I'd Like To Send You A Postcard

Join my postcard writing project and let's make a creative chain that reaches across the world

Who hasn’t been watching the Netflix adaptation of One Day? I’m only a few episodes in but the TV series instantly sent me spinning back decades because of one tiny detail in particular: Emma and Dexter writing letters and postcards to one another.

I know many of you had a similar feeling when

Dr Lily Dunn

and I started writing letters to each other on Substack, we had no idea how much what we wrote, or indeed the act itself, would capture your imaginations.

(For those who want to catch up, you can find the first of Lily’s letters to me here and then follow the series as we go back and forth over eight letters. We will return with another series in the Spring.)

Memories of the Future

But again, what appealed to many of you was the nostalgia of letter writing – the excitement of having a penpal, the anticipation of waiting for a letter, or a beautiful postcard from some exotic land, to drop through your letterbox.

In this digital age we seem to have lost this art – this act of sending someone a little piece of our own art to decorate their home with, and sharing something of ourselves by putting pen to paper.

And so, I would like to send you a postcard.

Today I’m launching this creative experiment for my paid subscribers, and I am hoping the ripple effect of this little project – if enough of you take part – could spread to something larger.

So here’s how it will work.

1. If you will trust me enough to email me your address, I will send you a postcard with your own individual writing prompt on it. Alongside the prompt, there will also be the address of another subscriber, though not the person’s name. Everyone stays anonymous.

2. You will read my prompt and then buy your own postcard, and write something original, creative, and clearly quite short on it (a few lines or a couple of paragraphs) in answer to the prompt.

3. You will then post that postcard to the address that I have given you — only your writing will be on the postcard, not the prompt you received.

4. I want this to be an international creative project, so you might be sending your postcard to someone in the UK, or one of my paid subscribers in the US, Australia, or elsewhere — it depends who takes part!

5. Once you have received the postcard from this stranger, you will email me a photograph of it and tell me what thoughts came up for you based on what they had written.

6. I will publish a selection of these creative words on my substack – and without the original prompt we’ll just have to guess what it was!

7. So remember, no names, just addresses, everyone is anonymous — no addresses will be shared publicly (or used for any other purpose), they will all be safe with me.

8. Each person will receive two postcards: one from me with the prompt, the second from another person answering their own individual prompt.

Does that sound simple enough? Does it make sense? Shall we do it as an experiment and see how many people we can get to take part? You could do even invite your friends to do it.

I think it’ll be quite an exciting project – and all for the cost of my monthly membership, which is £5.

Here are the postcards that I have at the ready to send to you.

If you would like to take part, please email me your address: annawharton@substack.com

Don’t forget you’ll need to be a White Ink member to join in, you can upgrade here — even if it is just for the month, no obligation to stay (though of course I’d love you to), but I’m doing this for the fun of the experiment.

Let’s see how long we can make this creative chain! And let’s, just for a moment, take it back a couple of decades and take things offline.

Who’s in?

You can upgrade to become a full White Ink member here – it is a little like tipping for my work, and it is so much appreciated by me, as this is how I make my living and pay my bills. Being a member gives you great benefits too, like access to my archive including more than 25 guest author posts and you can also join my online Write With Me Club and spend an hour each month hanging out with me.