Gmail and writing

I like gmail. Gmail is so flexible. With gmail, you can have multiply inboxes so one will show only unread mail and one will show everything in inbox. You can put color-coded stars so you know which mail is most important to read. You can label mails so they automatically go to separate folders. You can see youtube videos and picasa photos using gmail. If your friend sent you an mp3 via email, you can listen to it right away with gmail. Plus, it never runs out of space for you! You can play the old snake game on it even.

You can also chat with gmail. That's how I chat with my Mom from Canada. My little sister, Erin, happens to have gmail and when she's online, we chat.

There's also a nifty Search field so you can find the email you want to read just by putting in a keyword. You can also filter out unwanted email. Plus, all replies to mail you send are in one single thread, like when you post in online newsgroups.

Once I got this great idea for a story loosely based on gmail. I was much younger then. I made the mistake of telling my friend my story idea. The reason I told was because I wanted my ego stroked. I wanted my friend to say, "That's a great idea for a story! You really are a writer."

Instead, my friend shot down the idea with one well-aimed remark: "Google will sue if you use their trademark in your story."

That story, until now, has remain unwritten.

There's so many other great features in gmail but there's also the option of setting it to "Basic HTML." That's gmail stripped down to the very basics. It's how it looked like when it began years ago. (I was one of the very few who was sent an invitation by a friend to start a gmail account when it was still on Beta. Back then, you had to be invited to get a gmail account. There was a sense of exclusivity to it. Now it's free and popular, although not as popular as yahoomail. A lot of my friends stick with yahoo.)

When you set gmail to basic html mode, you temporarily lose the chat feature and many other add-ons you may have added. That's okay. You can always set it back to "standard mode." But sometimes I like it pretty basic. You send and receive email, that's it.

Writing should be like that. Basic. Just baring one's essential self onto paper. "This is who I am, really..." When stripped of ego, writing can be very powerful. Then, no one has to say "You're such a great writer!" for you to feel like one. You simply write.

The act of writing makes you a writer.