Letters Never Sent

[Dan Goodwin]

I'm very fond of writing and receiving hand written letters which is becoming something of a lost art form in our ever more digital world.

I've been looking through some old letters I've received, and they're greatly treasured. I want to write and receive more.

In the meantime I thought it would be interesting to hear about letters you've written and not sent. Maybe you wrote the letter with no intention of sending it in the first place, maybe you had second thoughts, maybe the person you addressed to moved away, or your relationship changed, or, they suddenly passed away.

Share your tales (and samples if you have them) of letters never sent...

[Dan Goodwin]

This is a letter never sent to a friend called Stefano. We used to go to a discussion group, and he was a warm, passionate, vivacious and incredibly eloquent Italian in his fifties. I was a fiercely poetic and desperate for meaning young man in my early twenties and found him very appealing, as a fellow writer, and as someone who had a depth of experience and knowledge and culture that I could only dream of.

It's interesting to read the kind of thoughts that swirled in my mind back then, and how many are still relevant to how I am today. Certainly writing is more important to me than ever.

Also makes me smile to see the gushing, tumbling way I wrote, and how I still do really.

Anyways, here it is, dated 25th May 1999.

Oh I can't remember why I didn't send it, but we did exchange more letters after this date...

Click in the images to see them full size...

[jane]

handwritten letters are the very best...

they have more personality and emotion in them - you can see the way they are written - large letters when the emotion in full flow, neater writing when the words are considered and carefully conveyed.

someone once said to me that they prefer to write on a clean page with no lines, something i whole heartedly endorse.... it is less restricted and the flow is uninterrupted. I like to write with thick gel pens, sometimes several coloured pens per letter - it gives a warmth and a visual excitement... as least in my world. my handwriting is not neat... so a thicker pen helps and the colour distracts from the untidyness!

i dont have letters that i would like to scan and share with you all, sorry, they are intensely personal - but i have hundreds of hand written letters, each one a real treasure and which i count myself lucky to have. I re-read them from time to time to remind myself how lucky i am to have had those expressions of love and support given to me. It is not the same looking back on emails.... which could have been written by anyone! With a handwritten letter, you KNOW it was written and considered by the hand of the one you love or loved... no faking it !

As for have i letters i have never sent... yes, quite a few. Some to a lover, some to my children and some to myself. the ones to myself as a reminder usually of what an idiot i am being or have been.... letters i should take out and read EVERY time i show those worrying traits that get me into trouble. The unsent letters to lovers and children - perhaps they will get one day when i am no longer here to stop others passing them on..... we will see... i may get to them first.

gradually i am returning to more simpler methods of communication i think.... there is too much communication of the wrong sort, not enough of the right type and usually there is too much noise associated with the wrong type of communication.

i have cut out television and only hear radio news. I only watch films with which i can identify or escape into. I am trying to cut out emailing and texting those i want to keep in touch with and am returning more to phone calls where the distance is too great, and seeing those who are nearer to "touch" in person so we can see it each as we discuss and debate.

And where communication breaks down... yes, perhaps i will return to handwritten letters.....

[Dan Goodwin]

Jane,

Yes, love blank unlined pages and coloured pens as you can see above, it does make the letters visually more appealing.

Totally agree about emails vs letters, you can receive lovely words on a screen but you can't hold them in your hands, you can't see the personality, the exuberance, the passion, the affection, the confusion in the writer's pen.

I don't write letters to myself, but it's a good idea. I have tried writing letters from the future, they're more like future visions or goals about how I would like my life to be in 3 or 5 or 10 years time. Then looking back at me now, what advice and guidance would my future self give my present self. This can also work well going back in time, looking at where you were 3 or 5 or 10 years in the past and realising how much you've changed, evolved, grown, and achieved...

I agree re communication, I seem to spend most of my time affixed to some keyboard or other, and I've been trying to cut down on that in recent weeks. Yes it's communicating, as yes sometimes it's a wonderful medium, the community here at CCS a great example. There's no way people from the UK, US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, Europe and beyond could just pop round for a chat. But we can do that here... : )

But wherever possible I think we should meet in person with those we want to be with rather than have a relationship in bursts of 160 characters via texts or whatever.

