3 more sleeps to go for InCoWriMo-2019

February is almost here, woo hoo, the shortest month on Earth. Why am I looking forward to February? Well, it is a month of handwriting letters every day. For those wanting to use typewriters, manual clunky thunky things, then the project for you is A Month of Letters (handwritten letters also allowed there).  The basic premise is to write a letter every (postal) day. This can be to family, to friends, to strangers (both sites have addresses available to send to), a mixture.  

To write a letter, I first need some ink, I mean, drink - a nice cup of tea.

A little longer and it'll be ready for milk. I like my loose-leaf tea. This duck tea-infuser is one of the better ones.

Also needed is a pen and paper. It doesn't have to be plain paper. It doesn't have to be airmail paper for international mail. The jolly envelope was part of a letter writing set from Paperchase.

Who to write to? If I have a letter I want to reply to that moment, I will do. I have ongoing correspondence with penfriends, some even from 4 or 5 years back through the old InCoWriMo site. The February projects can lead to long term / committed penfriendships, but not every letter will lead on to years of penfriendship. 

What if I wanted to write to someone new, I could look at the incowrimo-2019 address book. The list is long, and I could go scrolling up and down, stopping at random, and pick an address on screen. Or, I could look for countries or keywords in the address. CTRL+F is your friend. Last year, I chose some addresses with trees of some sort in them. I haven't decided what I'll search for this time. Also, I may pick a few people from the comments they have left on the website.

Once the letter is written, and addressed. I'll need stamps. These Game of Thrones stamps came out in January 2018 and I used some of them during February last year. For international mail, other stamps were needed in addition to these 1st class stamps.

I've skipped what to write in the letter. That is a subject up to you, but what I've gleaned from experience, and from others is that it should be written with genuine interest in the person you are sending to, perhaps with stories, anecdotes, and is a conversation you are having with the person you are writing to.