Letter writing is something most of us do infrequently these days.

So today’s creative writing prompt take us to *epistles. Try writing an informal letter of appreciation to someone you admire.

You don’t have to follow through and actually post the letter, this is just an exercise for you to stretch your creative writing muscles. All these exercises serve to help you become better at your craft, even when they take you out of your comfort zone.

I recall as a child being urged (forced!) to write thank you letters to generous aunts after my birthday and Christmas, and I found the whole process tortuous – what on earth should I put in a letter?

Fast forward a few years and penfriends became a thing, and I would labour over infrequent, but long, descriptive letters to girls in Canada and Australia who I didn’t know the first thing about. Worse were the penfriends in France when I was expected to converse in French!

Nowadays, text messages and emails fit the bill and letters – especially hand-written ones  – are a rarity.

But I think it is really nice to receive a letter in the post, news and views shared thoughtfully and exclusively in someone’s cursive handwriting.

See if you can produce the kind of letter you’d love to receive yourself. And when you’re done, take the idea a bit further and write a story or poem about letter writing. Better still, try writing a story that is structured as an exchange of letters between two characters.

*We’re not talking Epistles here, which concerns the Bible. As always, punctuation – and capital letters – matter!

Call back next week, 5pm Dublin time on Wednesday, for another creative writing prompt/exercise to help you produce some new written work.