I started writing to one of my pp's last night and didn't get it finished so I started writing again tonight. So I put yesterday's date on what I wrote yesterday and today's date on what I am writing tonight. Which brings me to my question. Is it better to send smaller letters, more often or one long letter maybe written over a week. I put in the letter for him to tell me so I'm sure he will but I thought I'd see what other people think. :)
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I do both. Just as long as I get something to them once a week, my guys are content.
(The guy that I write to via corrlinks email, though, gets irked if I miss a day.)
You'll settle in. It's not about routine, its about concern and excitement.
What is corrlinks? Can you write to anyone using that? How would you find out if the person you are writing to can do that?
Corrlimks is an email service but as far as I am aware it is only available to Federal inmates
Corrlinks give you direct, send and receive, email access (text only) to prisoners in federal prisons, state prisons in Iowa, and a limited number of prisons in other states where the system is being trialled.
On the outside, its a free service. For prisoners, they pay a set amount per minute for access to the computer.
That's how I write my letters - over the course of a few days.
Well we usually have one big letter a week, that has all the good stuff, but we also send smaller letters called 'fixes' lol. Given that I have more access to stamps, I will post out say three small letters, or cards along with the big weekly letter.
He does similar, but instead of three small letters it an be as little as one small letter along with a drawing or a card etc.
I think we don't write as often as most people here, but when we do it's usually several pages (typed, not written, so in the end it's quite long).
Plus sometimes I'll send a funny pic, a bunch of quotes, or he'll send a picture or card, without any letter.
Usually I write one letter back, except from when there are too many pages and it will be too heavy for the regular stamps I send some more and shorter letters, but only because that is still way cheaper than sending the big and heavy one. ;)
So depending on the weight of the letter I do both, lol.
I think that this is one area where cost is definitely a consideration . . especially if you are writing from overseas. Naturally, it is a thrill for any inmate to hear their name called at mail call. And, they would like to hear it every day. But, with the price of postage, how many times can you afford to write just to say that, "the sun was shining and that you missed them, when you woke up"? But, to each his own. Personally, I couldn't find enough interesting things to write about every day, and the task would soon get boring, if I were to try. Perhaps this is one area where content is more important than volume (ie: one long letter, weekly, vs. many short notes with nothing of substance being said). Just my 2 cents.
I reply a large letter as soon as get a reply but It's 3-4 week turn around for me but I send postcards every 2 weeks
I do both. I send letters just short ones along with pictures maybe once a week or even more and I will send him a JPay daily so he will get something every day.
I do both. Sometimes I send short ones, or a Jpay. Other times I write long letters, all in one night or spread out over the course of a few days.
Isn't Jpay for sending money? You send your PP money every day? Forgive me if I sound ignorant about this. I know that they also have music credits you can send.
No theres a bit where you can send and email as well and it gets printed out and he gets it either the same or the next day its pretty good.
No i dont send him money every day just letters through that.
have a look put your guys number in and see if he gets it...Some facilities dont have the email part.
I write both as well. But usually I have a long MAIN letter, and a few sub-letters haha, which are more like diary entries to update him about what's going on in my life.
So I put both the guys that wrote back to me in JPay and they showed up. Does that mean that they can get the emails from me? Do they have to write back snail mail or can they send emails too then? Again, sorry for the ignorance.
ok, I figured it out. One of my guys can only get money through there but the other can get emails. I don't plan on sending money.
This is me, lol. I'm equipped so that if I go over 1 oz, I don't have to put another WHOLE stamp on it, because it's only 20 cents for the next oz so I'll just stick that on there. Rare I go over 2 ozs. UNLESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS Mark is hitting me with Bibles and I don't have time to respond to his tomes so I'll answer one letter over 3 or 4 of my letters, lol. Of course interjecting my own stuff.
Mountanddo - I'd wait til you figure it out. Each pal is going to be different. Now that you know one friend can get jpays, maybe you do that in between. The ones that HAVE email often WANT the email. They like that instant fix.
And unlike Xray, I can find a million things to yak about DAILY and weather wouldn't be one of them.
Good luck to you.
With JPAY I can write like sending emails and tend to write almost every night...and she likes it. She get something from me almost everyday now. Of course with the prison system putting her reply letter on the back on a snail and sending it on it's way is not cool. I have to wait a week for a reply.
