Get those pens a writin'

My suggestion that we should try and see how many bloggers can get letters published in the papers seems to have gone down well, so I guess I ought to suggest a date and a paper, right? In fact, because I'm so generous, I'm going to go for two papers just to boost the possibilities of some of us getting published.

So, I'm proposing that we try to get as many letters as possible in The Guardian and the Daily Mail on Thursday 17th July. Letters featured anywhere in the paper count, which is why I've gone for Thurday as that's when The Guardian has its Online supplement that regularly features blogs and blogging, so that should be inspiring for people who don't have any comments to make on the news. Plus, it gives you a few days to think up a letter in response to anything that features in this Thursday's Online. However, if you're aiming to get something in the main paper, you'll need to write it the day before. The Mail has about the same thing every day - usually one page of general letters, and one on a particular issue from a recent edition as well as various one-liner section and whatever their Notes and Queries rip off is called.

If you want examples of letters to The Guardian then they post them on the website - just click the 'Letters' bit on the main page to see today's. However, the Mail doesn't have any online, so here's a couple of examples:

There is no more foul an act of anatomical desecration than homosexuality. Abominable both in concept and in practice, the thought of a man remorselessly driving his penis into my dirty backside is an image that haunts me every night.

or

I'm fed up of hearing trendy liberals banging on about how it's 'okay' and 'cool' to be homosexual. Anyone who says that must be homosexual themselves - hardly an impartial position from which to approach the subject. As a committed heterosexual, I am better equipped to view the issue objectively - and it is obvious to me that homosexuality is wrong.

OK, they were actually from TV Go Home's Daily Mail Islander, rather than the real thing, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to include them. They might be inspiring to some people when trying to get themselves in that Daily Mail frame of mind.