The Write Life magazine, which is on the App Store for iPads and iPhones. Laura’s idea utilises Futureme.org, a great service that allows you to write an email to yourself and have it delivered to your inbox at some point in the next 50 years. I’d just like to add the suggestion of doing this for one of your characters instead of yourself, and imagining the response of their future self to receiving the email at some random time in the future.

Of course, there’s no reason not to send an imaginary missive to your past self too…

What a great chance to write about something you’re going through right now, a challenge, a blessing; a hard job or a young love, and think about what your future self would think about it. Another way of thinking about it is, what will your future self want to say to the younger you?

Warm it Up!

1. Decide what event to write about, and which “future you” you want to send the email to. Do you want to read it six months from now, a year, five years, ten? You can choose to have the email delivered anytime in the next 50 years.

Work it out

2. Head to www.futureme.org/

3. Spend 10-15 minutes writing the letter. What do you want to say about what is happening right now, and perhaps where you hope to be when you read the email?

4. Be sure to choose an email address that you’re likely still to use in the future. Also check that futureme.org is whitelisted by your email provider so that it doesn’t land in your spam folder.

Cool it Down

5. Choose whether to make the letter private or ‘public, but anonymous’. The ‘public, but anonymous’ letters that have been delivered recently are published on this page, http://www.futureme.org/letters/recently_delivered?offset=0, and make for great reading.

6. Hit send!

Got an idea for a writing prompt you’d like to share? Send it to me at Judy(at)socket creative.com!

And if you write something prompted by this, please let me know. With your permission, I’d love to publish it on SkyLightRain.com.