Letter to the Philippines, a new Slowly Penpal

May 26, 2020

Another day and reply to a new Pen Pal gets written;

Contrary to my usual, this letter was written at night. The Weather has been good, most people are outside, doing yard work or exercising, walking, cycling. Warm weather is wonderful after a long Winter.

This is an example of the letters we share, with pen pals all over the World, via the magic of the Slowly App. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience.

The original letter doesn't have the added pizzazz of imagery and links included in the Blog post – my Favourite way of Content Creation. But the inspiration and most of the text in this page came directly from the Slowly editor screen.

Sent an hour ago, and will reach the Web via Blog post way sooner than the actual letter reaches its destination — in the South East Asian country of the Philippines.

And here is the Letter, in Full.

Hello A.,

And thank you for your excellent reply letter – you wrote very well, covered many topics and had paragraphs in good sizes, so it's not hard to read. I also try to do the same, visually it's important that we give a reader little breaks so the eyes don't get strained if possible.

Wonderful that you have visited the links I provided you on my previous letter, and read, enjoyed the pages. I am very glad to have found my inspiration again, it had been months since I had last created a Blog page, back in mid January. But it's great fun, I take pleasure in the process of creating a visually appealing page, while also polishing the language to be correct and flow well.

It takes a few hours of work for each page, but I look at each of them as a complete piece, similar to a magazine article. That is my goal, that it feels and reads like one. :)

Thank you for your gentle compliments along your letter, I appreciate them. And I am glad to have you as a pen pal, a correspondent, we have similar interests and different cultures and places we have visited or lived in. Good material for many conversations!

New Blog Pages this week :

Recently, I have added some new pages to the Blog, trying to keep it to one a day if I can. In my last letter I mentioned the Slowly Web guide in the Reddit sub, but just yesterday I made a Blog version which is not only a lot prettier, but has new added content as well.

A Laptop is the Best & Easy way to use Slowly

On Friday I created another page with a Reply Letter to a Friend in Poland, May 2020, and it's also very nice, if I can say so. :)

Since you enjoy letter writing, there might come a time when you feel that a particular letter is a great one, and would like to share it with one or two close friends, possibly. I had done it, with people who wrote, read and appreciated letters, and now *wrote a blog page explaining my thoughts, methods —Forwarding a nice Letter to another Pen pal.

...so you see I have been busy! :) Which has impacted a bit on my letter replying, I have been a bit slower than usual, but will catch up. I have been active on the Slowly sub at Reddit, and it has good content for us users – a rarity on the Net, there isn't much anywhere.

And you can visit and read without even logging in.

Sorry for all those links, but this letter is getting similar to a blog page as well — I include extra links in the pages, for example those that were letters to pen pals; it adds value, but you want to keep your reader in your page, just suggesting these other ones for extra references, maybe when they finish the blog page. :)

Suggestions for Writing Good Letters ?

Suggestions for writing, you mentioned; and I am going by memory, replying right after first reading your letter as is my custom — which I feel gives me the very best results, my emotions are fresh, and I let the prose flow. We need inspiration and free time for this. :)
until you know a bit about a new possible pen pal, try not to go too long, as some people will be turned off and not reply to a very long letter. Many people use cell phones for Slowly, and that really makes for two classes of users – the ones with the powerful tools, who can produce long content without stress, and the ones that send shorter letters, and still spend a lot longer since the phones are not ideal for content creation.
consider creating a blog, maybe, in the future, you might enjoy it. And then you could also refer people to certain pages, with pieces of writing you consider relevant for the current letter's context.
keep a folder with nice photos for sharing with you closer pen pals, and use them in letters; since we have a quite limited quota, 10 photos for every 12 hours or so, we need to be a bit spartan; maybe one or two in a letter, so you have more if needed for the next replies.
yes, don't ask too many questions, since the other person might either get annoyed and ignore some of them, or if they are very polite, might have to write for a long time to cover all your queries.

Examples are always helpful.

I think that seeing examples of actual, good letters, like these that I have been publishing, can be helpful – I learned to write letters in school, as part of the curriculum, and used that over the years, in commercial, personal, business or government related letters. These are all a bit different, but practice and some reading does open horizons, and you do get better over time. :)
provide feedback to your friend, as you did in this letter, with references to my blog pages, thank you for the gentle comments. This kind of thing makes a letter feel quite personal, and we want that natural flow of conversation, so things will happen and keep evolving.
sometimes you might not be able to respond immediately, specially to a long letter. I have dealt with a situation like that, and actually responded with a shorter letter, mentioning that I would follow that next day. And I did, in fact for the next two days, as that one incoming letter had many questions, good ones, and I was pleased to engage it. :)

I think I will have to take this approach with this letter, actually, since I am half way thru it and it's already getting a bit late; but we will see.

And an idea leads to a new Discovery :

And I just had an idea and went looking. Found a NEAT site with an online Word Counter (that also reports many other things, got a screenshot. ) At the moment, at the end of the short paragraph above, I already had 950 words, so it will be 1,000 soon; I think this is good for Part 1? :)

While writing, I kept thinking that this would be another nice example to include on the Blog – it has good style, flowing text and paragraphs, nothing too personal to reveal. And — it has a lot of suggestions and examples, links which might make for a valuable page to many readers.

I am sure you would agree? and I will be sending this letter soon, then trying to create its online version so I can keep my publishing streak going, one page per day is very satisfying.

So please pardon me the indelicacy; And we will continue in part 2 soon, tomorrow likely.

Have a good day! I think my letter will reach you during daylight hours, possibly.

Sincerely,

Yann2.

Famous Last Words

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

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