The Art of the Email

Jeannie here: your friendly, frazzled CMO of Thinklings. I'm also a literary consultant, and I've been in the biz for more than a decade and a half. This post was pulled from my blog.

I've always enjoyed writing letters. However, with the advent of modern technology, letter writing has fallen out of fashion. At least, that's what you'd think. While we may not use the post office to mail letters like we used to, there are modern heirs to the letter, but they've been co-opted . . . by impatience. The main heir would be email. I love email. Well, I love writing a good email letter. I do this with my editor Deborah and proofreader Sarah. They are both great writers, and we enjoy sending each other long, thought-out emails with interesting ideas. Same with my writer friend Emma who lives in Germany.

But, like I said, these heirs have been ruined by instant-gratification culture.

I was reading the new book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, and while I liked 95% of his thoughts, I was appalled by the way he downed email. In a nutshell (and sorry, Cal, I know this doesn't really do justice to your thoughts), you can't have real, meaningful connection through email or digital interactions. I wanted to throw the book at the wall when he said that email was bad, and then in the next sentence, he said computer coding was an acceptable digital-minimalist activity. He's a computer-science professor, so of course his favorite digital activity was okay. But the writer's favorite computer activity, emailing, was forbidden as junk.

Recent circumstances (okay, maybe in the last couple of years it's been getting worse), though, have made me rethink Newport's pronouncement. Maybe he has a point.

Why?

Because 99.9% of people don't write long, letter-like emails like Deborah and I do. While I have never met Deborah in person, and have only actually talked to her on Skype, I count her one of my very good friends. Until this last year, our relationship has been completely digitally written. But if I am in trouble, I can count on her to help. Because she has, many times before.

Back when I was in college (you know, in the Stone Age . . . okay, the Ethernet/phone-card age), the business standard for responding to business email was 24–48 business hours. It's what I've been working with since I began my foray into business. If you send me an email at 4 p.m. Friday (which is when I clock out of work for the day), I assume that I have until Monday night / Tuesday morning to respond to you. Some emails can be responded to quickly, and I try to do that. Other ones that require me to look at something, like a Word document, take longer.

I've been informed that the standard is 12 hours now. And many people expect a reply within 6 hours. Not 12 business hours. Just 12 hours. So, if someone sends me an email at 5 p.m. on Friday, I'm expected to respond by 5 a.m. Saturday. If this is the email that Newport was dismissing, I'm with him. Not only does this need for immediate gratification harm interpersonal relationships, but it also stresses me out. Me and the rest of America. Why is anxiety at an all-time high? I know politics can play some part. However, since removing the Facebook from my phone, politics doesn't stress me out anymore. I also made a lot of other changes.

Y'all . . . I have a family. I have a life. I am not here to answer your emails in an hour whenever you send them. I am not obligated to tell you what I am doing every minute of the day so you know why I'm not responding. I work with anywhere from 5–20 people a week. I cannot send out emails to all of them to say, "I am having a date night with my husband, so I will be out of contact for the next 3 hours." Or "It's my kid's birthday party today and I won't be responding to anything for 5 hours." I'm told many freelancers do this. Why?!

If there was one isolated event, I'd call that person a jerk, but it's gotten so bad that I had to make a lot of changes in the way I do things with regard to email (and a few other digital things, which is why I was reading Digital Minimalism in the first place). First, I hired a personal assistant. Pretty much her sole job is to answer my email. And because I realize she needs to sleep, she still won't respond to my email within an hour. Secondly, I have set an auto-responder that says, "Thank you for contacting me. My office hours are from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. M–F, and my assistant checks and responds to my email at 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. Please allow 12–24 hours for general responses, and up to 48 hours for more in-depth needs."

For Thinklings, we have set up a 3- to 4-week response time for submissions. It takes time for us to fully consider what you have sent us. And we have so many emails from so many talented writers. If you keep badgering us, Ali, my assistant, who has been upgraded to managing editor and communications queen bee, will black-list you faster than you can say "hobbit."

Now, I never really deal with emergencies. Once in a while someone will need a project completed within a week, but even that can wait for 24 hours. There is no need for your editor / writing teacher / literary guru to respond in 1 hour every time. Some people who deal with emergencies will put their emergency number in their email. I also took email off my phone. Finally, I created a new personal email address that only those people to whom I write letters have.

So, I'm sorry I almost threw your book against the wall, Cal Newport. You were right . . . mostly. I still maintain some people can use email in place of personal letters as a way to foster long-distance relationships. I mean, whose grandparents didn't write long love letters to each other in the war, and then fall madly in love and live happily ever after?

How long do you take to respond to email? How do you deal with the stress of having to be reached 24/7 for work? I'd also be interested in hearing your horror stories in the comments.
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Jeannie Ingraham

Jeannie lives in a magic lamp with a dragon and a pirate. Her author/editor/consultant website is www.jeannieingraham.com.

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