The Art Of Letter Writing

If you only hold a pen to scrawl out your shopping list and the contents of your letterbox are solely bills, you’re not alone. While these days most of us communicate mainly through social media, email and text, fortunately the art of letter writing is not lost. Time to put pen to paper.

- Samantha Allemann

Yearning to slow down, be more mindful and strengthen your relationships at the same time? Dust off that pen licence and start writing. Taking the time to craft a letter to one person is the opposite of what we do when we post our thoughts to all of our social media connections. The correspondence becomes personalised and deepens the connection between two people rather than broadcasting to the masses.

Ironically, social media can take some credit for helping stage the comeback of letter writing. “The #snailmail hashtag has over 1.5 million posts on Instagram,” says Melbourne-based graphic designer and illustrator Michelle Mackintosh, the author of Snail Mail and Care Packages. She’s a self-confessed “stationery nerd” and avid letter writer.

“In our grandparents’ era, letter writing was as important as all our social media platforms put together,” she says. “Right now, a new generation of people who love making things by hand are drawn to letter writing. Many older people still treasure a written letter, so the art of letter writing is really multigenerational.

“Awaiting a letter in the past could have been a matter of life and death, or bring great change, sadness or joy,” says Mackintosh. “Today they may still do a little of that; however, now that our communication channels have opened up, letters do not have the same significance. But they can still evoke strong feelings, agitate change and pull heartstrings.”

Why we write letters

Can you remember the last letter you wrote? Perhaps it was a note of thanks, an annual update to a distant relative, a rundown of your travels, birthday greetings, well wishes or maybe an apology letter. “I write for a lot of reasons, sometimes in the form of letters I take time to pretty up and other times to say thank you or for a personal reason,” says Mackintosh.