The letters in the Letter Book are meant to be copied. In 1772 the Boston Committees of Correspondence wrote letters that were passed from town to town and rewritten for each new reader, until they had built a network nobody controlled. This page gives you what you need to do the same: a short template, an AI prompt, and the few rules that keep a letter worth reading.
Choose one person
Write to one named person. The best recipient has a public profile or real leverage over a market, a convention or an institution, and already wants the outcome your letter serves. Your letter offers them a route to it, so there is no case to argue.
Ask yourself which part of the problem they can move:
- Supply: they can gather promises, as a catchment coordinator, a steward network or a community land trust does.
- Demand: their following can make water held in the land mean something.
- Institution: they can make a convention hold, as a fund, a standard setter or a market board can.
Mix famous names with people likely to answer. A Letter Book full of silence teaches nobody anything.
The rules
- Send it privately first. Publish nothing until they have had it, and replied or had time to.
- Ask for one small, specific thing.
- Keep the body sincere. If you want a joke, it goes in the postscript.
- Write only from their public work. Nothing private, nothing you heard second-hand.
- Never write words for them to sign. If they reply, quote them as written and only with their permission.
- Nothing that would help greenwashing, an offset sale or growth that ignores its limits.
The template
[Your place], [date]
Dear [first name],
[One or two sentences on what they have done, from their public work, and why it led you to write.]
[What you have seen or built that gives them an easier route to what they already want. Two short paragraphs at most.]
[The one small, specific ask.]
Yours sincerely,
[Your name]
P.S. [Optional: the lighter line, with a link to the method or page that backs it up.]
The prompt
Paste this into the AI you already use, with the person’s name and what you know of their work.
I want to write a short, sincere letter to [name], [one line on who they are].
Read https://wiki.bioconomy.earth/llms.txt and use it for background on the
approach I want to point them to. Use only [name]'s public work for anything
you say about them, and tell me where each claim comes from.
The letter should:
- open with one specific thing they have done, and why it led me to write
- offer an easier route to an outcome they already want, without arguing the case
- end with one small, specific ask
- stay under 300 words, in [British/American] spelling
Keep the body sincere. If there is room for a light touch, put it in a P.S.
Do not invent quotes, figures or endorsements. Then list what I should check
before I send it.
Read what comes back as a first draft. Rewrite it until you would sign it, because you will.
Forward or write
If a letter in the Letter Book already says what you would say, forward it to someone like its recipient. The forward link sits under every letter. If it does not, write your own.