How Hard Can It Be to Write a Letter?

"[A] letter is like an email on paper, and paper is like a computer screen made of trees, for those who don’t know"

I've been giggling ever since I came across this line. I love how it acknowledges the transition we're facing with printed books and e-books, even if it is clearly leaning away from the printed books. But it's easy to imagine this conversation a few years ago, explaining to our parents and grandparents, about email: "It's like a letter, only on a computer screen."

The quote is from Craig Morgan Teicher, editor of PWxyz, a new blog from Publishers Weekly. It's a short piece about Saul Bellow's letters being published.  Not many people write letters anymore, and it's easy to understand why. Email is so much easier, and there's the whole instantaneous gratification aspect, which is probably what sold all of us on it initially. None of us like to wait. Nowadays even email takes too long when we have texting and tweeting as instant communication tools.

What I find really fascinating is how many people devoted themselves to writing letters WHEN IT WAS REALLY HARD TO PHYSICALLY DO IT. 

I mean, stone tablets? You'd spend half the day, at least, trying to find something small enough to carry around. And what do you use for whiteout when you make a typo, or I guess it's actually a carve-o? You had to plan ahead of time what you were gonna say, since it's not a medium that caters to pantsers. So where did you write down the stuff before you, well, carved it in stone?

Think what it must have been like to sharpen a quill every time you wanted to jot a note to a friend. You'd have to make sure you didn't slice off a fingertip or two. For one thing, there goes the penmanship, because clutching a quill in your fingerless fist isn't gonna make for the prettiest letters. And of course it's next to impossible to continue sharpening quills if you have no more digits. You would have plenty to write about to your friends though.      

Still, I wouldn't be very far into either one of these letter-writing processes before I would say, "Yea verily, and forsooth. I shalt just holla at my peeps when next we meet."

So it's even more amazing when you think about letters written by AUTHORS. I'm talking about authors who either wrote their books by hand, or on a typewriter that is slower than a manual can opener. I get all twitchy when one of the keys gets stuck on my laptop and I have to press, EXTRA HARD, to get it to actually cooperate. But what they did had to be excruciating. We're lucky to even have books from way back when, in the literary Pleistocene era. I wouldn't have blamed them if they had just given up and decided to write one-word neon signs instead. 

And on top of all that they wrote LETTERS.

Of course, maybe writing letters was the old-fashioned way of procrastinating, and "counting things as writing" that aren't really, even when we call them "research". Or maybe writing a letter was a warm-up, a way to get the words flowing when the author was stuck on a certain scene.  

However, I suspect letter writing was another form of art, and they knew these would be preserved, and appreciated, and analyzed, along with their books. So it was worth the time, and the effort, they devoted to it. 

Still, I'm glad I'm a writer now. I can document my words with technology that will probably make future generations giggle, but would cause past generations to gasp. Whatever challenges my laptop or the internet or other modern wizardry throw at me, it's still a wonderful way to write.

Plus I get to keep my fingertips.

Comments

[Maureen]

Gods! The letters I used to write! Pages and pages and pages! My mother used to write back, pages and pages and pages. When calling long distance was just too pricey...

Alas, I had few friends who would take the time to write letters back. Though I find these same friends are just as stingy with e-mails...

I'm going to learn to tweet soon...but I still think I'll be shootin' off the long e-mails still... I like words!

[Donna Cummings]

Maureen, I did too! And the waiting for mail to be delivered -- it was so exciting to see a LETTER amongst all the other unwanted stuff.

I like words too, so I'm actually thrilled to have so many outlets for them! Twitter, and blogs, and my manuscripts -- there's plenty of words to go around. LOL

[Terri Osburn]

This got me to thinking. (Always dangerous.) Considering all the pain and frustration I've put into writing this dinky little pitch, it might have felt good to be able to rip a piece of paper out of a machine and throw it in a waste basket.

Or thirty pieces of paper.

