Sunday, August 9, 2009

Who Do You Write To?

The first question people ask when I tell them I'm starting a magazine on letter writing and journaling, is " Does anyone write letters any more?" And when I assure them we do, their follow question is "Who do you write to?"

The most common answers are friends, relatives and pen pals. Even with email and Facebook, people still do write letters. Results from the ongoing online survey I'm conducting on letter writing show

50% write 1-3 letters per month

And of those 243 respondents, here is who they write to:

74% write to friends
58% write to relatives
47% write to pen pals
22% write to someone in a category not listed

They could choose more than 1 category.

Some people want to write letters or just send/receive mail, but have no one to write to. That's where sites like Sendsomething.net, Postcrossing.com, Just Letter Rip, the Missive Maven, We Love Snail Mail and 365 Letters come in. You can find like-minded people here looking to talk about letter writing, read about it, comment on it and share in the passion of letter writing even without someone to write to. And if you are looking for people to write to, you can find those online as well.

There are also two popular pen pal newsletters that you can check out. They both have a printed newsletter and offer articles and information online as well.

Inky Trails
Lex Letters

3 comments:

Stephanie said...

I really like that you can use the Internet to find pen pals. Otherwise I would never have found the motivation to write letters to all my friends and find new pen pals!

PostMuse said...

I also think the Internet has helped snail mail rather than hurt it. Well... yes, the Internet has hurt snail mail in other ways, but as far as regular correspondence, more and more people are finding out how much fun it is to connect online and then expand the connection via the mail.

Laura Kay said...

Jackie, Thanks so much for the link to a very cool artist!!! I am just getting back into handwriting notes. I usually write to my mom. I have to look through your sites still & take your survey.