Aside from acquiring my library haul, it wasn’t summer unless I went camping or built forts out of sticks with the neighbor kids. 

As you may have suspected, this book lover who needed SPF 5o+ gravitated toward inside activities in the summer months. One of my favorite? Writing letters.

Which is probably why I loved The Correspondent by Virginia Evans so much. It celebrates the simple act of committing pen to paper and sending your thoughts out in the world. Some letters were short and newsy. Others reveled in details and danced around its subjects—serious and otherwise.

The novel’s leading lady Sybil Van Antwerp never ran out of things to write about, and neither did I. Even if the day-to-day activities of my younger years (see left) weren’t as riveting as say, the plots of The Baby-Sitters Club books I loved so much. But whenever I stayed with my grandparents in Illinois, I needed my parents to know about visiting Storybook Gardens and swimming in Lake Louise. Also what I had for dinner and whether I liked it.

Later on, my letter writing expanded to kids from camp (see I did go camping, although I stayed in a cabin rather than a tent) and pen pals I “met” via Children’s Digest magazine.

Sending a note off to somewhere far away like Pomona, California or Richmond Virginia seemed so glamorous to this small-town Wisconsin native. And checking to see if anyone wrote back? Let’s just say the mailman’s arrival ranked high on my list of what sparked summer joy. That and whenever the Schwan truck circled our neighborhood (hello, orange sherbet push pops).

To this day, I still love writing and receiving letters. I joke that I’m single-handedly trying to ensure the survival of the greeting card and stationery business. So imagine my delight when my dear friend—and fellow letter enthusiast—sent me a link to The Sunday Letter Project.

The mission is simple. Write one letter every Sunday. Which is exactly what I’ve now pledged to do. The creator of the project explains its value this way:

“In a world dominated by technology, The Sunday Letter Project is a weekly invitation to balance. To recalibrate, reconnect, and return home.We believe that letter-writing is the perfect antidote to this generation’s dependence on screens—it allows you to slip back into a time where the world felt less frantic and more spacious.”

How about you? Do you like writing letters? Why or why not?