When I worked as a newspaper reporter and photographer, one of the most surprising and wonderful things that happened to me was receiving letters of praise and thanks from people who'd read my articles/seen my photographs. Mostly they were from people I was writing the story about, but sometimes it was from someone who'd just happened to read the story and wanted to let me know what they thought of it.
It had never occurred to me that people would actually do that, write a letter to me to thank me for my work. I treasure every one of those letters, and have them all still. It made me feel so good, and made me want to do even better next time.
It's so great that you wrote that note and sent a copy of your book to that guy! I'm sure he'll treasure them. :-)
I've written letters of praise and thankfulness to a few favorite authors. Recently I wrote an email to Sarah Bird, feeling like a total geek, but doing it anyway... She'd written a really great article in October in my local newspaper about going door knocking to talk to people about voting for John Kerry, and I wanted to take the opportunity both to thank her for what she was doing and to thank her for her wonderful books.
While vacationing in Italy several years ago, I took postcards of my home state with me and carried them around every day so I could give them to people as thanks for being extra kind or helpful or cool in some way (an idea I'd read about in a travel book).
I found that it really was a great way to connect in a tiny way with people. One card, for example, I gave to the front desk manager of our hotel in Rome when I was checking out because he had been really nice and helpful to us during our stay. It surprised him, and he dropped the formal veneer a bit, enabling us to have a nice brief moment of connection, talking about our hometowns and travels and stuff.
I try to make it a point to say thank you to people I encounter during the day who are in the service industry, such as waiters, or grocery sackers...especially people who have looked me in the eye and smiled and said hi and did a really good job or helped me above and beyond the call of duty. I've worked in the service industry and know what a thankless job it can be and how you can be treated so anonymously and how a sincere thank you from a stranger can really lift your day.
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It had never occurred to me that people would actually do that, write a letter to me to thank me for my work. I treasure every one of those letters, and have them all still. It made me feel so good, and made me want to do even better next time.
It's so great that you wrote that note and sent a copy of your book to that guy! I'm sure he'll treasure them. :-)
I've written letters of praise and thankfulness to a few favorite authors. Recently I wrote an email to Sarah Bird, feeling like a total geek, but doing it anyway... She'd written a really great article in October in my local newspaper about going door knocking to talk to people about voting for John Kerry, and I wanted to take the opportunity both to thank her for what she was doing and to thank her for her wonderful books.
While vacationing in Italy several years ago, I took postcards of my home state with me and carried them around every day so I could give them to people as thanks for being extra kind or helpful or cool in some way (an idea I'd read about in a travel book).
I found that it really was a great way to connect in a tiny way with people. One card, for example, I gave to the front desk manager of our hotel in Rome when I was checking out because he had been really nice and helpful to us during our stay. It surprised him, and he dropped the formal veneer a bit, enabling us to have a nice brief moment of connection, talking about our hometowns and travels and stuff.
I try to make it a point to say thank you to people I encounter during the day who are in the service industry, such as waiters, or grocery sackers...especially people who have looked me in the eye and smiled and said hi and did a really good job or helped me above and beyond the call of duty. I've worked in the service industry and know what a thankless job it can be and how you can be treated so anonymously and how a sincere thank you from a stranger can really lift your day.