Writer and puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal has a challenge for you: Write a letter every day of February, because why not.

It's not to bolster the flagging USPS, although those valiant souls could certainly use the help, but for the simple delight of getting a letter in the mail.

"When I write back, I find that I slow down and write differently than I do with an email," Kowal says in her blog entry. "Email is all about the now. Letters are different, because whatever I write needs to be something that will be relevant a week later to the person to whom I am writing. In some ways it forces me to think about time more because postal mail is slower. 'By the time you get this...' It is relaxing. It is intimate. It is both lasting and ephemeral."

Actually you're only committing to 24 mailings, since there's no delivery on Sundays or President's Day. You can make it anything you like as long as you physically mail it. She also challenges participants to write back to everyone who writes you (and, of course, those count as one of your mailed items).

Kowal, who won the Hugo for her short story "For Want of a Nail" and is a professional puppeteer and voice actor, recently took a month off from the Internet.

"During my vacation, I told people that they could correspond with me by paper letter," she said. "Some people did. Some people still are. Every letter delights me."

I'm considering it, despite my handwriting, which at first and second glance appears to have be the last spastic scratchings of a dying man anxious to reveal his murderer before he bleeds out. I embraced email and instant messaging the way professional chefs embraced electric blenders and shouty reality shows.

But there is something special about the written word. My wife and I still have all the sappy notes we wrote each other in high school (mine are in a notebook, in order, hers are in a sack, which tells you a lot about both of us). When my friend Dave joned the Navy I wrote him long, depraved, try-to-get-him-in-trouble letters on a regular basis, and he responded to let me know I hadn't yet succeeded. We exchanged news, jokes, short stories, cartoons, horrible poetry and whatever else occurred to us as we sat in front of our typewriters thousands of miles apart, and those letters are boxed up at my house now where they probably can't hurt anybody.

I have letters I've received from authors and artists I admired, cards from friends and family, bizarre things that someone I know thought worthwhile to shove into an envelope and send my way just to baffle or cheer me or, possibly, both.

And let's face it. Wouldn't it be nice to open the mailbox and get something besides a bill, a political mailer or a handful of glossy advertising for once?

So give it a shot. If you need some prompting, consider Postcrossing, an online postcard-swapping service that lets you sign up to get postcards from random people and places around the world. Sign up, get an address, send a card, and see what you get yourself. Repeat as desired.

Or consider Paperbackswap.com, where you can send out books you don't want any more and get credit to use toward free books you do, from other people. You pay shipping to send but not to receive, and the packaging prints out from your printer. An easy and cheap way to keep your library rotating.

You can write to soldiers through sites such as adoptaplatoon.org or amillionthanks.org or anysoldier.com, or find addresses to send letters and cards to sick kids through sites like hugsandhope.org.

Write a letter or send a card or a newspaper clipping. Surprise your loved one with a handmade card for no reason. Got a friend in the frozen north? Send 'em a pressed flower to a) brighten their day and b) remind them why Florida is better. Get in touch with old acquaintances without going through Facebook.

And if you get anything from me, I apologize in advance for my handwriting.