* (restored)
1. Hand write your letters and make sure you write legibly. Remember to write clearly. Nothing stinks more than having to try and figure out what a person has written, it will be easily tossed aside.
2. Consider sending your letter in a brightly colored envelope. Don’t fill the envelope with glitter or anything – it could spill all over the star’s clothes.
3. Use a good pen. Try to find a pen whose ink is their favorite color. The use of pencil is absolutely prohibited.
4. I suggest you use stationery with manga characters on it, or stationery with rock/pop stars on it, or lined note paper or spiral notebook paper torn from the spine.
5. Make a special place to write your letters. When I write mine I put on some cool music and curl up in my bed.
6. Always try to obtain the most current address. Celebrities move around a lot.
7. You’re writing these letters more for you than for them. That said, make sure you’re totally cool with everything you actually do write. If you ever plan to run for the U.S. Senate, think about whether or not that “I love you so much, you’ve changed my life forever” sentence really does need to go to Justin Bieber.
8. You need to start off by introducing yourself, tell this person a little bit about yourself. This first part of your letter shouldn’t be too long as they may get lots of fan mail, so a long introduction will probably bore them.
9. Say how it is you got to know about them. Was it through a friend? Radio? Maybe it was through a TV show or a movie that you happened to see at the cinema.
10. Are they good musicians? Actors/actresses? Do you have a huge crush on them? Tell them.
11. Compliment them by saying you liked their outfit at the Grammy’s or something to make them smile.
12. You must worship them if you care so much what they think.
13. Try to minimize terms like “it’s like you know my soul” and “twin flame.”
14. Go on to tell them what piece of their work you enjoy the most and why. For example your favourite song or film scene. You could even tell them your two favourite parts, lyrics etc etc.
15. Don’t write a book.
16. Don’t list your age. If you tell them you’re 13 or whatever, they’ll read it like a thirteen year old wrote the letter, all squealy like.
17. Sample Letter: Dear______,
I’ve been a fan ever since I heard/saw _________. I think you are an amazing _________. I follow you career and can’t wait until _____.
I follow you on Twitter. I hope you hit ________ followers soon. It would be great to meet you someday. You inspire me to __________.
Could I please have an autographed picture? It would be amazing if you replied!
Sincerely,
__________
18. Sample Letter: Dear______,
I know you’re busy, so I won’t take up much of your time. I want to be a writer (Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to read anything of mine.)
I was just wondering if you have any advice for new writers. Just one piece would be really helpful…
Love the book,
___________
19. Tell your favorite singer or actor or writer or whomsoever how his or her work helped you through a rough time in your life.
20. Never directly blurt out that you would want to meet them only give vague hints of that.
21. Don’t send demo tapes (audio or video). Don’t be disappointed. Don’t send demo tapes. And don’t send valuables.
22. Whatever you choose to write, just remember the joy they will feel as they feel the warmth of yours and many others’ fan mail burning in a fireplace.
23. Remember that a little bit of flattery can go a pretty long way. But be careful not to overdo it, like many girls or gay boys would simply write – “OMG OMG OMG, I LOVE YOU SOOOOO F*****G MUCH, I WANT TO MARRY YOU!!! XD” for example, which as you could probably imagine would be funny the first time, but then it would quickly become annoying. The aim here is to get the reader to think of you as a sophisticated person.
24. Writing “I’m not crazy” once makes the reader question the statement. Writing it more than 4 times makes you sound crazy.
25. You can finish a letter off with a question. This is the part that can help to generate a reply, so you need to ask a question that is not a yes or no answer, nor can it be a question which requires an essay length answer. If it can be answered in a line or two, then it is ideal.
26. Make sure to wish the celebrity luck with their future career when ending the letter.
27. Be sure to include a self addressed stamped envelope.
28. Do not use Lots of Love or Love from, etc. at the bottom with your name as it may scare the celebrities away from writing back.
29. It’s always cute to include a few pictures or drawings.
30. Don’t run to your mailbox everyday hoping for a reply. Your best bet is to just send it off and just be thankful that they might read it. Even though some celebrities are overwhelmed by fan mail, they are so thankful for their fans. Some may not show that, but without you, they wouldn’t be where they are today.
31. If the person is real hot at the time of your writing, it may take days, weeks, or even months for your mail to be read.
