Angela Ensminger & Keely Chace

Experts in written communication

Note-writing experts

Personal notes are important in building and maintaining relationships – whether family, friends or colleagues. But writing a great note can be pretty darned tough to do, especially in today’s busy, time-crunched world. While it’s often easy to get started, “Dear…” , you can find a blank piece of paper staring back at you in short order. And that can be pretty intimidating – until now.

On a Personal Note: A Guide to Writing Notes with Style authors Angela Ensminger and Keely Chace offer a casual-but-correct, you-can-do-it-in-six-easy-steps approach to writing notes for any occasion. From thank you to sympathy and from birthday to just because, On a Personal Note guides you through the basics and on to writing notes with personality and style.

In addition to its six-step approach, it includes idea-starting questions, key words and phrases, a comprehensive range of sample notes and much more to really get you – and keep you – going. With wit, fun, casual instruction and lots of good information, On a Personal Note turns the tough part of note writing into the creative and enjoyable heart of note writing.

Keely Chace

Keely Chace was always a wordsmith, but rarely a note writer. In fact, if anyone had told a younger Keely that she would one day author a book about note writing, she would have laughed. Or at least thought the notion a little odd. She was too busy enjoying life in rural Kansas and her lifelong pastimes – reading and obsessing over her thighs. She would have penned a sonnet before a thank-you note any day. But things can change… and they did.

After getting married and later having a daughter, Keely learned a thing or two about writing great notes. From “Thanks for the blender!” to “Olivia loves the swing!”, Keely cranked out note after note – even though her notes were often decorated with strained peas. And this book is filled with Keely’s hard-won lessons in note writing.

When not writing Mother’s Day verse or a happy wish for a birthday card, Keely, a senior Hallmark writer, can be found tackling endless fix-up projects at home in Kansas City with her husband, Jason, and teaching her daughter Olivia, now 2 how to write the alphabet… writing great notes will have to wait a couple years.

Angela Ensminger

Despite her mother’s best attempts to teach her the importance of written correspondence, Angela Ensminger never had much time to write notes when she was younger. With jobs as varied as Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco to travel writer in New York, she was always on the go... and who could figure the postage anyway.

Then she moved to Kansas City, fell in love, and went and got married on a beach. But the honeymoon was over pretty quickly when she felt like she had been enrolled in post-wedding note-writing boot camp with hundreds of wedding thank you notes due to family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, you get the point... So figuring writing all those notes couldn't be harder than learning to speak Berber, she plunged in pen-first and realized there was something to this note-writing thing, after all. And when it was all said and done she thought that maybe someone else would like to know how to do this, too. Thus, this book was born.

When not catching up on note writing, Angela is an editorial director for Hallmark and can be found hanging out at home in Kansas City with her husband Aaron and their herd of cats.