Pen Pal Match Up April 2021

 

 

 

 

April is, apparently, National Letter Writing Month. I did completely miss out on InCoWriMo (International Correspondence Writing Month), a reflection of my own lack of life organization, but missing the mark entirely on February leads me to being just slightly late for April. What could that be if not perfect timing?

 

We are going to run another Pen Pal Match Up.

 

We are mainly keeping everything the same as before. Here is the blog post from when we announced the details of the last one, in August 2020.

 

To join our pen pal match up, send us a letter introducing yourself. We will send your letter of introduction off to your pen pal, and your pen pal’s letter of introduction to you.

 

Send a letter to:

 

Wonder Pens Studio Shop

Pen Pal Match Up

290 Gerrard Street East

Toronto, ON

M5A 2G4

Canada

 

All letters must be received by May 15, 2021. Please keep in mind that Canada Post has been experiencing some service delays. While it is best to try not to be the person that sends an email on the 15th asking if they can still send one in, if there are late arrivals, we will try our best to match them up together.

 

In the last round, we received a few lovely, cryptic, basically information-less introduction letters, and it was a real gamble to match these ones up! From the perspective of the match-maker, the more information you include, the easier it is for us. However, by all means, include as much or as little information as you’d like in your letter.

 

To aid us in helping to match you all up, in addition to your letter of introduction, please consider including the answers to the following questions:

1. I consider myself judgemental about postage: Y/N/Indifferent
2. I have more than four bottles of ink: Y/N
3. I think more shops should have shop cats: Y/N/Indifferent
4. I like the rain: Y/N/Indifferent

 

Please include your full name and address, as legibly as possible, in your letter of introduction, and not just on the envelope that you send in to us, as we will not include your envelope to your pen pal. I do not use bold lightly. We had a number of people emailing to inquire about slightly fudgy addresses, or addresses that were completely missing. I did try my best to tear off addresses from envelopes to enclose when I knew that the pen pal had not included it in the body of their letter, but clearly I missed a few.

 

We cannot guarantee anything including: international/national addresses, gender, age, political preference, etc. Please, please strongly consider whether or not you’re open to writing to anyone you might get matched up with, and understand that if you’re not comfortable with the person you’re matched with, that person will also have lost out on their pen pal for that match. That being said, some of you enclosed information on another piece of paper, along with your introductory letter, that informed how we matched up pen pals, such as a particular reason for a particular preference, and we definitely take all the information we have into consideration because...well, we are trying our best to make the best matches possible.

 

For pen pals under 18, please include your age. Because age is much more sensitive for those under 18, and because we get fewer entrants, please keep in mind that there is a chance we won’t have enough age-appropriate pen pals to match everyone who is under 18.

 

And that’s about it! We’re excited to launch this next round. It’s always exciting to get mail in through the slot of our studio shop door, even if it’s not actually addressed to me personally. If you miss out on this round, we will run another one in another season.