This is a slight tangent I know, but one of the great things about discovering salsa dancing about two and a half years ago is the whole physicality of it. Takes me away from being the cerebral, living-in-my-thoughts person than I mostly am and engages my body. Plus obviously it engages the body of another, a dance partner, and you can't experience any of this via electronic communication! And, it means I go out to different places and meet a variety of people from different backgrounds, all drawn together by a common love, the dancing.

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

Interesting discussion, Dan, and your passionate writing is a joy to read.

Yes, I've written many unsent letters. They are unsent because it becomes apparent that I am really writing to myself, and I realize that after putting down the pen at the end of them. Unsent letters for me are ways to vent feelings that I'm unwilling to speak, and upon reading what I've written, I realize the impact such a letter would have on the recipient and how very unfair to them it would be if I really did unload all my angst about the relationship in such a way. It does help me to write them, though. It clarifies my feelings to myself. I remember writing one to my dad, and several to a friend whose treatment of me I resented, but at that time in my life I didn't have the confidence to speak up about it. I know some of these letters were not destroyed, as I've run across them at times. Others, I've destroyed right after writing them. I've also written some on the computer. Since I've started journaling in the mornings, I haven't felt the need to do this as much, as my feeling come out on the page on a daily basis.

I have boxes of letters from a friend who moved away ... we were separated for many years and wrote to each other at least once or twice a month, usually more often. Then we started recording our voices on cassette tapes, along with music we liked from the radio :) Years later, when we were living near one another again, I asked my friend if she wanted to trade back our letters and tapes for a while, so that we could each re-read what we'd written and listen to what we'd said. I would have really liked to do that, but she never got around to it ... and she's since moved away again, and our relationship isn't active any more.

Like Jane, I don't watch television any more and try to limit the media input in my life to what I choose to have, not just mindlessly absorbing what is being constantly broadcast. I like to use many colors of ink in my writing these days, and I note the variations in my writing. I feel that my best penmanship occurs when what I am writing feels very sure and true for me, and when it feels as if my body is a conduit through which the words are coming from a higher wisdom. When I'm questioning or doubtful, my penmanship gets sloppy, and my hand doesn't write the words correctly so I scribble out what I began to write and rewrite the word.

[Dan Goodwin]

Barb, that's interesting about letters to others really being letters to yourself. Reminds me of two things.

1. Often the things we find most irritating in others are the traits we don't like about ourselves. It holds up an uncomfortable mirror.

2. I've been revisiting Byron Katie's concept of "The Work" and it's a similar idea, that things we're uncomfortable with in others we can turn around and see that a part of our frustration is with ourselves. So something like: "I'm angry with David because he's not being supportive" we can turn around as "I'm not being supportive of David" or "I'm not being supportive of myself"...

I love your idea of recording on tapes. Ingenious! I used to record poems on tape for someone very special to me who kept all my writings. Sounds kind of self indulgent on my part and was a bit strange recording them but I know they meant a lot to them, and you get a different experience hearing a poet reading their own work as they wrote, rather than reading from a page yourself.

Definitely relate to your conduit to higher wisdom idea. I think this also for me is about a connection to some higher (or, if we look within, deeper) creative source. I know I write stuff that just flows and I don't know where it comes from, and I'm wise enough now to not stop and think "that's odd, where did that come from?" but instead just keep writing, keep flowing. It always makes sense in the end... : )

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

Yay! It's good to read that you understand about the projecting onto others (somehow I knew you would :) It's changed my life a lot since I've learned more about this. I did some exercises where I made up names for different parts of myself, such as "Righteous Rita" and "Listless Lisa" and "Perfect Penny" just for fun, and for each one I wrote a few lines about how they behave. It was a little emotionally stressful for me when I tried to share the exercises and what they mean with others, as they didn't really seem to get the point of seeing "I am that". As Jules has said here, and I have adopted "Since I've learned to laugh at myself, I never cease to be amused!" And I feel that most of the time I'm not as critical as I used to be, of self or others ... when some behavior pattern is really bugging me about someone I can usually find or imagine some instance where it's also been true of me, laugh about it, let it go. And once I'm aware of what is "pushing my buttons" I can work on explaining how I am feeling, instead of putting the responsibility for my happiness on someone else! It works!

