Recap of the inaugural Living Out Loud project: an Open Love Letter

Well, 5pm came and went on Sunday and I call this first project a success. Sure it would have been great if there were 50 entries, but that might have overwhelmed me. All told there were six entries plus my own. I'll list them below with links. Ben's Love Letter to his wife Megan My favorite part of his letter was the line that "the very act of writing this letter gives me a feeling of warmth." Me too, Ben.

Megan's Open Love Letter to my Son This entry made me cry. I haven't gotten to meet Ace in person yet, but I feel for her frustration at not really understanding what goes on in his head but wanting more than anything to be on his team.

K's Sometimes things don't turn out the way we want I knew K was a good writer, but this really blew me away. I'm now going to impatiently stomp my feet until she creates a blog and keeps writing. Feel free to comment to her on the page with her entry.

Liz's Love Letter - of Sorts The fact that Liz participated in general meant a lot to me. She doesn't have a blog but wrote hers out longhand and then transcribed it into an email to send to me. I'm honored to host it for her. She reached out to so many deserving people. Again, feel free to comment to her on the page with her entry.

Kim's Dear Mom I have known Kim and her mom for many years and this also brought tears to my eyes. Kim and I talked at length on Friday night about all kinds of things and one subject was that we both talk about our dads a lot more than our moms online. I think this letter was a fine tribute to a not often mentioned force in her life.

Rich's Love means never having to make a savings throw Rich told me once that his teacher gave the class an assignment to write a letter to their favorite author. I think the teacher hoped to mail them away and get responses, thereby encouraging reading. Rich wrote this long tribute to JRR Tolkein and his teacher had to explain that Tolkein was dead. Rich was crushed. I'm glad he could continue his pattern of writing letters to dead men. I'm also not upset that Rich decided to write a letter to a gaming nerd instead of me because there are countless things he does for me that show me he loves me every day, the majority of which would earn him a restraining order if he tried them on famous authors.

Lastly, my contribution was in the form of an Open Love Letter to my Husband. It's no secret that I'm quite fond of Rich, but I wanted to try to count a few of the reasons why.

I hope that you all enjoy these letters that everyone wrote. It was a lot of fun for me personally. While it wasn't necessarily about any prize, I did want the opportunity to pick out one entry with a reward for the hard work. I'm pleased to say that K will receive a Flickr pro account for one year as thanks.

Thank you so much for participating, either by submitting an entry, pondering what you might like to write one day or just enjoying what others wrote. Now to decide what our project will be for this month!