James B. Kim—the president of Korean American Students at Yale University—wrote an excellent letter to his congressman regarding the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Here’s the link , and the letter is below.

Following 4th of July weekend (a great reminder of our own freedom!) I’m going to use this letter as a model to write my congressman on behalf of the girls, send another letter to the Chinese embassy, and I think it’s time to write Al Gore.

Tomorrow, I’m headed to Newport, RI to enjoy the long weekend and savory my independence. I’ll be there until Monday, so I probably won’t blog again until Tuesday. My friends and fellow Americans, I wish you all a safe and wonderful holiday.

Dear Representative Buck McKeon,

Yale University
PO Box 201974
New Haven, CT 06520

I have one final thought I’d like to add to the blog below. In defense of the people who don’t write back: Often times, I think they intend to. I can think of plenty of times (pre-letter lover) when I meant to write someone back and didn’t. Even now, I might mean to write someone back on Tuesday but it doesn’t end up happening until the following Wednesday. We all have the best of intentions when it comes to keeping in touch with people, don’t we? (Is now a good time to say The road to Hell is paved with good intentions? =)

I leave envelopes on my desk and in plain sight until I’ve written back. I’m OCD when it comes to my desk space, so being able to move the envelopes from my desk to my letter box is often what gets the job done. Whatever it takes! Perhaps people who don’t write back put the letters away too quickly—leaving no visual reminder to respond. Or sometimes, too much time can go by and they think What’s the point of writing back now? We know that there’s always a point and just have to keep spreading that word.

Thank you Maggie for igniting such a lively discussion with your comment on Breaking News: Thank You Notes (4 blogs below). I have a lot to say. Too much for the comment section! So I’ll respond up here. I’ve pulled part of Maggie’s comment:

My problem lately is how to write a letter to someone you KNOW is not going to take the time to respond. I write several friends who don’t have email, or don’t depend on email to keep in touch with others, and it’s hard to keep writing these friends when I know they will not respond. Hardly anyone takes the time to sit down to write a letter these days. And, that is reinforced by the fact that one is usually hard pressed to find letter writing stationery at even the stationery stores, or at least the stores around where I live.

I know it can be disheartening when you take the time to write to people and they don’t take the time to respond, but that doesn’t mean your letter wasn’t appreciated. I think Hope made a great point in saying, “You have no idea what kind of reaction your letters receive.” Masa and Rodney expressed similarly encouraging sentiments.

One of my friend’s tells this great story about a guy and a letter. She had volunteered with him for a year—eventually the program ended and the time came to go their separate ways. She wrote him a goodbye letter encapsulating the year they had spent together and going on about how great the work they were doing was. Now, she had romantic feelings for him, but she did not reveal that in the letter. Perhaps he it read it between the lines. He never wrote back.

More than a year later, the two of them found themselves in a bar—talking about old times and catching each other up on what was presently going on in their lives. At one point he said, “You wrote me a wonderful letter, didn’t you?” She’s funny. When she tells the story it goes something like: My heart fell on the floor. I know it sounds impossible. I know that there’s a rib cage and lots of skin to prevent such a thing from happening. But I’m not kidding. My heart fell on the floor.

I, too, have written many letters that received no written response, but that are brought up in conversation years later. This is one (of the many) things I love about letter writing. People remember it! Remember when I wrote a-letter-a-day for the month of April? Do you know how many responses I got—via letter. One. Yup one. Now, my friend Heddy e-mailed me yesterday to say she sent a letter. So when I receive her letter I will have received two responses. It was still worth it! It was a challenge I issued to myself, and I met it.

I think the safest thing to do when you write someone a letter is assume that you won’t get a response. If the person is worth writing to knowing that, then write away. Enjoy the process. Hide from your computer with a cup of tea and a piece of paper (that how I do it). Don’t fear sounding too self-absorbed by talking about what’s going on in your life. As long as you invite the other person to talk about him or herself with a Now tell me what’s been going on with you! (or something of the sort) at then end, then you’re fine.

With regards to paper: My thoughts, like Rodney’s, went straight to Papyrus. Their greeting cards are very expensive, but their bundles of writing paper are affordable and last forever. I have a stack of blue letter-paper—I’ve had it for months—and it’s what I write all of my letters (that aren’t thank you notes) on. But any old piece of paper will do. Honestly! Computer paper. Even notebook paper. What matters are the words.

I hope this helps, Maggie.

Happy July everyone!