You can use JPAY to write letters and they get them the next day. My PP told me she got my letter the next day but it took a week for her reply to get back to me. could you tell me how to add a picture to my profile. I see you have a nice one fee...ö
Right yes if their names are there to get emails at their prisons you can use that to write to them...Some prisons can write back through that but my guy cant he has to reply by snail mail.
Dont be sorry...Anytime.
Right iv just seen only one guy can get emails. Cool yeah then he can reply through snail mail...i dont blame you for not sending money...me either.
Dang. I wish my pp could have Jpay email service... But of course no such luck. On my end I have been sending short letters, but keeping the content exciting and non-predictable. I create a new graphic design for each letter so to also keep it visually interesting (I am well versed in photoshop, so that helps), and I create a cool quote for each letter. Some quotes are funny, some are inspirational, etc... I have been sending a letter every other day or so (3 letters on average a week). As of yet, not sure if he has received any of them, he is in Ad Seg in a 'not so good' facility. It's been 2 and a half weeks since my first letter was mailed out, and so far no reply yet. It's good to know you guys are also experiencing delays in your replies as well... So maybe we're ok...
Did I read this right? You have sent ten letters so far and he hasn't replied yet?
You are certainly okay.
In some places, if guys are in AdSeg, they only get their mail in bunches. Sundays, end of the week, occasions like that. And in AdSeg, sometimes they are denied paper and pencils.
So, keep writing. Once you make a committment, you cannot withdraw. 2 and a half weeks is nothing. Sometimes it takes months to get a reply.
How long is a piece of string?
There is no "better". Just write what you can comfortably write and your pal should do the same - whether that means you both write once every 2 months or once every hour. But you should keep in mind that writing to inmates is not the same as corresponding with someone in the real world, and if your communication becomes almost constant then you will have to deal with periods of not hearing from your pal due to circumstances beyond their control.
Why are you sending all of this mail when you don't even know if he wants to respond? In any other situation, this would be classed as stalking. Do you realise that you could be seriously freaking him out by doing this?
Less is more!
When my man was in seg I didn't write as much as when he is in gen pop. Firstly, he was on mail restrictions so he could not respond much (which frustrated him) but also because daily letters would have overwhelmed him when he was without any other human contact. I would send a few paragraphs by Jpay once a week to keep him abreast of the news and gossip. And I would send a snail mail once a week which was more personal.
Thanks for the feedback, that was my thought exactely. :)
I guess each person has their own approach, and there are pros and cons to each approach. The goods news is I just found out he is not alone, he does have a cell mate. :) the facility has about 193% overcrowding, so they are two to a cell in Ad Seg. I was happy to hear this, it will certainly help the morale. His cell mate and him were moved from Z block into D block together. Ithink they have been bunking together for over a year now. Guess they must get along OK :).
193% overcrowding! That means there's three times as many people in the facility than it was intended for. That's inhumane! In the free world it would be declared a slum. What happens when the overcrowding exceeds 200%? Already there are two people sharing a cell meant for one. Do the fellas have to start sharing a bed? Maybe sleep in shifts?
I suggest you slow down for a bit, and maybe wait for a reply before anymore letters? People in Ad Seg can get overwhelmed quite quickly.
The devil is in the detail, then. If I recall, you went to great lengths to find ways to compensate for his sensory deprivation in Ad Seg, assuming that he was in solitary confinement with nothing at all to stimulate his senses. But after all that it turns out his is sharing a place with someone else and is possibly even good friends with him. Someone to talk to, share hopes and aspirations with, someone to swap books with. You wanted to send him something to smell. Bearing in mind there are two of them sharing a tiny cell and we know how infrequently they are allowed to shower and change clothes, I think his sense of smell may already be overworked!
At least you can be thankful that your prayers for his well-being appear to have been answered.
''
I'm curious as to how you know so much about someone that you've just started writing to and hasn't responded? I realize you called the mailroom but you seem to know how many times he's been transferred and where he is now and the fact that he has a cellmate. How exactly did you find all this information out. I guess if I were him I would feel "a litte" freaked out by that. I don't mean that in a bad way and he probably has no way of knowing unless you told him.
