The Blessings of E-Mail

I consider e-mail to be a great blessing in my life. (I suspect that my husband, when wading through 3,452 business e-mails, might not feel so warm and fuzzy toward it, but I love it).

E-mail allows my family to remain close in a way that would have been impossible in pre-Internet days. My parents and two brothers live in Utah, I live in California, one sister is in Arizona, one is in Pennsylvania and one is in Virginia. Without e-mail, we’d still have the phone and the post office—but how often would we actually sit down, write a whole letter, print six copies and mail them out (in an actual envelope with one of those square, sticky things . . . what are they called again? Oh yeah—stamps). And phone calls are wonderful, but are usually between two parties, not the whole gang. E-mail can be a group conversation. Rather than long letters sent only occasionally, we can fire back little messages and updates and encouragements and pictures on a frequent basis and get rapid responses. We can cheer each other on and support each other through the rough times. Because of e-mail, I got a peek at the darling Halloween ghosts my sister-in-law in Utah created out of pillowcases and hung in her front yard. I know that my almost-two-year-old nephew in Virginia is having a bad morning—major tantrum when my sister wouldn’t let him have chips for breakfast (the nerve!). And despite not seeing my nieces and nephews in person for up to two years at a time, I can watch them grow up in pictures. When my family gets together at our family reunions, we’re not strangers—we’ve been sharing our lives with each other via e-mail.

E-mail has also opened the door for me to become part of the vibrant and incredibly supportive LDS writing community and to make new and dear friends—such as the wonderful ladies of the V-Formation. If it weren't for e-mail, I'd have little contact with the LDS writing community, and I'd have nothing resembling the fantastic support network that I enjoy at the click of keyboard.

I also love e-mail for practical reasons. Administrative/planning issues that would have once taken a jillion phone calls to organize can be dealt with through a few e-mails sent to multiple parties. And e-mail makes being a writer much easier. A decade ago when I wanted feedback on a manuscript, I printed the manuscript, put it in a binder, packed it in a box, took it to the post office and paid to ship it my sister out of state. Now, when I want to send a manuscript to test readers, this involves clicking “attach file” and “send.” Send it next door or send it to Germany, it’s a snap either way. I can get multiple reads on the manuscript without spending a penny for postage or ink cartridges. Love it. Then when it comes time to submit a manuscript to my publisher, it’s the same process—a few clicks and it’s there, with no more fussing over manuscript boxes and printed pages and postage.

The problem I have with e-mail is that I’m addicted. I remember learning that intermittent reinforcement—where you don’t get the prize every time you push the button, but sometimes you do and you never know when it will be—is the most powerful type of behavior reinforcement. E-mail is serious intermittent reinforcement. Even if I just checked my e-mail three minutes ago, there might be something new there. It might just be Amazon.com ads, but it might be a fun e-mail from my mom, an interesting comment posted on a writers' line, or a message from my editor regarding my new manuscript. No way to know unless I check! Sometimes I try to turn my e-mail off while I work, but then when my mind wanders, I think hmm, maybe I’ll open it back up just to see if there’s anything interesting . . .