Placement of "now" in negative sentences

Question

I have no trouble with the placement of "now" in positive sentences. However, I am struggling with its placement in negative statements. I am going to make up three sentences with it.

1. I am not now cooking lunch for anyone.

2. I am not doing now what you want me to do.

3. I am not now singing to my friends my favorite songs written by my uncle.

Without "not", the sentences sound OK to me. However, the "not" tends to make them sound odd to me. Is "now" correctly placed in my sentences?
Please explain this.

Answer 1

I suppose there are plenty of ways to write and get across the message I believe you are trying to get across, but here is one of them.

Let's have a look at your first sentence:

"I am not now cooking lunch for anyone."

I think that you should place the 'now' at the beginning of the sentence, accompanied by a 'right' if you are looking to use the present tense.

So the corrected sentence will be:

Right now I am not cooking lunch for anyone.

This applies for your other two sentences as well.

"I am not doing now what you want me to do."

should be:

Right now I am not doing what you want me to do.

Lastly,

"I am not now singing to my friends my favorite songs written by my uncle."

Right now I am not singing to my friends my favourite songs written by my uncle.

Answer 2

First of all, I think the sentences would be improved if you moved the word now either to the beginning or to the very end:

(1) I am not cooking lunch for anyone now.

(2) I am not doing what you want me to do now.

(3) Now I am not singing to my friends my favorite songs written by my uncle.

However, the word now in such contexts has an ambiguity problem. Let's take your lunch sentence:

I am not cooking lunch for anyone now.

That sentence could be describing two situations:

• (a) You formally cooked lunch for people, but you're not doing that any more (perhaps you got a new job, for example)

• (b) You're not cooking lunch at the moment (you will be cooking lunch in an hour perhaps, or maybe you finished two hours ago, but as of right now, you are not cooking lunch for anyone).

So, you could get replace the word now and with a phrase that more accurately describes what you are trying to convey.

(a) I am not cooking lunch for anyone any longer.

(b) I am not cooking lunch for anyone at the moment.

So, for Sentence 2:

(a) Right now, I'm not doing what you want me to do. I'll get started on my chores in a minute.

Or:

(b) I'm no longer doing what you want me to do. I need to start living my own life for once.

I think you'll find phrases like no longer, any longer, right now, or at the moment may be easier to place in a sentence.