A Month of Letters 2013 Wrap-Up

Here are the links to my weekly LetterMo updates:

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4

The challenge is to mail an item daily for each day of postal service in your area. The second part of the challenge is to reply to all the letters you receive.

I did better this year in sending items out, replying to letters, and posting my updates. Last year I mainly wrote to people I knew. This year I added some new people from the LetterMo forums to my address book. Postable seemed like a popular choice for keeping track of mailing addresses although I did not create an account for myself. I did add my address to a few Postable accounts. I made sure each new person I wrote or was hoping to get a letter from had something in common with me. Usually it was an interest such as reading, writing, or yarn crafting.

Curiously, the mail I received was not much more than last year and none of the people with Postable accounts sent me anything. If they did, it’s either gotten lost or has to travel quite a long ways to get to me. Even though it is March I am still replying to anyone who sends me a letter; I’m taking more than 2 days to send my reply though.

It’s a natural assumption to me if someone sent out a lot of mail they should receive a lot of mail. I mean, if you send out 100 items then you’re probably going to get 25 or 50 back, right? (I’m assuming not all letters were for charity.) So I asked the prolific mailers of LetterMo and found out some interesting things.

They mailed early. Knowing mail out of the country would take a week or longer, they mailed many of these items the final week in January. This gave the mail a headstart in reaching its destination. If it was going to another LetterMo participant then it (hopefully) allowed time for a reply.

They found snail mail blogs. Some people blog about the mail they send and receive. Included along the sidebar is their mailing address. Voila! Another person to mail who is under no obligation to reply but is likely to do so.

They signed up for other mail-related challenges. The Fountain Pen Geeks did International Correspondence Writing Month (aka Incowrimo) each day in February. Postcrossing saw postcards winging across the globe with the recipient noting when the postcard arrived. (And you only get so many addresses until your postcards are received.) Swap-Bot organizes group swaps for items such as books, crocheted granny squares and letters. Sendsomething collects your address and interests so you can find other mail enthusiasts.

I was disappointed I didn’t get as many letters or postcards from my fellow participants. I may need to focus more on charity letters as I know there won’t be anyone writing back. Last month it was nice to decorate cards and rubberstamp them. Some unexpected things have come about from my month of letters. For one, I’m still writing letters and sending cards. For another, I’ve signed up to be part of a traveling journal. I’ve never done one before but it should be a fun experience. Several people are reading epistolary novels and conversing about them on Goodreads. As you can see from yesterday’s post I’m considering getting an account to keep up the conversation.