What's in a letter?

There's something refined about writing letters.

I don't mean E-mails. E-mails are so impersonal. And they're cheap, aren't they? I mean, with E-mails, you just need to invest time into the proceedings. Letters however, involve deciding what paper and pen to use; you need to buy an envelope, and get a stamp. You also need to invest effort into readable handwriting and into finding out the address of your recipient. It's not as easy as simply clicking a button to send a Facebook message – though I'm as guilty as any of doing this.

And there's something about receiving a letter. Something solid and reassuring about holding the paper in your hand. There's something about a letter that seems to say “I've been thinking about you” far more than an E-mail. Don't get me wrong, E-mail is useful for many things – as an aspiring writer I'm getting rather annoyed at the preference Literary Agents have for letters and paper submissions over receiving E-mails – but I'm afraid my heart has long belonged to letters.

But it's a tumultuous affair.

All through my childhood, it was a real challenge for my mother to get me to write thank you letters after Christmases and birthdays. It's not that I wasn't grateful, just with the selfishness of a child, I never realised the heart-warming nature of such a letter to elderly relatives who didn't see us much. I assumed that I had far better things to do with my time. As I grew older, I hated thank you letters for a different reason: they always seemed so fake. I had nothing much to say apart from “thank you”, but to say just that seemed more heartless than I was prepared to appear. So I used to write the most incredible tosh, all in the name of making the letter appear something that it wasn't.

I longed to write something that actually mean something.

So when I got to York I promised myself that this was the time to start.

So I began writing letters to a few friends from home. One or two wrote short and, while not amazingly deep or meaningful, perfectly pleasant and smile-inducing letters. One wasn't very sure what to write and ended up just telling me the most random things; and one wrote back so amazingly infrequently I soon lost enthusiasm.

After a summer of writing to my boyfriend and another university friend – both of whom write interesting and amusing letters, I decided to start again last term with writing to home friends. I wrote one letter to my infrequent correspondent that, when chided for never replying, he later declared as rubbish: a claim which my other friend - who I must admit, I ended up forgetting to reply to after a few weeks of letters – backed up with enthusiasm.

This annoyed me.

It appeared that my letters had only been good when I had been lonely. When I had been depressed and in a completely pretentious state of mind. Once I had become happier and started feeling like I was really living, my letters had suddenly become pieces of worthless handwriting.

I agonised for days over this. What it meant; whether I should keep on writing. To insult my words was possibly the worst thing they could have said to me, even if they were a bit drunk – and as my friends of years and years they should have known this.

The one friend has since apologised and insisted that he wishes to continue corresponding with me this term. However, I'm not so sure whether I can deal with his high expectations. So I think I'll let him start this one.

So what's in a letter? Whatever you want there to be.

But beware, because, as with all writing, you're always going to be open to criticism. The important thing is not to let that criticism from getting in the way of what could be a beautiful relationship. Letters are, after all, much prettier than E-mails, but there's a hell of a lot more expectation that comes with them.

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