I read a little about my pp's before I decided to write to them. Maybe I'm not the type of person to find out everything little thing I can about someone. I figure that as I get to know them I will do more research maybe. One on his profile states that he was set up and is innocent. I have no way of really knowing if this is true yet and will hold my opinion about that. You seem a bit obsessed with this person and haven't even gotten a first response yet. I am not trying to be judgemental it is just an observation and it may not be the case. I would hate to see you get all tangled up with someone and not have them respond. I imagine it could be a letdown. You are sending letters every other day with perfume and praying for him.
I sent one handwritten letter by snail mail in response to his and signed up for JPay and sent one letter that way. I asked him which he would prefer and how often he wanted to get letters and how. I think I'm going to let him guide this for now. My other pp can only get letters.
I would suggest you slow down a little bit and see what his repsonses are to your letters. I'm sure that he is loving getting the mail but I'm sure reading 10+ letters without writing back could be overwhelming.
Slow down is certainly good advice here.
Writing to a prisoner is a marathon, not a sprint. Can you keep up this pace for years and years? It would very upsetting for a lonely person (if he is indeed lonely) to receive very regular mail from someone who obviously cares a great deal and then for that to suddenly dry up because she can't go the distance.
Hope...i am sure you are a lovely person with great intentions etc, but just reading the things that you have written scares ME...so i really wonder what the inmate you have written to is feeling. In the outside world if a stranger were to e mail you, text you etc regularly would you feel comfortable with that?
Give this inmate a chance to reply, see what he or she is thinking or feeling...it is wonderful that you are so excited, but these people are only human and in a not so great place. You have been researching them, know masses about them etc, before you even know IF they want to write to you ...in England we would call you a stalker. Please take a breath and be patient, it is a little selfish to bombard a stranger with mail when they have said nothing to you as yet.
I do a letter or card once a week and email everyday !!! they love it. But once you start its hard not to send more lol but that is just me.
I think that is absolutely fine once you establish a relationship with your pp if that is what you both have decided. Doing that in the beginning before they have even responded may overwhelm the person. I imagine that there are some PP that don't want to receive mail everyday and don't want to write that often either. I spent a few hours on the first esponse back and it ended up being about 5 pages long. Most of what I wrote was introductory, telling them about me. I'm going to wait to get a response before sending another. The back and forth is what makes this fun. Answering their questions, asking your own. That's how they get to know you and you them. Otherwise it ends up being all about you.
My pal and I have one long letter that we reply to directly and send back n forth. In between though, we have lots of little small ones, just to update, add info, or just to say a quick hiya. :)
193% overcrowding combined with the highest rate of staff vacancy in the state means that there are way too many inmates and not enough staff to get the job done. The result is: Ad Seg inmates are not getting their yard time, mail is extremely slow at best and when rejected, rejection slips rarely provided to either inmate or sender... I read an interview with one of tower gunmen (snipper) said he had to do overtime to cover the tower, because they are so short on staff. But working long hours up there, means being tired, means less accurate when shooting. Pretty scary when you think about it. Cause a hair too much to the left and he will end up shooting the disruptive inmate down below in the yard, instead of shooting "next to him".
PS: For those of you who think you have me "all figured out" and think I am a stalker, if you only knew who I am you would realize how incredibly retarded your comments are. But that's the thing now isn't it? You have NO IDEA WHO I AM... So it's pretty comical. I'll leave it at that, because frankly, I have much better things to do with my time than to sit here and address your accusations. Some of your comments are plain rude. It's a great turn off, and I prefer to remove myself from the negativity I have found here. I will not be contributing to this forum anymore.
Wow, I can't imagine that just because some people wouldn't agree with what I say that it would cause me to leave a forum. But that is your choice I guess. Good luck to you.
That really is quite scary when you think about it. You hear about things like this all too often now eh? (staff shortages)
Sorry to see you depart to quickly and precipitously.
Silas, you said your penpal and you send your letters back and forth. That sounds like a great idea! For how long do you do that and I would imagine it might get to be quite the letter sending back and forth. When do you decide to start a new one?
Fabulous - thanks for the laugh you've just given me. I now have an image of a C-list celebrity being told they can't enter a club and yelling "don't you know who I am?" And I don't believe for one moment that you wont come back if only to read the responses to your post - and oh look, there you are, just you and me here at the moment.
