Some people are saying that due to e-mail and SMS and all that jazz, the art of writing proper letters is vanishing. So as I'm not much of a fiction-writer, I've taken up a project here in WC to write letters (that will never get sent, to people who possibly don't even exist -- I guess I want to trick the historians a little :P).

So I'd like to hear suggestions: what kind of letters should be written? What kind of letters should be received? And by who?

My latest plan is to write a formal but bitter letter to an ex-employer who fired "me" for wrong reasons... You know, the kind of letter you'd write when you're drunk and then regret sending it the next day.

I really like this project! :D


I think I will write a letter just about daily things, nothing quite in particular. Usually I receive letters near the end of every year from certain families basically boasting about their successes throughout the year, but never anything super friendly.

Nice project. :D

I write proper letters in my email, when I have enough to say.

I've read stories taking place at the turn of the century where characters wrote enormous letters about everything, as if they were diary entries meant for an audience. They were written in a casual voice, similar to the voice the character would use on the phone if he had one (of course, real dialogue is always more broken up than letters). And there was always something to say, because the character was committed to maintaining a relationship with the audience.

A tutor of mine spoke about one book like this (called Clarissa or Christina or some other woman's name that begins with C :S), the entire book is just letters that these characters wrote to each other.

But I had my plan before he told me that, and I felt only a little unoriginal to find out about it :P

That really depends on your purpose in doing this. If its a "slice of life" kinda thing just try to think of all the stupid little mundane things people are excited or worried about from day to day, what they confide in other people, how the same person writing about the same thing will write very different letters saying very different things to different people, that kinda thing I think.

I don't know who said but... "...Nothing new under the sun..." right?

I've been taught that Mika Waltari said that (in his book Sinuhe the Egyptian), but I'm not sure he'd be that famous to have been the original sayer so other-than-Finns would know it... Maybe he was, I'm not sure.

Hmm, I do slice-of-life more in my other project "Human-People," which is more about anecdotes and things people would tell their friend about what happened to them. The letter is more like what would people consider important enough to pay postage and send to another people.

So far I've done a letter from mother to an unborn child and a few to a lover. Newest idea is that employee-employer letter... Hmm, maybe a fan letter as well, from a fan to a musician or something.

six of one half a dozen of the other... I'll take your word for it.

Wow, did my research. And it's Biblical. :O Old saying.
Ah well, it fits since Waltari was a religious man; if he had to rip something off, it had to be the Bible. :)

Oh well... The bible IS universal intellectual property so I guess it's not REALLY ripping it off.