5 Healing Ways to Use Letter Writing in the Modern World

Writing letters is a lost art. These exercises are designed to help you clarify the power dynamics and meaningful connections that are central to your stories, in real life and in your fiction writing.

Real-Life Situations:

1. Write a series of letters to your future self, and stash them somewhere to be opened in a few years, to see your progress over the course of your journey- like a time capsule.
2. Write a thank-you letter to your parents or another family member as part of your forgiveness process, expressing gratitude for the positive aspects of your relationship, without mentioning the wrongdoing. Just the good side of things.
3. Write a letter to an unresolved injustice. Document what happened to you and vent about it. Once the initial steam is released, try to write the same situation from the other person’s perspective or through a lens of universal human imperfection. This activates your deep capacity for sympathy and willingness to forgive. End the letter with a definitive sentence stating that you are choosing to release the hold this event has on your present energy. Why it’s Healing: It provides an outlet for your powerful emotions without the impulsive overreaction, allowing your calm and composed nature to take over and restoring your belief that most people are fundamentally worthwhile.

For Fiction Writers

1. Write letters from one fictional character to another, imagining how their relationship might be and what intimate things they’d say to each other in private.
2. The Letter of Unsent Intent (for fiction writers): The goal is to uncover your main character’s true, often subconscious, motivations, core conflicts, and the permeable (or rigid) boundaries that define their relationships in the novel. Write a letter in the voice of your character admitting something they crave very deeply that they can’t say aloud. Add it to your creative writing binder and refer to it as you write their story.