HOW TO WRITE A LETTER

Over the last week or so, a letter from F. Scott Fitzgerald has been doing the rounds on the internet. Supposedly he wrote it while in quarantine during the Spanish Influenza outbreak.

The first line reads: “It was a limpid dreary day, hung as in a basket from a single dull star.” Now I know the letter is a parody, that line makes me laugh but on first reading I thought: “How poetic.” And then: “People were so much better than us back then.” And finally: “Do we even know how to write letters any more?”

Of course we all write letters every day: they’re called emails. But because almost everything we do on the internet is kept there in perpetuity, most of it will ultimately be lost. I have more than 15,000 emails in just one of my four inboxes — in there somewhere is probably an email worth remembering but I won’t and my children will never stumble across it.

Physical letters carry weight. The last handwritten letter I received was more than 10 years ago, from a former flatmate, writing to me about his life in London. I was so touched by the gesture, I kept it. Do I know where it is? Of course not. But one day someone might find it in a box and it will be so old it will mean something.

This is all to say, locked away in our homes, disconnected from one another, now is the perfect time to write a letter. And I, a person who last wrote and received a letter in 2007, am going to teach you how to do it.

I remember learning letter-writing at school. It was very rule-based: write your name and address, skip a line, write the date, skip a line, write the recipient’s name and address, skip two lines, write the greeting. I want to tell you to throw all the rules out the window and just write from the heart. However, when living in unprecedented times, accurate record-keeping seems important. Skip lines or don’t but do include the aforementioned specifics in your letter.

Choose how you will greet your recipient: Dear? Hello? Hey there? What’s up? It doesn’t matter at all but it will set the tone for the rest of your letter, so make it perfect.

Some people suggest explaining the reason for your letter in the first paragraph. For example: I’m so terribly bored here, Janet, my skin is falling off from washing my hands too much, I can barely grip the pen but I thought I would take my mind off things by writing to you about all those things.

Next, you need to ask your recipient a question about themselves. It shows you’re interested in their similarly boring lives. You could try: How’s isolation treating you, Beth? Or if you’re keeping things more formal: How fare thee?

Then share your news but make it interesting. If you have no interesting news to share, why are you writing a letter?

One online expert suggests sharing an in-joke or two with your recipient, like: I guess we’ll just have to smoke burritos. See, now, that means nothing to you or me but it is very funny to Janet and Beth.

Now it’s time to write the last paragraph of your letter. A by-no-means reputable website, answershark.com, says “End the letter with positive feelings … Encourage your friend to write back or make a call. This will show your desire of hearing from the person soon and will make a logical ending to the letter.” That sounds right. No one wants to receive a letter that ends on a bummer.

Lastly, choose your closing. I’d shy away from formal endings like “Yours sincerely” and use something more heartfelt like “Love” or “I miss you” or “I’m thinking of you.” In the words of forgotten American songstress Jackie Deshannon: “What the world needs now is love, sweet love”.

Your letter is now complete and may one day serve as an historical artefact. Seal it, address it, pop it in the post or, if it’s for someone living locally, you could drop it in their letterbox yourself — just don’t pop in for a cup of tea.