something a little different this week. Rather than being all introspective-y and writer-ish, I thought it might be be fun to write to someone else. It’s nice to get out of a headspace where we are worrying over whether we have written the right thing or examined something in the right way; when we write to someone else it frees us up a bit. Even if that someone else is you, and you are writing from a different perspective.

Do you have somewhere where you keep old letters, postcards, 14 year old you love notes? I’ve got a tatty old envelope that lives under my bed that is sadly neglected these days. We don’t really do physical post that much any more do we? Whilst thinking about this prompt I went for a dig about and rifled through my old envelope.

My ancient envelope full of letters and a card from Norman

I found a big old pile of cards that were written to me from Norman the Spider who lived in the airing cupboard. He wrote to me most of the times he went on holiday, or disappeared with his spider girlfriend for a Christmas break. Funnily enough, the dates on these coincided with the exact times my Dad went to work on the oil rigs for weeks at a time. And Norman the Spider happened to have the exact same handwriting as Father Christmas.

Odd.

Prompt 2 : Write to someone

Take this prompt however you like it. My recommendation would be to try perhaps writing something by hand just to switch things up, but as I mentioned last week- I’m not your Mum! Think of someone you haven’t connected with in a while and write to them. Write a ridiculous ode to your pet and recite it to them. Write some fan mail to your favourite actor/singer/geologist just like Antony Hopkins did to Bryan Cranston about his role in Breaking Bad. Write to your MP and tell them what you want changing. Write a lengthy, cathartic letter to someone who has pissed you off in the past.

Write to yourself from the future. Or from where you are right now.

Epistolary poetry is a genre of poetry written as letters to others. There are lots of examples, like this from Jack Spicer, or these weird text message poems in the Guardian but if you fancy a go at this- don’t tie yourself in knots. You could write a letter then try and add some line breaks, or even take an email already written and play around with the structure. Got an angry email to Bulb like I have? Excellent- play around with it a bit and make it a poem!

If you have a bit of time over a morning coffee, I highly recommend a peruse of the letters on Note Archive. I lost a good bit of time here this week, and it’s lovely inspiration for writing. I particularly loved this bittersweet letter from an American soldier to his lover, Dave, in 1943. And this letter from a Grandad to his 1 year old Grandson signing off

Sir, Your proud, Humble, Obedient GRANDDADDY

It’s up to you whether you send these letters out of course.

Play with it

• Go to the corner shop/garage and buy the shittest card you can find. Doctor it, or send it out as is to someone.

• Get yourself to a local art exhibit or museum and stock up on some 40p postcards. Send them. Or pick one you like, write to yourself, and stick it up in your space.

• Rifle through your old letters/postcards and write in response to one of them.

• Make a card like when you were 8, with stickers and lots of different colours of pens.

Thanks for sharing within the group. We have a few who are joining in who don’t do Facebook, so please feel free to share anything you do write in the comments on Substack, or simply hit reply to this and share with me!

No pressure to share what you have written to someone else if it turns out to be private, but I would still love to know what you decided to do with the prompt!

With love and a messy kitchen.

Em