
My daughter recently turned two. We are now on the fifth day in a row of singing happy birthday to her and blowing out a candle. I haven’t the heart to tell her that birthdays only last a day, but I don’t make the rules. She does. I digress. Since before her birth, I made a promise to write her a letter for her every birthday. This letter writing, I guess, works as some form of her year in review. I talk about how she is developing, I talk about things she has done or achieved in the last year. I talk about how my year was – making it quite the therapy session – and finally, I discuss what our upcoming year together might bring.
The masterplan is to have one written per year, completed on her birthday, for as many years as I can hold a pen. Then, once I leave this planet and moved onto the next one, the collection of letters will be presented to her. I am quite certain it’ll be the best book I will ever write, but to a very, very niche audience of one. And I won’t receive the feedback.
As I wrote my letter this year, it made me laugh, it made me reminisce, and it made me cry. It really pulled my emotions all over the place. So, I wanted to propose letter writing as my prompt. Not only letter writing, but a letter written for a particular person at a particular time. Is it their birthday? Your anniversary? The day of their remembrance?
Writing a letter in such a way might do a great job at prying open the emotions and deeper feelings you have inside, and spilling them onto the page. It will encourage you to tell your truths, reveal your soul and share your secrets, because you are talking to a person you want to reach out to (and you love them, which will help).
The goal of this exercise might not be for anyone to actually read your letter, but it could inspire something else: the seed of a new idea, overcoming writer’s block on your work-in-progress, or simply getting something off your chest.
Either way, it’s writing. And that’s good enough. Now excuse me while I go and light the candle one more time.
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