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Writing Your Thanks

December 5, 2022 By Carol

Dear Reader,  In this season of generosity, please be sure to stir in time for some handwritten thank you notes. Sadly, technology has overshadowed this precious act of human courtesy.  Writing your thanks says so much more than the words alone.  When you take the time to acknowledge a kindness rendered, it touches the heart of the recipient. People save thank you notes. They are keepsakes!  And for further encouragement…

David Sedaris Is Bullish on Thank-You Notes

In the midst of a grueling book tour, the best-selling author makes time to dispatch notes to people he’s met along the way.

“If I see a can deep inside a blackberry bush, I have to get it because either you cleaned a road or you didn’t,” said David Sedaris. “I’m like that with my mail too. Either you answered it or you didn’t.”
Photo Credit…Vincent Tullo for The New York Times

By Elisabeth Egan

June 16, 2022

If you’ve read David Sedaris’s latest best-selling essay collection, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” you understand why he politely requests your address at the beginning of a phone interview. “When I go on a book tour, I write to everyone who interviews me, to every store and media escort,” Sedaris humbly brags in “A Speech to the Graduates,” his commencement address for the Oberlin College class of 2018. “You know who else does that? Nobody.”

When a publicity blitz includes more than two dozen stops in multiple countries, as Sedaris’s current one does, this is an impressive feat. So why doesn’t he fire off an appreciative email or simply evaporate into the next time zone, as most busy authors do? “It kind of tells you how somebody was brought up,” he said. “I had a great-aunt who sent me to summer camp in Greece. Now if that’s not worthy of a thank-you note, I don’t know what is. My mother had to put a gun to my head to get me to write that thank-you note. But when I became an adult I just realized how important it was.”

Given his trademark persnicketiness, it’s no surprise that Sedaris has certain standards for his correspondence. He may not follow up with an interviewer who asks boring or dense questions such as “What is your writing like?” or “What does your mother think?” (His mother has been dead for decades — and no, he doesn’t use euphemisms like “passed away,” as he explains in the book.) Sedaris avoids stationery printed with goopy messages; he’s partial to cartoon postcards purchased in Germany, “the capital of cartoon postcards,” where he holds a record for bulk buying at a store in Berlin. He tries not to repeat himself, which can be a challenge. Sedaris said, “This morning I was writing Politics and Prose a thank-you letter and I thought, ‘Oh, I hope it’s not identical to the one I wrote the last time! I’ve been there so many times, chances are they could have a big collection.’” He’ll focus on something personal, like “somebody at the store who brought me something to eat or drink.”

Sedaris has an important message for the recipients of his notes: You don’t have to write back. It’s not that he doesn’t want to hear from you; it’s just that the logistics get complicated. He explained, “Sometimes I write someone a thank-you letter and they’ll write me a thank-you letter for my thank-you letter. You have to cut that off at some point. There are only so many pen pals you can have in your life. The gratitude spiral has to end.”

-David Sedaris

Filed Under: Guest Author, Handwriting, Letter Writing in the News, Stationery Tagged With: David Sedaris, Elisabeth Egan, Happy Go Lucky, human courtesy, Keep writing, season of generosity, thank you notes, The New York Times, Vincent Tullo

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