Emma Frei: For the Love of Writing

I love letters. I have written letters since I knew how to read and write. My very first pen-pal was my cousin Megan, who is the same age as me. The people who delivered the mail were my Dad and my Aunt Lori. I wrote letters to her up until I was nine or ten years old. We both loved it, me especially. For as long as I can remember I have loved to read. I remember sitting in my room when we lived in Rifle at ten pm. reading one of my favorite series, Little House on the Prairie.  Often Mama would come in and find me asleep with my nose in an open book. I loved to read so much that I decided that I was going to be a writer when I grew up. And I was serious about it. I have so many notebooks filled with stories, actual books, that I wrote when I was seven years old. Not kidding! In fact, I have read so many novels that I already knew everything about writing by the time I got to that in language arts! I knew from reading where to put comas, quotation marks, proper grammar, the basics if writing. The very first chapter book I wrote was a holacaust story, where most of the characters died and the whole thing was very tragic. A few years ago I re-wrote it, this time into a story about a Jewish girl who marrys someone and escapes with him out of the Warsaw Ghetto and into Britain. I am now changing it a little bit again, adding more drama as I see fit. So far it is my master piece. It will probably continue to change and grow over the years, as most of my stories have. In 2013 I started blogging. 

As I've grown and matured I have turned again to letters. I'm now writing to my cousins Megan AND Lily, who live in Yuma, AZ, a pen-pal named Alexandra and a friend who I met at Family Week in Kentucky back in 2013. And I'll tell you what: There is something very special about getting a letter in the mail with your name on it. It's different than getting an email or a text. It's something you can hold in your hand, something you can feel. Somebody put time and effort into that letter, even if it's just a simple note asking how you're doing. Somebody sat down and thought about you. That makes me feel special. 

So write a letter. Take time to think about who you should write to, whether it's a friend and a relative, or both. Write it with a pen on paper, not on your computer or phone. It'll mean that much more to whoever you write to.