#incowrimo

February is International Correspondence Writing Month.

That means writing letters. Lots of them. It means writing one letter per day for the entire month of February.

By hand.

No emails. No text messages. No Twitter DMs. Actual hand-written letters on paper using pen or pencil, folded and placed in an envelope with a stamp and dropped in the mail. If you don’t want to write a full letter, a postcard is fine. If you don't want to send through the post office, skip the stamp and hand-deliver it. Miss a day? Write two the next day.

There *is* a website that explains it all, and it also gives a place for you to share your address with others, but many people aren’t comfortable sharing their address on a public website, so they find other ways. They send letters, cards, or notes to friends and family. They might even write letters to their kids or significant other and hand-deliver them.

For what it’s worth, I don’t use that site because I’m already a member of a private pen pal Facebook group and have a fair number of pen pals I write to year-round. During #incowrimo, I write to my existing list, but also send random cards and short notes to other friends who I think would appreciate getting a hand-written note in the mail. I also have friends with birthdays in February, so I send them cards and count that toward my goal of 28.

Last year I took part but fell short by four or five due to COVID, but this year I plan to get all 28 sent!