The more I’ve been writing lately, the more I’ve thought about getting in touch with my writing professors from college. I’d like to say thanks for everything they taught me. I used to correspond fairly regularly with some of them, sometimes even mailing a letter rather than sending an email. The novelty of writing a letter with pen and paper is appealing because it makes me think about what I’m writing in a different way. For one, I’ve become used to being able to edit instantly, without scribbling. I’m used to seeing the final copy of my writing clean and crisp, without obvious human faults.

Periodically changing the form of my writing grounds me and forces me to think about what I’m writing and how. Writing on paper is different from using a computer. Writing a novel is different from writing a blog post. Both novel and blog feel different from the moods created by poetry or a formal essay. And a letter is different yet again. In a way, blogging is similar to letter writing because both forms ask me to reveal myself to another person. But writing a letter, especially with pen and paper, is more intimate than blogging. In this blog, I’m writing for a wider audience. When I write a letter, I’m crafting my words for that one special person. She or he will hold this paper that I’m holding now.

Letter writing, especially to people who have influenced me as significantly as my college professors, opens up another avenue in writing that I seldom explore: It offers the opportunity for gratitude. That may sound like a topic for journaling rather than more “serious” writing, but it isn’t necessary to first record what I had for breakfast. I just dive into reflections on gratitude. It opens me in a way that impacts all my other writing. Acknowledging gratitude, whether for help with my creative pursuits or for something else entirely, helps me reconnect to myself and where I came from. It also connects me to other people, on a much deeper level than the surface interactions that so often take the place of truly connecting to those around us.

As I contemplate the letters I will write to my teachers, I am grateful for the lessons they taught me about writing and literature and life. I’m grateful for the help they tried to give me - which I too often refused, confident that I knew what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. Most of all, I’m grateful for the human contact, for the sympathy, humor, and advice they gave me during a trying time of my life.

I also feel gratitude toward influential teachers whom I’ve never met. Many writers have influenced me through the power of their writing, their skill at joining streams of words into rivers. As with the teachers I know, the writers I appreciate most are those who share wisdom by letting their humanity shine through the words.

Take some time to think about those to whom you are grateful. Better yet, pick up a pen and tell them so. Write a letter to your parents, an old teacher, an author you admire. Even if you never send the letter, the experience will open you to the interconnectedness of everything and stir the deep well of creativity inside.

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