Letters Are Still an Option

I sometimes wish I’d grown up in the era of written letters, or that email and long-form written correspondences were more fashionable than they currently are. There is something quite enjoyable about sitting down and intentionally writing to someone, for hours even. The times that I’ve sat down to write something long-form to a friend, or have received the same, feel qualitatively different from the accumulation of many shorter messages.

Part of what draws me to letters is the fact that I value high quality writing – reading it, writing it, editing it. Writing is a proof-of-thought, that the author cared enough to sit down and put mental labor into writing something.¹ And if that something is emotionally resonant, all the better. There are only so many hours in the day, and so the fact that someone spent that time writing something deep to you, or you to them, adds a level of intentionality that frequent texts, in my opinion, do not.

More “modern” async communication nudges in the direction of faster, briefer, more back-and-forth. Admittedly, there’s a time and place for this! In work contexts, dismayed as I sometimes am about the size of my Slack inbox, it just would not be feasible to write considered email responses to every inquiry I receive. I’ve worked in organizations where long-form emails were the default, and that always felt like a well-meaning but misplaced use of time and attention.

In the personal domain though, I’m finding I value slower communication. A slower pace allows you to sit with ideas for a while before responding, and then respond in sufficient detail that the background thinking time was worth it. This doesn’t require adopting a distant intellectual tone. Good “slow” writing can be warm, connecting, and exciting.

Good “fast” personal communication can also be warm, connecting, and exciting, but it can also carry along with it a sense of “always needing to be available”. The feeling that at any given time, your phone may buzz and you’ll be liable to respond to something. Or that you’ll send someone a message, they immediately respond, and you owe them a quick response. Personally, I find this constant availability draining, and that I don’t have as much to offer when responding from a place of “quick response”.

This is all, of course, norms that are partially developed at a global level and (more importantly) negotiated in each one-on-one relationship. Similar to the reflection I wrote on scheduling recurring calls, slow long-form writing is something that one can propose.

Thankfully, we have the technology in 2025 to distribute text rather easily. This can look like multi-paragraph iMessages, hand-written letters, writing 5,000 words and attaching it as a PDF via email or text. I suspect I’m not alone in finding this mode of communication underused – in fact, I know I’m not, since I’ve run into wonderful people who also share this sentiment.