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PENPALLING WITH A DIFFERENCE

Writing to pen pals by ‘snail mail’ seems to have taken a nosedive in popularity since the introduction of social networking sites, yet some creative writers long to get into what once was called ‘alter-ego pen palling.’  That was where the participants involved write as a fictional character of their own choosing.  They could become anyone they wanted to be, past present or future.  They could come from any country, planet or dimension.  They could choose to be any age, gender, race or religion.  The whole idea was that they would write an ongoing story about that character to other characters. 

I did it for over a year and slowly people got writers block, got bored with it, blew their covers and wanted to chat to the ‘real me,’ or just stopped writing for no given reason.  It was fun being a Celtic vampire for a while and I’d like to do something like it again as it really helps develop writing skills, but I can’t find any Pen pal organisations doing it anymore.  Do you know of any?

I had a ball drawing my character since I was a very artistic vampire who drew her fellow creatures of the night to illustrate the ongoing diary of my fictional life.  My fellow vampires in USA enjoyed getting the drawings.  I even did a treasure map at one time.  I ripped a sheet of paper into an old and damaged looking shape.  Then I soaked the page in strong coffee to age it and while it was drying threw a few coffee granules around the edges of the paper to make an old mottled look.  I put a few grains of coarse sea salt on it in parts to take out colour.  The result was one I was pleased with.  When I had drawn the treasure map on that page and crumpled and folded it a few times an old pirate might just have fallen for it and went hunting for the hidden vampire’s gold. 

I look back on that fun and think of today’s teenagers writing on MySpace, Facebook and Bebo in ‘text speak’ and wonder I things like that could ever take off if someone did revive the hobby. 

When people say ‘the art of conversation is dead’ I wonder if the art of storytelling might be too as far as things like alter-ego pen-palling or alternative pen-palling goes.  Of course, I’d still like to hear from people interested in giving it all a go.