Can't remember the last time I wrote a letter. Mostly because I hate my handwriting. I don't even like signing cards. :) And I would never have been a writer without a computer. In fact, for years that was my excuse. "I'll write a book when I get a computer." So far, I've lived up to that. LOL!

[Maureen]

Terri - I had nuns for teachers. We all learned how to write neatly.

Not so much anymore, I bet. When I take notes anymore, it's all printing. No cursive for me!

But wow, my nephews? Tweets and text have destroyed any abilities they had to write complete sentences...let alone spell anything right!

Technology is a curse and a blessing in this regard!

[Donna Cummings]

Terri, you dangerous thinker you! I think I "officially" felt like a writer when I got my very own printer (back in the day when it was kinda expensive to get one that wasn't a dot matrix -- LOL). And it kinda motivated me, since I couldn't justify the expense if I wasn't writing. Boy did I LOVE printing those pages and see them stacking up. LOL

[Donna Cummings]

Maureen, I used to have nice handwriting, BEFORE I went to law school. LOL Which reminds me -- when I took the bar exam it was 2.5 days of writing, by hand. LOL I can't imagine doing that now!

[Maureen]

My DH dropped the printer the other day. Not from a great height...but it's rattling now. Think we'll be getting a new one soon...

[Terri Osburn]

I had 12 years of Catholic school. It did nothing for my penmanship. And I NEVER write in cursive. I guess I have a kind of hybrid print/cursive style. Mostly print. Couldn't write a letter in cursive for anything.

I have a cheap printer that hasn't been hooked up in a couple years. I'm not even sure it works!

[Donna Cummings]

My printer gets about as much use as my handwriting anymore! I'm tempted to drop it on the ground, just so I can get a new one. It used to zip the pages out really fast, but now it takes forever just to do one page, as if it's literally carving the ink into the paper. LOL

I just remembered I finally found some ink cartridges for a fountain pen I've had forever -- and I haven't tried it out yet. Maybe I'll have to write a letter with it! Eeek!

[Maureen]

Wow, Terri! You had lax nuns! Ours graded for penmenship and really hammered it home!

We also sang folks songs at church, in the open air, holding hands.

I love California.

[Hellion]

Well, fortunately there was no AI or DWTS back then, so they had plenty of time to devote to that sort of thing. And when you're by yourself in the woods and you've run out of wood to chop, your stew isn't done cooking yet, and there is nothing left to organize in your cabin, writing does seem like the logical thing to do. It's not like you can pick up a phone and catch up with your friend who lives 2000 miles away from you. Writing a letter was your only option.

I do marvel at the number of novels there were (and dissertations written) before the invention of the word processor (even electric typewriters are too complicated for me at this point, even though I used to have one.) However, it does make sense then that the novel itself has only been around for a few hundred years and it's easy to see why: too labor intensive. Plus I always think of things a few hundred years ago like the people in the movie The Invention of Lying--where they don't understand the concept of lying for fun and profit. Totally blank looks. Clearly lying was around--but fiction, not so much. If you're going to the trouble of a printing press, you'd do it for something more worthwhile than a bunch of lies. You'd do it for something like a medical journal or Bible, which are all truth.

[Donna Cummings]

Maureen, I love your descriptions! LOL

[Donna Cummings]

Hellion, you're right -- I hadn't really thought about "important" books being the ones that would get all the time and precious resources. So fiction IS kind of an upstart. We're lucky there was plenty of time after people were done "organizing their cabin" -- LOL -- and writing letters to write fiction.

[colbymarshall]

I miss getting letters in the mail. It makes me want to write someone a letter...with a quill ;-)

[Donna Cummings]

Colby, I have to admit, I miss getting letters in the mail too. Now I only check my snail mailbox about once a week!

And I tried writing with a quill once. Yeesh. It was hard work -- and it was already sharpened! You had to go reallllly slooooooow. LOL