32. Face reality. Some celebrities won’t write back no matter what you do.
— advice collaged
*
p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, Well, the good thing about being a writer is you can pour out and work/refine what seems inarticulable or quasi- in words and find out what works outside your head and what’s yours to keep. Knowing over nursing is my policy. Tracy Lynne Oliver’s prose is fantastic. And Gladman. Mm, I’m blanking on which work she’s referring to. I’ll see if I can check in on the book again and find out. This was the first time I feel like I got Berlin and fully enjoyed it for some reason. Yes, saw your email, and caffeinating is a go. I’ll write back to you. ** Jack Skelley, Jacko. On, the 23rd, that’s almost tomorrow. So I guess you’re over here already. Wow. Major fun and luck and etc. with the London event. Let’s check in and compare notes. xo. ** Steeqhen, Sounds like you could be right. I think you know I stay away from alcohol, but in my case because it makes me sluggish not wild. I get how hard it must be in the UK to socialise without alcohol involvement. Luckily Parisians seem happy to hang without that or with mere sipping. There was some other Anthony Burgess novel that everyone seemed to be into back when he was a thing, but I can’t remember the title. ** Bill, Berlin was really good. The screening was great, big theater, totally sold out, fantastic response. Couldn’t have gone better. There’s a beautiful Fujiko Nakaya fog sculpture at the National Gallery if you want to check that. ‘Magician’ is more ambitious, a full-on novel, excellent, and her prose remains super exciting. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Berlin was excellent. The screening was a big success. We’re very happy. Love writing a fan letter to you, G. ** Steve, Berlin was fun, thanks. The screening was amazing, huge crowd, and the response was extremely positive. No one I know who’s at Cannes has reported in yet. Don’t know that Ha Gil-jong film. I wonder if I can find it. Sounds! Everyone, Steve has launched a new episode of his vaunted music program. Check it out lengthily, obviously. In his words … ‘I posted a new “Radio Not Radio” episode this weekend. It features the Hobknobs, the Tubs, Miaow, My Best Unbeaten Brother, Paloma Morphy, Nwakke, Serebii, PS Hitsquad, Khmeii, Miharu Koshi, Moderator, Isaiah Rashad, Kehlani, Cypress Hill, Leak Bros, U. S. Steel Cello Ensemble, Onna Kodomo, Delphine Dora & Jérome Bouvet, the Sea Plus, Boards of Canada, Alabaster De Plume, Vic Bang, Tyler Friedman, Cabaret Voltaire and Mahavishnu Orchestra. Here’s the link. ** kenley, Hey hey! I don’t even sort of speak French. I just barely get by when the language requirement is extremely simple. Exactly, nowhere is imprisoning. Adventuring is the goal always. I moved to Paris for several reasons. One is that my bf of the time was Russian, and he couldn’t get into the States to visit, but he could go to France, so it was a way to be together in one place. Also I was writing the theater pieces for Gisele Vienne, and me being here made that much easier. And I’d always been a massive Francophile with dreams of living here. So, that’s why, mostly. Berlin finally made its full appeal clear to me in this trip because before I didn’t get it or understand why people like it so much. Now I do. I think just because I got around there more, and the great RT screening probably helped to. Have you been there, I forget? ** jay, Hi! Good book choices, duh. I remember what it was like when I finally had a bedroom that my parents weren’t trying to control and sneaking into looking for evidence of my misbehaviors. Very nice, yes, luxuriate utterly. I’m going to look into the Mannerism post thing. Mozart! Whoa! You’re doing awfully well to be immersing your fingers in that. I never got much further than trying to playing boogie woogie things when I was trying the piano. That’s super cool, pal. ** _Black_Acrylic, I think the Tracy Lynne Oliver book came out yesterday. In the States, I mean. Sadness for the Hearts. Sounds like a terrible movie title. But more importantly, go fucking Leeds!! ** Carsten, Hi. Berlin was nice. Other than the screening … roamed around, saw a great Brancusi retrospective and Fujiko Nakaya fog sculpture, went to the Farsi Museum, which is a museum about the Soviet/East German secret police in the building were they operated, and that was surprisingly fascinating. Ate Sudanese Falafel, which you can only get in Berlin and which is heaven. Stuff like that. I was particularly into the blues in my teens and early twenties because one of my best friends was obsessed with the blues, and I went to see shows with him a lot and bought records on his recommendations. ‘Touki Bouki’ is great. I actually assigned it to our Zoom club a while back. ** chris dankland, Hi, Chris! I know, right? I was so excited when Roxanne Gay sent me the ‘Magician’ mss. Tracy/xTx is such an amazing writer. I’m so happy she’s back and so killing it with that novel. Everything’s going good with me. I hope it’s the same and miore with you. If you get in the mood, catch me up, pal and maestro. xo. ** Sarah, Hi, Sarah! It’s so great to see you! Holy shit, your book is out!!! That’s so exciting. I’ll go get it. Wow, congratulations to you and to us all. Everyone, Sarah Cummins is a wonderful writer, and her first novel just now came out, and I so highly recommend that you go look at a bit of its evidence