The Museum of Epistolary Arts

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I'm doing the Month of Letters challenge this February. I will mail out a hand written letter to someone every mail day in the month of February. If you would like to be on my recipient list comment on my post with your address. You do not need to mail a reply and this is open to anyone in any location.

Wow, no updates since my last entry here. I hope everyone is writing and receiving lots of fine letters.

I have a new desk and wanted to gush a bit with people who would understand. It's a mission style computer desk but my keyboard doesn't fit in the tray. So in a flash of inspiration I left the keyboard on the top. Put my pens in the left-hand drawer, papers in the right-hand drawer. That leaves the keyboard tray free to be a writing surface. A very satisfactory setup I must say.

For my birthday last Friday (43rd if you are curious) a friend gave me a set of two glass pens and inks. I've never used glass pens before but my attempts at using Pilot Varsity pens has been less than perfect. I write slowly and the ink seems to soak into the paper and bleed which makes the edges all fuzzy if you know what I mean. Actually I seem to have a problem with most stationery I buy no matter what pen I use. I can't seem to find a happy medium where the ink dries without leaving pools that smear or the ink bleeds and the writing looks fuzzy.

So I'm hoping to get some suggestions on paper to use. What do you all use?

Greetings!

I travel a bit and even when I don't the best times I find to write letters are during lunch or other breaks during the day. So I haul around my pens, stationery and stamps in a couple of Ziploc bags that I put in my messenger bag. It works, but I would like to find a better solution. So I turn to you fine folks. Do you take your supplies with you during the day? How to you store and organize them?

Thanks!

Just wanted to remind everyone that you can still sign up to be part of our Round Robin Paper Swap. You can find all the details in this post and add your name to the list. I'll be starting it off on July 6th.

Come join in, because the more, the merrier! You never know what you might get for your writing stash. :D

I would like to invite any and all members to join in on the First Ever Paper/Card Round Robin Swap Thingy. Hey, you put anything in capitals and bold it and it looks impressive, right? ;)

The premise is simple. I am putting together a packet of note paper/cards/maybe a few postcards. There will also be a little booklet for people to write whatever they want: put your name, where you got a particular paper from, doodle your favorite "Kilroy Was Here" drawing. It's totally up to you. Then go through the papers and if you see something that strikes your fancy, snag it. If you have something in your stash that you just don't see yourself using, place it in the envelope; if you are low on papers just now, then enjoy the new goodness. The packet is then sent on to the next person on the list.

It is very likely that many of you may share my reluctance to have your address hanging out in cyberspace, even if we were to lock the post so that only honorable members would see it. LiveJournal, however, has a way of getting around that. When it is time for you to send the packet on, look up the person below you on the list and send them a private message (you can do that from your profile page. look at the bar going across the top and click on "Messages"). The last person on the list will send it back to me.

If you would like to be in on this, leave a comment saying so. I will plan to send out to the first person on July 6th. We can leave it open and keep adding names to the list, though, so there is no immediate pressure to "sign up". As we get some people, I will update this post with an actual list to make it easier to see who you should contact.

Hopefully this will be fun and give people a chance to experience different stuff or share something they particularly like.

Anyone? Bueller?


List of Participants

demiguise_lady (starting)
hollyking 
sosoclever 
mintyfreshsocks 

Last July I challenged myself to an Iron Epistle. In short I challenged myself to send one hand written letter a week. I sent out a few and then things in my life went to hell and I dropped the ball. Seeing the renewed interest in this community has inspired me to try again. Tonight I will write the a new letter to some lucky person on my list.

I was inspired to start my Iron Epistle because quite a few of my friends started challenging themselves to create something every week. Artists were making art, writers were writing and so on. I'm not an artist or a writer, but I could participate in my own way. :)

I have a long list, but if you want to take your chances everyone please add your name and address to that post.

Hi! Time to start sparking conversation here again. mintyfreshsocks and I have been talking over a few things, and we have some ideas for the community that we hope you will like. We also value your input, so if there are things you want to discuss, start a post! Something you'd like to see the community do? Shout it out! The best way for us to keep this community active is for everyone to be part of the process. :)

Starting things off, I am going to steal the idea from my co-mod, and throw a question out there for you all: What are your favorite letters that you have sent and received?

For me, I think they are the ones that have gone back and forth between far-flung friends. I have several friends who live in other countries, so there is first the joy at seeing an envelope with the familiar writing. Next, it's always fun to see the stamps or what paper they have chosen, usually something local and common to them, but a bit different and exotic to me. Finally, I get to curl up and catch up on what has been going on with that person. Since most letters take a week or so to reach a destination, it is close to a month before I receive a response to the letter I have written. I am reminded of what was happening in my own life as I wrote, as they comment on various things I said, and I get answers to questions I posed, questions of my own to answer, and new tangents to go off on, from news that they write or things going on at my end.

The funny thing is that most of these people are also friends on LJ, and several of them I "talk" to on AIM or even text. Still, nothing takes the place of knowing that they took the time to choose paper and ink, sit down to write a few pages, go to the post office, and send me something to brighten my day when I checked the mail. I guess that's why we all love letters so much. It's that unexpected gift that tells you someone was thinking about you. It could be scribbled on notebook paper with a ballpoint pen or written on pretty writing paper with a felt tip, it still means that they took the time.

For me, I write at my desk. I have a glass dip pen, several colors of ink, linen paper and matching envelopes, writing paper (I use a black gel pen for that, as the dip pen doesn't "sit" well on the writing paper surface), and try to suit the material to both my mood and the person I am writing to. If I know it's going to just be a short "hey! everything's great" letter, I'll use the writing paper, as it's much smaller and more festive. A serious "OMG, so much has happened and I have to tell you all about it!" letter gets the linen, which is larger (I think it's actually meant for printers), no ornamentation to get in the way, and gives me plenty of room to write everything out. Whichever one I choose, I always seal the back with a blob of red wax and my inital seal. My return address is on the front, but this is just a fun, personal touch that always seems to make my friends smile.

OK, so now that I've written my mini-novel, let's hear what you have to say. What are your favorites? Does any one in particular stand out? or is it more a particular vein of correspondence that you enjoy?

So far I have demiguise_lady, iconoclast_dawn and mintyfreshsocks all willing to take up the mantle. I checked, and the difference between "maintainers" and "moderators" has to do with moderated communities. As this one isn't, it's not a concern.

So, now I need to know if the three of you want to work together, or figure out how to pick one person from the field.

Opinions, anyone?