My husband and I are moving from our city townhouse to a suburban house-house in slow motion over the next few months, so anticipate a lot of posts over the next several weeks that are pretty much based on the things that I find as we pack up. Like today's.

Many years ago, when I was fresh out of college, I sent then-AV Club writer Nathan Rabin what I think you could call a fan email, because I had enjoyed reading his reviews and articles for awhile. To my surprise and enjoyment he wrote back a nice email, and we struck up a correspondence that became a friendship that's lasted until today and I hope will continue for a long time unless we have some sort of epic falling out. (But assuming that doesn't happen, you can see him as one of the many wonderful performers at the Funny Ha-Ha tenth anniversary next month.) Anyway, in our early days of correspondence, I pestered him for advice on freelance writing. He wrote back and I printed up his response and pinned it to my bulletin board in my first apartment. It survived two moves after that but now I've decided to let it live on electronically. As you can tell, this advice is a bit dated, as several of the publications mentioned no longer exist, but I still think the advice is still pretty sound, if maybe a tiny bit dispiriting (but maybe that's good for scaring off the faint of heart.) I would like to add a #6, which is to be a good correspondent and reach out to writers you admire, because you never know if they'll have advice for you or at least turn out to be a good friend.