New York (sigh) -- always a couple of years behind Vancouver

Last fall American science fiction author Mary RobinetteKowal took a month-long vacation from using the internet. 

She asked anybody & everybody to communicate with her by post and paper letters.   

And they did.   

So now she has these correspondences going, and she’s delighted: “When I write back, I find that I slow down and write differently than I do with an email. Email is all about the now. Letters are different, because whatever I write needs to be something that will be relevant a week later to the person to whom I am writing.”

Now she’s challenged her friends & family -- and all her Facebook buddies-- to mail at least one item through the post every day through February, part of a bid to help the ailing U.S. postal service hold its head above water.

And it’s catching at close quarters: her own agent has actually promised to respond to an author query every day. And many other writers are joining in the call to put pen to paper.

Well, that’s New York, behind the times as usual.

In Vancouver, a shop called The Regional Assembly of Text on Main Street has for years been encouraging its customers to come in at 7 o'clock on the first Thursday evening of the month to write paper letters to their loved ones. The Regional Assembly hauls out their collection of old Remingtons and Royals, Underwoods and Smith-Coronas -- and encourages all us limp-wristed internet writer lightweights to pound our hearts out on those cranky old manual typers in their Writing Club.  

Glad to hear that the Big Apple is finally catching up.


(c)2012  Margo Lamont