Short letters stand a better chance of being published.
No attachments, please. The Guardian Don't ask Jack Jack Schofield shows his usual Microsoft bias. But it's rather an expensive solution both in money and time. I recommend the excellent MacLink Plus set of translators from Dataviz, which can convert from lots of different file formats into AppleWorks format, and vice-versa. They also integrate very nicely into AppleWorks, appearing as options on the pop-up menus in the Open and Save File dialogs.