No, I’m not a little late.  If you check the archives you’ll see last year I also did this only a week after New Year’s.  No specific reason.  My blog, my rules 😉

But about that resolution…I’ve decided to make just one this year.  No mucking about with losing weight or saving more or all that nonsense that never work anyway.  This year I’ve decided I want to start writing letters again.

In November Jon Negroni wrote a post about how we should start writing letters again.  In a few short paragraphs he had utterly convinced me that this form of communication should return.

Letters are more than simply a form of communication.  They are a record of our messages that can be saved in a way that electronic messages can’t (for one, they’ll never become corrupt and they’re format won’t become incompatible with current software).  Letters also require more thoughtfulness to write, as you cannot simply press backspace when you make a mistake.

Last year a book came out titled Letters of Note.  It is a collection of 125 letters written by people as diverse as Leonardo da Vinci, JFK, Queen Elizabeth II, Kurt Vonnegut, Mick Jagger and Iggy Pop.  Who’s going to do something like this with emails?  Will you buy a book titled Most Inspiring Tweets of January 2014?  A plan started forming in my mind.

Only a few days after Jon’s post, Jayde-Ashe also wrote a post about letter-writing, including a few letters by her favourite author, John Steinbeck.  My course was set.  But I was smack-bang in the middle of NaNoWriMo, and then December came along with all its decorating madness and cookie-baking and enduring enjoying time with relatives, so I decided to wait with my plan until the new year when there’s actually people on the internet again.

And then, if I still had any doubt, just last week I opened a post by Miss Tiffany on her New Year’s resolutions and what is her very first one?  You guessed it.  Write more letters.

The letter is coming back y’all, and I’m going to do my part to help that along.  But I need your help.  Because I need someone to whom I can actually write letters.  So this is an open call for pen-pals.  Remember those?  I had a couple during high school and would like to have some again.  Why must you be my pen-pal?  Because one day I’m going to be a famous author and those letters will be sought-after collector’s items your grandkids can sell to buy a new hovercar 😀

If you’re up to this, use the form below to send me your details.  Now, I know many of you use pseudonyms online for the sake of anonymity, and I respect that.  But due to the nature of regular mail I will require your real name and surname, and of course your address.  I promise I’ll not share it with any other person (except, of course, our respective countries’ postal services).  I’d also appreciate if you can tell me a bit about yourself in one or two sentences.

(At this point I need to warn you that I have terrible handwriting (though hopefully this will improve my penmanship as well).  If you become my pen-pal be prepared to decipher my scribblings.)

Due to the time-consuming nature of letter-writing I’ll have to limit my number of pen-pals.  Depending on the response to this post I might have to let some people know I won’t be able to write them.  Sorry in advance if that happens.  In any case, I’ll take down the form as quickly as possible after I’ve gotten enough responses (though I’m headed to bed now so it will be up for at least the next ten hours).

If I might have to tell you no-thank-you or if you’d prefer not to be my pen-pal but still want to do this, feel free to use this idea on your own blog.  As long as you start writing letters again.

So, are you up to it?  Are we going to revive the art of letter-writing and give the Post Office a reason to exist again?  You know what to do.

P.S.  Comments are open on this post so you can tell me what an awesome idea this is, but please don’t leave your personal details there.  I accept no responsibility if I don’t delete it in time and some nut-job finds it and starts stalking you.  Only write the address in the form provided.  Thanks.

Update:  You will notice that the afore-mentioned form does not appear here anymore.  That’s because for now I’ve closed the submission for new pen-pals.  If you really want to write to me, feel free to contact me via the contact page in the menu.  If you’re just looking for a pen-pal, consider interpals.net or sendsomething.net, both suggested by commenters (though your use of these sites are entirely at own risk and my mentioning them does not constitute an endorsement…I’m not using nor have I ever used either of them).

• Language & Writing