Everything Seems So Tainted Now...

It's funny how quickly one project can make you start seeing other things in a new light.

For example, I'm chugging away on this novel writing project, trying to get to 50,000 words by November 30 (about 18,600 so far), and today while writing an email, I had to remind myself that more words was not necessarily crucial in that context.

Because when you're aiming for a word count, all your normal habits of trying to be concise and find just the one right word for something go right out the window. Maybe normally I would say "unlikely," which is nice and to the point, but for NaNoWriMo, "not very likely" is much better. Three times as good, in fact!

So I was basically looking for the long way to say something to someone in a business email, which is not normally the recommended approach. My work emails tend to be probably longer than strictly necessary or desirable anyway, because I always want to explain everything in great detail, the better to avoid having to send another email later.

Fend off follow-up questions by smothering the person with information the first time, that's what I say.

It may not always be perfect for work, but it's an advantage in unreadable-novel-writing.