Author Alice Hoffman has issued an apology to Roberta Silman—the reviewer she attacked via Twitter (full story is two blogs below). And here it is:

“I feel this whole situation has been completely blown out of proportion. Of course I was dismayed by Roberta Silman’s review which gave away the plot of the novel, and in the heat of the moment I responded strongly and I wish I hadn’t. I’m sorry if I offended anyone. Reviewers are entitled to their opinions and that’s the name of the game in publishing. I hope my readers understand that I didn’t mean to hurt anyone and I’m truly sorry if I did.”

Let’s focus on these words: I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I’m sorry, publishing someone’s phone number is a deliberate act of cruelty. The only reason to do such a thing is to invite others to harass that person. This was the most offensive of Ms. Hoffman’s Tweets: “If you want to tell Roberta Silman off her phone is 999-9999. Rsilman@emailprovider.com. Tell her what u think of snarky critics.” That looks like a premeditated plan to hurt someone to me. And, of course, Alice is free to make her mistake and recognize it later. But that needs to be acknowledged in the apology.

An apology, by its nature, needs to focus on what you (the doer) did wrong, and what steps you are taking to make the situation right—the apology itself being the most important step. This involves coming clean about what you were thinking/feeling at the time and how you could have handled the situation better. Alice’s apology first blames an omniscient presence for blowing the situation out of proportion and then goes on to mention what Roberta did wrong (giving away the book’s plot). She apologizes to her readers (because she wants to keep them) and forgets to apologize directly to Roberta. It’s true, the situation was blown out of proportion—by Alice. Had she not tweeted so drastically, this would not have been news.

If Alice had hired a letter writer—like oh say, me—then the apology would have gone something like this:

I am overwhelmed and embarrassed by my actions, and I have no one to blame for the situation except myself. I would like to extend a public and sincere apology to my readers and directly to Roberta Silman for my instant and inappropriate reaction to her review of my book The Story Sisters. I’ve been fortunate in my career not to have received many bad or even skewed reviews of my books. Regrettably, this hasn’t done much in the way of thickening my skin and preparing me for the reality that not everyone is destine to be a fan. Roberta was the victim of my inexperience or—perhaps more accurately—my unwillingness to accept this simple truth.

With sincerity and chagrin,
Alice

The Soap Opera Continues: Apparently, Alice was once the victim of an author’s rage when she wrote a bad review.

Could your post office be closing?

It’s official. I’m addicted to blogging. I thought I could tone it down for a few days, but it’s proving to be difficult. (In my own defense: it’s difficult not to blog when I’m sitting in front of a computer. When I’m breathing the fresh air, the desire goes away completely.)

Remember when I blogged (or re-blogged the NY Times) about anger on Friday (two blogs down). Well, author Alice Hoffman demonstrates why it’s better to go for a run than for your computer when you’re angry. Thank you Gawker for capturing a few gloriously psycho tweets.

Sorta related: I just discovered (and I’m probably the last to know) about Tweleted. The Web site that recovers any tweets that you delete. So far, I’ve only deleted a few tweets for grammatical errors. I have yet to do it because of a change of heart or opinion. Word to the wise: Think your tweets through very carefully!

A shout out to Andrea who sent me the link to the SF Chronicle article about thank you notes: Are thank-you notes passe in the e-mail age? It never ceases to amaze me that every six months or so an article about thank you notes will pop up—begging the question Have they gone away? The answer is always no. I can say this based entirely on the fact that the stationery industry is alive and when. We can worry about letters when people stop buying paper. I have yet to see the drug store that’s done away with its greeting-card section. I think we letter lovers will be okay for a little longer.

The writer of the article, Jen Burke Anderson, laments that she’s written many thank you notes lately and no one has given her a response. My response to that would be that you don’t need to get a thank you if you give a thank you. The original gift was enough. Of course you can e-mail / text Thanks for the note. But it’s not necessary. I’ve also had people thank me years later for letters I’ve written, so just because you don’t get an instant response doesn’t mean you won’t get one eventually. The years-later response is better, too, because it means what you wrote stood out enough for them to remember it all this time. In the article, Lizzie Post (great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post) had a similar reaction. “Don’t write a thank-you to get a response; write one to really thank somebody.” Exactly!

FYI: This is going to be a slow blogging week for me. I’m finishing a book proposal and getting ready to go away for the long weekend. I’m sure I’ll have some insights, but they might be on the short side. . .

Insightful Times piece about anger and how getting angry does no good to one’s mental or physical health. It focuses on anger that fuels revenge. I struggle with this—thinking sometimes that it is my job to teach people a lesson. Even if revenge is successfully executed, the other person seldom thinks Oh wow, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have done that. They just get angry themselves, and it’s a never-ending cycle of revenge and fury. Letting it go is so much harder and so much better.