If you have letters from a significant relationship with a friend, lover, spouse, child, relative, colleague or mentor, take them out, put them in chronological order and read through them. Imagine writing an essay, poems or memoir chapters "between the letters." Choose a few of the letters that you feel inspire you to write about what was going on during the time of the letters. Start your writing and then include a passage or more from one of the letters you have chosen. Then return to your own writing and again include a passage from a later letter. Keep interspersing your writing and excerpts of letters until you feel you have told a story.

If you have wanted to do something with a collection of letters you have saved or if you have wanted to write about particular people or periods of time in your life, Ann Patchett's book will provide a useful strategy for finding your way into the time period you have in mind.

If you don't have letters to use as the bones to hang your writing on, you might start by writing letters to the person you want to write about or to one you knew during the time you want to write about. Address this person, whether he or she is alive or dead, with a play on the name or a pet name. Be poetic in the way that Lucy was and let the salutations evoke what the person meant to you. Tell your heart as it was during the time you are writing about. Write another letter about another part of the time you knew that person. Do this until you feel you have enough letters to cover the time span you want to write about. Then write "between the letters."

I imagine that whether you write between passages from letters sent to you or between passages in letters you create now, you will tell a full and focused story. You will definitely get a good taste of how this can work by reading Ann Pachett's tender and wonderful memoir, Truth and Beauty.