Is the pen mightier than the keyboard? Thoughts anyone?

Hello there!

What do you think? Is letter writing dead? Do you think those days are gone when buying stationary was a beautiful fetish? Where giving/receiving a gift set of notes and envelopes was actually quite nice? Oh, and some smelled pretty too! How about a leather writing compendium complete with expensive pen? A yearly agenda planner and a not-so-expensive pen?


Our Australia Post has recently practically declared bankruptcy as no one sends letters anymore. So their response was to double the cost of a stamp. Well, that'll stamp it out altogether.

So by all evidence letter writing seems to be yet another dying art, along with 'proper' English, landlines, taking phone calls instead of messages, regular SLR cameras etc.

So, what's the cause of this demise? That's easy, isn't it? Email's the go (although it's already old hat according to my Face-timing, Snapchatting students). Twitter and texting and facebooking are quicker and easier, so why write a boring old letter say you?


But the death of the letter really kills me.

A person born in the last 20 years may never have sent or read a handwritten letter. Wow! Really! The thought of picking up a pen and writing a personal message to someone seems foreign to the young and now many of the not-so-young. But don't handwritten letters offer a unique and personal touch that can never be replicated in our 'new' ways of communicating?

Are our mailboxes just for bills? Ugh!

Is a major literary era on its last legs? Double ugh!

The written word is undeniably the most dynamic discovery of human history that sets us apart from the animal world and personal letters have traditionally been an important literary medium.

JK Rowling is a prolific modern day letter writer. But if we want to, we can also read the letter collections of writers such as Beatrix Potter, Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, Graham Green as well as some of the famous political leaders of the 19th or 20th centuries. And who could forget Anne Frank's handwritten diary?

A couple of precious pages from Anne's diary I snapped at
Anne Frank Haus, Amsterdam

Handwritten letters create a connection that modern, impersonal forms of communication will never approach. No doubt there are writers whose emails are worth collecting, but if they're locked behind passwords they're inaccessible.

Old French postcards written during war time

Collections of handwritten letters cover a vast array of topics. Queen Victoria was a prolific letter writer. She wrote about 3700 letters to her confidante alone! And isn't it romantic when a stash of love letters are discovered, especially those bound by satin ribbons. In war time letters are written to those at home. Very poignant they are too. So important that many of them are housed in War Memorials and Museums. They provide invaluable eye-witness evidence of the horrors of war. Will emails from a tour of duty in Afghanistan hold up against the letters from the trenches in WW1?

Did you have a pen pal when growing up? I had several. How I enjoyed receiving those light airmail letters replete with the daily doings of a life in Japan, or Canada, or Alaska. Had far more appeal than a Facebook post or two hundred.

I recently read an article that claimed that highest-level communiques should be hand written in an effort to thwart spying. So maybe it's back to the future in some areas!

 US President Barack Obama said in 2012: 'In my life, writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are.' 

That man does have a way with words.

• Do you still write personal letters?
• Does the demise of personal letters worry you or are you all for technological ways of communicating?
• Do you ever hand write your stories? 

Going to Pot in Amsterdam, and experiencing Anne Frank house...

Hello there!

Well I'm having a marvellous time in the Northern winter, how about you? America looks scary at the moment. 

When I was in Amsterdam there was the mighty wind storm. Thankfully it just lasted the day...the day we took a trip into the country. Got absolutely blown away every time we stepped outside, but on the bright side the windmills were turning. I think Amsterdam is definitely best visited in summer! Although the Christmassy feel was at times dazzling.

The view from our hotel

This was my first trip to Amsterdam, but of course I knew about the coffee shop culture. Still, nothing like seeing it for yourself.

Just a couple of coffee shops near our hotel. 

Loved the art everywhere...here in a little alley...

The best thing about Amsterdam is to just stroll around the streets and alleyways. So much to discover. So many niche shops. 

However, the highlight of my visit was always going to be to experience the Anne Frank huis (house). I left it until the last day as I knew it would depress me. It wasn't that depressing, just so poignant to think I was moving through the rooms of this little girl's home, seeing the blacked-out windows, feeling the claustrophobia of being shut in for two years. Photos weren't allowed for whatever reason, but I will show you the facade of the building which was obvious to the Nazis, being just another canal house. 

The little white plaque shows the entry door to the building which was a manufacturing warehouse during the war. The Annex where Anne Frank and her family and others were hiding is in the back of this building. You can see the canal homes from across the canal reflected in the windows. This is the bare chestnut tree Anne saw from the attic.

What the Nazis didn't know until some unknown betrayer told them, was that hidden behind a bookcase in the building, Jews were hiding out on two back floors and an attic. 

There are quotes from Anne's diary throughout The Annex, which add to the impact of the experience. 

In the words of Anne on 23 February, 1944...

"I go to the attic almost every morning to get the stale air out of my lungs. This morning when I went up there, Peter was busy cleaning up. The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swept through the air." 

The rooms were laid bare by the Nazis when they arrived that fateful morning to take them away, and Otto Frank, (Anne's father), the only survivor from those hiding out, didn't want it refurnished when the house was opened as a museum in 1960. He wanted this house to be a metaphor for all the Jews had lost during the time of Holocaust. Instead, he had a huge scale model made so visitors can see it as it was.

THE original Diary is on display, the one she was given on her thirteenth birthday, before they moved into The Annex. Anne's writing is everywhere behind glass. She also wrote short stories. She was planning on being a novelist when the war was over and was re-writing her diary when she was taken away. Writing kept her sane during the horrendous time. 

"When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived."                 April 5, 1944.

Sadly, her life was cut short. She died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp only one month before the end of the Nazi occupation. She believed all her family was dead, so gave up hope, according to her life-long friend who used to throw packages over the fence for Anne.

My most treasured possession from my trip will be the replica Anne Frank diary I bought. Lots of facts about Anne at the front, and lovely blank white pages thereafter. Not sure what I'll write in it yet... 

Standing looking towards Anne's house. She was denied this view throughout her incarceration. Geo is holding my precious diary in the style of Anne's.

After leaving the house, I just wanted to find a little hole somewhere and cry my eyes out...not just for Anne, but for all those who suffer and die in the name of prejudice, hate, greed and whatever motivates humans to turn on humans. Plenty of that still going on. As Marcus Zusak says through his narrator Death in the fabulous novel, The Book Thief, "I am haunted by humans."

But instead of moping, we walked along the canals through snowy scuds to the Van Gogh museum. How splendid was that! Many of his 800 paintings and drawings are on display over 3 floors. 

So now I have arrived in Paris and am taking photos of pretty things to recuperate, although France has plenty of war wounds.

Yesterday we visited the medieval city of Provins, north east of Paris. Was amazing. Today we're heading for Champs Elysee. Stay tuned for a Paris post before too long. Want more? I post nearly every day on facebook.

Meanwhile, it's hard promoting Write...Edit...Publish while on the move. I'd love you to sign up and share something about your Christmas/Holiday traditions...simple but uplifting maybe??

• Have you been to Amsterdam? What was your experience?
• Have you visited Anne Frank house? How did it affect you?
• Have you read The Diary of Anne Frank? (It's published in 70 languages, so Anne got her wish to be a published author.)
• If you enjoyed this post, please share...