[Dan Goodwin]

It's a massive revelation for me too. Projection and realising that something we find distasteful or annoying in others is something we struggle with in our own personality. I like your idea of acknowledging different parts of your self and giving them names! I might try that...

[Dan Goodwin]

In the midst of writing a new article, I'm reminded that very often I write the articles I need to read myself, again like your idea Barb of writing letters to others that turn out to be more for you. Often the things I'm struggling with, creatively and otherwise, are the topics that end up in my articles. I think this also makes them more authentic, I'm not spouting preset "solutions" from a text book, I'm working stuff out myself too as I go... I think when you write from the heart, whether it's poetry or fiction or articles, others will recognise and connect with that when they read them too.

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

Right on ... for me it's pretty obvious when something is written from the heart, and I tend to give it more attention. This is one reason I don't understand some writers who say that they don't write about themselves, or that if they do, it's boring. I feel that every creative thing that comes through us is really about our selves. A really good writer can write anything from thoughts upon waking to an account of washing up the after dinner dishes and make it interesting to me.

[Dan Goodwin]

Yes, I think a good writer notices the details of life and portrays them in an interesting way that others find stimulating and can also relate to.

I agree too that everything I write is somehow a way to understand myself better and make sense of the world a little more, whether it's a poem, flash fiction, story, letter or article. Being an artist is a life long quest of self discovery, whatever else it may also be...

[Mary Hicks]

Hi Dan! What a great discussion. A few days ago I was "rummaging through" some older discussions and came across our handwritten posts. That was fun, wasn't it?

I have a letter right here on my desk that was never mailed. I wrote it about a month ago. It won't ever get mailed, or delivered, but it's written. Like Barb, sometimes I feel as if writing it down helps put the situation into a clearer perspective for me - especially if feelings have been hurt or anger is involved. Reading what I've written out loud (in a room with the door closed!) also helps. Hearing myself say these words that have been screaming in my head will, quite often, make the entire situation less serious.

When I was young(er!) I had several pen pals. One I remember was the daughter of the mayor of Denver. She was my age, so I wrote her a letter! She replied, and we corresponded quite a bit. We never met, even though we lived fairly close to each other. I've never forgotten her. Another pen pal was a great-great Uncle, who I never met. My dad took me to his funeral in a little town outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. Being in his house put all his letters in a "real place" for me. I could see him sitting at his typewriter; I could see him watching his beloved Razorbacks on television; I could see his yard and feel his presence. I still have many of his letters - always typed, and usually with a clipping about college football stuck in (which I never read, but kept).

Warren and I met at a baseball game in Denver in 1986. He left shortly thereafter to attend culinary school. I'm not even sure he knew my real name - he only called me "Hutch!" We started corresponding, and letters would arrive addressed to "Hutch." I'd write back. He'd call (collect) and we got to know each other through our letters and our phone conversations. He kept my letters. I kept his letters. They are treasures...pictures of when our lives were so much more innocent and proof that we as a team would be able to endure many life events that weren't on our agenda.

Letter writing seems to be a thing of the past, with the exception of a quick thank-you note or birthday greeting from time to time. One thing I do abhor is those Christmas letter "marathon messages" folks send. Ugh. I want to know about my friends on a regular basis - but don't need to hear about every A their child got on a report card, or how many times their great Aunt visited them!! Nope, not a fan of the Christmas catch-up.

Okay, enough rambling. This was fun, though! Thanks everyone.

Mary

[Dan Goodwin]

Hey Mary,

Lovely to hear about how you and Warren met and exchanged letters. I've had a few relationships where a lot of writing's been exchanged (writer that I am!) and it makes them very special. I have every letter I've been given I think.

It is sad in a way, like others have said, that we communicate so much electronically now. I have probably hundreds of emails with fond words, and certainly have received tens of thousands of text messages over the last few years, each with a fond memory attached.

Text messages (sms) are great in that you can send a quick message like "I miss you" and it it make a real difference to someone's day and put a smile on their face in a second. But there's nothing like long rambling letters where you know the other person's put so much love into it, and wrote it as if you were right there next to them talking...

Would like to publish my letters maybe one day. One of my favourite books is the collected letters of Jack Kerouac...