My daughter kept a swap journal, which I think is a wonderful idea. She would write something, – a letter, a poem, a little story – and this was when she was in third or fourth grade. She would give the journal to her friend when she’d finished, and her friend would write something back, either a letter back, another poem, or something completely different; they didn’t have to follow up on what the person before had written, and then she’d give it back to my daughter. Each time, they’d keep the journal for three or four days. They kept that journal going for the entire school year.
So, somebody else was reading what my daughter had written, and I think that, for many people, that’s another reason to write. It is an act of communication. You want someone else to read what you’ve written.
