My Inbox is a Surprising Source of Writing Inspiration

How marketing emails have sparked story ideas

When I first started writing again after my post-MFA hiatus, it felt like I couldn’t catch up to my ideas fast enough. There were so many things I hadn’t written about yet, since I hadn’t written much at all for nearly two years.

But like any writer, I don’t always wake up full of exciting new ideas about what to write. This has been especially true over the past several months, some of the busiest and most stressful I had in my career in Student Affairs.

And then, I began to notice a source of inspiration I hadn’t considered before — my inbox.

Let me get something out of the way right now. I love emails. And I get a lot of them. I am more than happy to sift through a ton of marketing emails every day, so I’m not super stingy about giving out my email address. There’s something soothing about receiving and deleting emails to me. Maybe my therapist and I need to unpack that?

Anyway, the point is, I get a lot of marketing emails from basically every place I’ve ever shopped and quite a few that I haven’t. Lately, I’ve noticed a trend with these email subject lines and their ever-increasing attempts to snag a few extra seconds of attention. They like to point out that it’s National X Day or some other great reason we definitely need to order pizza or planner stickers or more candles to hide in the upstairs closet because #selfcare.

Recently, I got an email from a pizza chain that my husband and I frequent, proclaiming that it was National Pizza Week. Wait a minute, I thought. I like pizza! I’ve eaten a lot of pizza, in a lot of places, throughout my life. I bet I could write an essay about some key memories related to pizza! This little ditty was born:

As a side note, we did not end up going to said establishment for National Pizza Week. Sorry about that, [redacted].

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