Start with the small true thing.

From the desk, on a quiet Sunday

The hardest letters are often the ones I have postponed until I have news. By the time anything qualifies, the page seems to require an account of the whole intervening season. I avoid this trap by beginning with something very small. Yesterday it was the green inside a broad bean pod. That was enough to open the door.

I write the first paragraph without deciding what the letter is about. A remembered walk may lead to a question about someone’s garden; a cooking mishap may lead to the story of a borrowed pan. The connection does not need to be clever. It only needs to be clear enough that the reader can follow me without doing extra work.

After the draft, I look for the sentence that sounds like a report. There is usually one. It lists what happened but offers no glimpse of how the day felt. Replacing it with a single observed detail makes the letter warmer and often shorter. A chipped blue cup can carry more of a visit than an entire itinerary.

I finish with a question I actually want answered. “How is the balcony plant?” is better than a vague request for every piece of news. Then I leave the letter alone while I make tea and read it once more before folding. The final check is simple: does it sound like me talking to this particular person, with enough time to listen?