February, A Month of Letters

February is  International Correspondence Writing Month or InCoWriMo for short.  It is not only a celebration of the hand written letter but it is a challenge to hand-write and mail hand deliver one letter, card, note or postcard every day during this, the shortest month of the year.

I’ve written just recently about hand written ‘Thank you letters’ and the joy they can bring to both sender and receiver.  I feel absolutely the same about any other form of hand written communication.  In a world where we so regularly have our noses buried in screens and are forever responding to emails, texts, and whatsapp , in a hurried fashion its good to take a moment to  pause, to stop and think, and to take a little more time over our communication.

Often in the past months I have heard colleagues discuss how poor their handwriting has become through lack of use.  Admittedly many of these colleagues are considerably younger than me and have grown up with computers in a way I haven’t quite, but it is a reflection of how infrequently many of us actually pick up a pen and write more than a quick scribbled list on a scrap of paper.  I remember one of my Grandads had beautiful hand writing, which my mum who has pretty good handwriting herself regularly alluded to as being ‘proper writing’, the writing we should aspire to.

Even if you don’t have beautiful hand writing, and I don’t particularly, getting into the habit of using a pen rather than a key board or touch screen once in a  while is a lovely thing to do.

In recent years there was a move towards e-cards, and although these are fun to send and receive (who doesn’t like their families heads embossed onto  a band of dancing elves at Christmas), they don’t have the tactile pleasure of opening an envelope and taking out a hand written greeting.

I usually have a stack of cards and writing paper so that I can drop a quick line at any time I might suddenly need to.  I buy cards whenever I see one I like, often having only a vague idea of who I might send it to, but I like to know I have a stash on standby.  Being able to dip into my stores and find a card just when I unexpectedly need to always gives me a feeling of satisfaction.

So for all of those reasons and because I took part last year and thoroughly enjoyed it I shall be participating in the 2018 InCoWriMo.  In preparation I have a list of all the people I want to correspond with in some way this month, and of course I have lots of pretty writing paper, and coloured pens.  On each of the 28 days in February, I shall be posting or hand delivering a card or letter to someone special.

If you want to find out more about  InCoWriMo or take part yourself, you can read more here.  You can also read about how I got on with InCoWriMo last year here.

Happy corresponding X