I don't care who you are, or who you think you are. I care about the inmate that you are bombarding with mail without giving him a chance to respond if he wants to, and if he decided on the first thing you sent him that he'd rather not correspond with you, he must be getting pretty unnerved now after receiving another 9 items of mail. If you know so much about inmates and prisons, then you will know that his mental state will almost certainly have been affected by his incarceration so far, and you should also know that this is not all about you and what you want to achieve. It is your behaviour - the behaviour that you have described in your posts here on WAP - that indicates you are behaving like a stalker. I don't need to know anything else about you to see that.
Those who try to sail through life without negativity end up missing the important half of everything.
I think perhaps I did not express myself clearly. Perhaps what I should have said was that we exchange letters frequently. Maybe my accent gets in the way.
But there was one penpal with whom the same pieces of paper flew back and forward across the Pacific for twelve months or so. It started with a frivoulous questionnaire that I created - based on the [I]Proust Questionnaire[/I] which is a feature of "Vanity Fair" magazine - B answered it, and sent it back. I commented on his responses, and returned it. And so on and so forth. What began as a light-hearted set of questions resulted in us getting to know onw another rather more deeply.
Another penpal and I wrote a romantic detective novel together. I contributed the first chapter, he wrote the next, me the third, and so on and so forth, until we could allow the hero ond herone to walk towards the sunset; hand-in-hand.
I think telling her to slow down was sufficient. Of course, some of the forum members had to take it one step further, and call her a stalker. She was just enthusiastic. The whole point of the forum is to encourage and help those starting out, not to imply that they are somehow stupid and creepy.
Hope32: I hope you continue writing, and my only advice is, to maybe slow down and give the inmate some time to reply to you first.
I see no difference between Hope's actions and those of the guy that mountanddo has been having difficulties with. Call it what you want, the obsessive behaviour is the same, imo.
That guy with the weird teeth, is pursuing her after she said no. Hope32, is just sending a few letters, and I think Googling the inmate given that she knows a lot about him. I wouldn't calling it stalking at all. But my post wasn't about that, it was about the treatment of forum members.
I had to laugh at that. Let's hope THAT'S over!
I didn't call her a stalker, I just said that I might be a little freaked out by getting 10+ letters with perfume and all without having had the chance to respond. Hey, the guy might [I]love [/I]it, we don't know. I only responded to how I would feel. Maybe going through what I just did tainted my response. I sent off 3 responses to the ones I got and I do have to admit that I am struggling [I]not [/I]to write another one before they respond again. Perhaps he may feel bad and [I]obligated [/I]to write back simply due to the volume of mail he has gotten from her. Another thing is that I am not at all religous. Having someone write to me that they are praying for me would be a big turn off for me. *again, this is just ME*
She also has information that I would have no idea how she received it. How would anyone find out if someone had a cellmate? You can't get that by googling can you? I googled my penpals and only found documents from their trial and news clippings.
I am finding on this forum that you can't write anything that might be seen as negative without someone rushing in to protect the poster. Don't we all have our own minds here? Not everyone is going to agree with everything someone wrote. Hope wrote her response and then said she wasn't coming back. I would hope that she could of responded with something like "yeah, I see how he might see that as stalkesh behaviour but that was not my intention" instead of "YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHO I AM!, I'm leaving and never coming back". One tends to think when the reactions are that intense that there is some merit to it.
Just my :2cents:
[QUOTE=Silas Sydenham;1047752]I think perhaps I did not express myself clearly. Perhaps what I should have said was that we exchange letters frequently. Maybe my accent gets in the way.
But there was one penpal with whom the same pieces of paper flew back and forward across the Pacific for twelve months or so. It started with a frivoulous questionnaire that I created - based on the [I]Proust Questionnaire[/I] which is a feature of "Vanity Fair" magazine - B answered it, and sent it back. I commented on his responses, and returned it. And so on and so forth. What began as a light-hearted set of questions resulted in us getting to know onw another rather more deeply.
Another penpal and I wrote a romantic detective novel together. I contributed the first chapter, he wrote the next, me the third, and so on and so forth, until we could allow the hero ond herone to walk towards the sunset; hand-in-hand.[/QUOTE]
Both of these are great ideas! I think it would be fun to do something like write a short story with my pp. I have one that might like that I think. The questionaire is good too. What better way to get to know someone. I hope it is okay with you if I steal these ideas :). Someone posted somewhere that they sent a map back and forth to mark where they had been or lived. That might be a cool idea too. I would love to hear more ideas/things people have done with their pp.