I found a list of "Things You Should Not Send Your Penpal" at CityMity Penpals Blog. It was a good, sensible list.

Not many people are writing letters which are mailed though the postal system these days. I did, years ago and I started thinking to do so again. If I find someone I'd enjoy writing with. We used to exchange more than letters, stamps or postcards. There were friendship books, mail art and anything else you could fit into an envelope without too much of it sticking up from the flatness of the envelope.

One thing which is risky to exchange, seeds, or anything plant based. Very sad. Some plant things are ok, usually something which has been processed. I think you can send tea bags, but not loose tea. So, you could exchange seeds if they came from a seed company, but not seeds you collected from your own garden, or seeds you found on a road trip, in the neighbourhood, etc.

Currency is ok if it is very small in value. Very small, being less than a few dollars. I used to like seeing what change/ coins looked like from other countries. I still have some of the coins I collected from penpals.

As a teenager with a tiny budget, my biggest expense for letter writing (other than postage) was stationery. I would shop for boxes of stationery and especially if it came in its own pretty box I could keep long after I had mailed the last of the writing paper and envelopes away. You can still find beautiful or customized/ unique paper and envelopes online but a lot of it seems too girly for me now. I may end up sticking with postcards for awhile.

I get annoyed about US spelling being taught or expected/ insisted upon, in Canadian schools. When I was in college, years ago, we were told to spell the US way. I went to Centennial College, the Warden Woods campus which is gone now. My nieces attend school in Newmarket and are taught US spelling. If they (or myself in college) don’t spell the US way our words are marked wrong. In college I had to write very well in order not o have a failing grade – because I refused to spell the US way in Canada. I still refuse.

This site is going to be about Canadian spelling and Canadian things in general. I love being Canadian. I was born here, though I have travelled, I still like Canada the best.

I think it is sad to see so many personal journals disappearing. This site is about writing, journals and diaries especially included.

Think about the word in the list below. Have you ever used one of them outside of a cliche/ idiom? I have used lurch as a word in a sentence. It is a good descriptive sounding word for a person who doesn't walk easily. That is the only word I've used outside of the phrases they have become known by.

12 Old Words That Survived by Getting Fossilized in Idioms

• Wend
• Deserts
• Eke
• Sleight
• Dint
• Roughshod
• Fro
• Hue
• Kith
• Lurch
• Umbrage
• Shrift

People say everything has already been explored. They’re wrong of course. There are oceans (literally) of places yet to be explored. The deep ocean, outer space, microscopic things, the human brain, and probably others which I’m just not thinking of right now.

With writing… I think it is much harder to find new places to explore in writing. Even the unexplored real places have been written about, in many ways, with many theories. Music is all based on a set amount of notes and yet there are millions of songs. Music also has genres and styles. I don’t write music but it seems to be even harder than writing with words. For one thing, we have 26 letters and they work with billions of words.

I think everything (unless it doesn’t exist yet) has been written about. Science fiction covers so much, a wide area of imagination and speculation. Non-fiction explains everything under the sun, just search online for “how to…” and there will be something.

So, what can you do when you don’t feel there is anything new to write about? Some would say “write it better” but I would say – write it your own way. You have your own life experience, your own ideas and ideals, and you can write things from your own perspective.

If that doesn’t help, throw things together and see what you come up with, randomly. Put together ideas and items that don’t go together, are unrelated and make it work in some way. It’s fun once you start.