and score a copy. It’s titled ‘You Are Cursed’, and it’s right here. Yay! ** HaRpEr //, Berlin was awesome. ‘The Deloriad’ was recommended to me recently, and I was really impressed with her writing and the force in it. Haha, you’re almost tempting me to write a memoir, but not quite. Printing out a manuscript and going over it on the page makes such a big difference It’s weird, I don’t know why. I guess just the resemblance to an actual book maybe, but, yeah, I always do that too. I hope the blood test was ok. I’m a little post-trip burnt, but not too bad. ** Laura, Hi! Good choices. Wow, strange to lose an entire language and only one. I wonder why? As simple as the differently configured alphabet? Oh, there’s probably some childhood related pleasure in the washing machine sounds but, yeah, it also triggers the noise music fan in me. Shopping? Good luck with that, haha. I hate shopping. I sort of hate spending money or even entertaining the idea. But you never know. Berlin went really well. I sort of laid it out in pieces up above somewhere. Love back. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Hi, buddy. Thanks for looking and using your brain in that regard. I think you said you moved your piano or at least were going to. You sound like you’re conquering that piano with respect and dedication. Childlikeness is beautiful. People envy it and get pleasured even if they don’t like to reveal that. Speaking of beautiful, your time solo and with the beloved sounds so dreamy. It definitely added some brain cells to mine or tweaked some snoozing ones to wakefulness. Thank you! It’s so great that you’re feeling all of that! ** laura w, Hi there! Oh, thank you. I try to be picky with my blurbs. There are writers whose blurbs have that effect on me and book purchasing too. So happy you love the Kristof. Yes, I like Marie Redonnet very much. I have an old post about her work that I need to restore. Haha, no, it’s cool about the covers. I mean, you know, they just showed me a bunch of possibilities, and I had to okay the ones that least depressed me. It’s very nice to see you. What are doing or working on or whatever? ** Okay. Today I restored a really old post, like from 15 or more years ago, made by a long lost reader of this blog. I found it, and it charmed me, and I decided to try to charm you. We’ll see. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Very true. I guess I already understand writing to be an exercise in trying to make intelligible to other people what’s already barely intelligible to me, so that whole thing will be up to bat soon. It’s infiltrated my thinking around the launch as well — not that the launch needs to have some huge conceptual apparatus hanging off it, but I’m thinking a lot about how literature collides with the social world versus how other forms do.
On that note, it seems like we’re on the home stretch, but I’m still waiting for a slow-as-fuck venue to send me payment details for the booking before we start promo. It’s weird to basically be begging someone to let me give them money — and way too much money, I might add.
Berlin-wise, I’ve heard such a range of takes that I have no idea how I’d find the place. I know a bunch of people who’ve crashed out of the crazy, amped-up party side of Berlin, and I like globbing together and embellishing all those stories to create some nightmare version of it in my head. But I doubt that version would be the main draw in real life, unless the hedonistic part really is so gobsmackingly hedonistic that the hedonism becomes a means rather than an end (is that an oxymoron?).
The concept of fan letters, like literal ones, boggles my mind a little. I don’t know how one would have engineered their way into getting a famous person’s home address — although I’ve connived my way into getting a few people’s emails, which I guess is roughly equivalent. I remember reading an actually sort of touching thing about Toni Morrison being extremely diligent with responding to letters — three or four years after sending a little stub of mail, fans and young writers would get long and considerate responses, always starting with a profuse apology for the delay.
Awesome, looking forward to it, thank you. It’s gonna be a trillion degrees, so I’m hoping the brasseries have worked out how to do iced allongés by now.
Hey Dennis, congratulations on how well the screening went. Fan letters are so good, you’re probably kind of one of the few people actually keeping some form of it alive. The Harry Potter one is great. “From the USPS worker who follows you on Twitter” is extremely spooky.
I’m really, really glad you’re getting republished by Grove, even if their covers aren’t totally ideal. I know a few people who picked up the (Serpent’s Tail) reprint of Closer because of the Lynne Tillman blurb/introduction, so fingers crossed. I actually really like the new Grove Closer cover, it’s really striking. I think I’d probably take it off a display to look at a blurb, if I didn’t know anything about it.
Much appreciated about the piano, I’m sort of trying to play things that are way above my level, given how well that method’s worked for me learning languages, or getting into reading as a kid. I think more technically challenging piano also means I sort of have to take care of my arms, which I normally wouldn’t. Anyway, it’s a lot of fun, I think needing to focus a lot on something difficult is great for me. Glad Berlin was a success, adios!