Ink pen explosion–all over my hand and fingers. That hasn’t happened in a long time since the computer took over and I usually type out most of my work. I was addressing an envelope to my friend who inspired the concept of postal fidelity in the last chapter of my novel.

I’ve been writing letters since I was in third grade. First, to my pen pal, Victoria, who actually goes by the shortened name, Tori, and has for many years (decades in fact) but I’ll always know her as Dear Victoria. She made the writer in me materialize early. Complete with a penchant for exaggeration, her name inspired reverence and intrigue. I was really putting letter writing to practice by addressing someone as Dear Victoria. And, she was mysterious and exciting simply by living in California, with the name Victoria. California was a state I had never visited and doubted I would ever visit since a weekend in the Great Smokey Mountains was as far as my parents were going in our Ford Pinto at that time in their lives. Now, they’ve followed me much farther than they ever imagined.

Though we no longer write letters, Dear Victoria kept me writing for decades, trying to tell her stories about my life and make it seem more exciting. My letter writing expanded to include friends in school and elaborate notes with secret codes and nicknames. Love letters to a boyfriend and recorded cassette tapes of poetry readings and love songs, my letter writing grew and grew. Envelopes addressed to soldiers from my family–in Germany, Kosovo, Iraq. I bought quill pens, wax seals, and parchment paper—got all fancy. I decorated the envelopes & called it Happy Mail. And then, email came along and took over. Facebook status updates. Tweets. I lost my touch, and put all my efforts into fiction and editing. Writing interviews.

I finally saw letter writing as a prelude to my creativity with a longer work. However, my mailbox (the real one by the road) was empty for too long. Sad even, flag always down. A friend from graduate school moved away and sent a postcard, and I sent a card back, and then a letter arrived, and I scurried to write a response. And one of my close friends deployed to Afghanistan, and I berated myself for not writing to her enough.

Hand-written letters allow us to get lost in writing, to forget about editing, to avoid our reliance on the delete key, and to allow the ink to flow across the page. Within letters, I can see the way my friend’s pen strokes show that she is tired, or annoyed, or angry, and they also show how excited or frantic she might be. A sealed envelope invites anticipation and personalization that email cannot offer.

Now, my grad school friend and I write back and forth with dedication for a while, but life takes over periodically and we stop writing, then we pick it back up again. We’ve written two letters in about a month. The pen explosion felt like an old signal, the start gun of a long run with writing and creating.

What gets your creativity in motion?