8th August 2008
Bradlley Mckoy

Did you know that Americans buy 7.4 billion greeting cards in a year? And if you apply your calculator to the task, you will be one of Americans who buy 235 cards per second! Not to disparage the greeting card industry or anything, but you can make your own greeting cards, too.

You can make your cards more personalized, which definitely beats buying a store-bought card. Just get your reliable Cross pen and pencils, coloring materials and envelopes, plus a healthy dose of artistic inclination. As for writing the messages, here are a few helpful tips for you.

Write For a Specific Person

You have to express yourself - emotions, angst and passion included - and share yourself with the person you are making the card for. Though expressing yourself can be harder than most other activities, you have the advantage of writing and re-writing your thoughts on paper with your Cross pen.

Unlike the spoken word, the written word can be edited as many times as you like until you come up with the right words. You need to aim for the "right words" rather than the "perfect words" lest you sound too edited and artificial. And do not depend on your Cross pen to do the writing for you either! You have to work on it.

Also, you should take the "me to you" approach in writing your message. For example, writing "I am sorry for hurting you" is way better than "The situation was not in my control and for that, I apologize". You are asking for a personal apology, not giving a business explanation (which is better covered by a business letter)!

Develop Your Own Writing Style

You can either mimic your favorite greeting card writers' styles or you can develop your own. The latter is highly suggested for obvious reasons, originality and personalization among them.

Since most greeting cards are written in poetry, you can learn poetry, too. As the movie "Mr. Deeds" showed moviegoers, your first efforts might be funny to some and horrendous to others. But if you keep at it and inject real passion into your verses, you will eventually do it right. Just be sure to keep a handy-dandy paper and your dependable Cross pen to write your thoughts whenever inspiration (or Erato or Polyhymnia or Calliope, all Muses of poetry) strikes.

This begs the question of "to rhyme or not to rhyme?" Depending on your mood and mode, you can actually do both, so long as the emotion is there.

Write Tight

If you will look closely, off-the-rack greeting cards are written tightly. A specific emotion is expressed in a few words but they still pack in a wallop, which you should aim for. When you write tight, you are actually writing in a conventional manner, only very much shorter in content but not in substance.

In short, keep it sweet and short. (And do not include "stupid" because you have to give yourself slack; you are just starting out, after all.)

Who knows? Someday, you might be one of the authors of those 7.4 billion greeting cards!

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