This email is nonsense

And you don't even have to read it

Quick Note: I was a guest at Nicola Mostyn’s The Unstoppable Author yesterday, talking about how writers kinda can’t quit even when we want to. Check it out!

Dear Writer,

I was thinking about how many emails we all get, and how I can’t believe I actually write an email newsletter when I… like you, I am presuming… hate the ever-loving fuck out of email.

Here’s why Email is the Worst:

1. Like most of the internet, my inbox is a non-stop parade of people I don’t know who got my email off the dark web trying to sell me shit I neither need nor want.

2. When it’s not that, it’s someone notifying me that a bill is due for something I do need, but resent having to pay so fucking much to have.

3. If it’s work email, then it’s five people asking me a question I answered in the email they’re responding to, seven people asking me to do something that is definitively not my job, and 3,422 people who got my email off the dark web and/or LinkedIn, same difference, and are trying to sell me services targeted to an industry I do not work within.

4. The rest is a mixture of spam that got past the filter, newsletters that I did sign up for and would enjoy reading if I could find them in the midst of the deluge of bullshit, and the occasional acquaintances from way back who found me online and wanted to say hi, but after we say hi, we don’t really have anything to say because it’s been so long since we were friends and we’re really two different people now¹.

I am also one of those people who obsessively has to keep their inbox clean. I mean, inbox fucking zero. Or at the very least, no little red badges indicating unread emails. So that means that whenever the little email beep goes off… which is roughly a gazillion times a day… I need to go in and process the damn email, most of the time with a swipe to delete immediately.

Ohhhhh…. and that’s another thing… I hate the little red badges. I absolutely cannot stand when I’m watching an iPhone tutorial—which I do, a lot—and the person giving me advice is showing this shit:

I got this screenshot from a tutorial at Engadget. The battery is at 17%. Am I going to be taking advice from this person? NO.

To be fair, though… I get it. I mean, if you work for a place like Engadget, you must be getting so much email that it’s like that boulder chasing Indiana Jones through the cave. You can’t run forever and the cave never ends so… I get it. Eventually, the boulder gets you and it’s probably wisest not to fight it.

But still…. just turn the badges off before you take a tutorial screenshot, dude.

And charge your damn phone.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah.

Email is awful and yet I have a newsletter.

I think part of the reason I do this is because the newsletters I actually want to read are the only thing in my inbox that make it worth processing. I like the idea of fighting back against the capitalist banshees that have infested my inbox with a desperate, never ending screech of, BUY THIS BUY THIS BUY THIS SHIT THAT NO ONE NEEDS!

Oh, speaking of which…

<imagine background ad music here>

The Year of Writing Magically 2024 workshop is open for applications until December 16, and if you want to listen to the free pre-workshop workshop I gave last week, it’s up on the How Story Works podcast feed today!

<violently kill background ad music with a record scratch>

So, this week, as it’s Wear Your Stretchy Pants Week here in the United States, I’m going to give you all something to be grateful for… an email you don’t even have to read.

You’re welcome.

Everything,

L

1. Actually, I’m the person who does this. Every now and again, I’ll randomly think of someone I used to know and wonder how they’re doing, so I find them on the internet and be like, “OH MY GOD, HOW ARE YOU?” and they’ll be like “I’M FINE OH MY GOD HOW ARE YOU?” and then we tell each other how we are and don’t email again for another ten years or so. I’m that person. Hi, Seth, if you stumble over here after that email I sent you last week. :)