On (not) finding the right words
The first journal I ever had was a ring-binder notebook with a mirrored yellow cover. Before I had achieved the dexterity to transfer words legibly onto its pages, I would sit in bed and narrate out loud the details of my day to my mum, who would faithfully scribe my account into the yellow journal. Later as a teenager, saying things became more difficult. Words seemed eternally on the tip of my tongue yet could never quite make the necessary leap into the audible realm where they had the chance to be met and understood. So in these mute years, my mum and I would write and exchange a journal, endearingly taking it in turns to write and leave the book on each other’s bed or doorstep each night. In this way, writing was a channel where things could be expressed plainly and honestly in a way they could not in speech.
Reflecting on my relationship to writing, it has always orbited around an attempt to express something more truthful. Whether in letters, journals or songs. To get at something honest. And yet this pursuit of ‘realness’ feels in constant conflict with the ability for the writer to endlessly edit and curate - to become the sole author of a predictable reality where everything is within their control, in contrast to the horrifying spontaneity of unformulated speech where words slop clumsily into the world - this impulsive quality of speech which perhaps makes it the truest expression. And yet writing provides a room away from the noise, where the writer can pause and reflect (requirements for eventual honesty to emerge?) and so from a safe distance, the writer sharpens their (linguistic) sword in order to eventually strike with more precision. Funnily I just realised that the word ’sword’ is only one letter away from ‘word’.
This makes me a copywriter who is sceptical of writing. Or perhaps I am drawn to writing precisely because of this suspicion, that it holds something both more true and untrue at the same time. It allows me to say things honestly that I might not otherwise be able to express and yet I question the effects of writing them, the need to carefully curate the words that I choose and the fear of them not coming out ‘right’. What is so bad about the words not coming out right? What am I so afraid of? A friend called me today because he said a text couldn’t express well enough the complexity of feelings in that moment - and over the phone the words indeed came out stuttered and unpolished, not ‘right’ by usual standards and yet they expressed exactly what they needed to. Disappointingly, writing doesn’t have the same generosity towards awkwardness and messiness.
Growing up it was so important for me that the words I chose were the right ones so I could be understood and today, maybe unsurprisingly, it’s my job to help other people find the right words. But this fidelity to correctness has also made me so appreciative of moments when things are not correct. When we don’t manage to find the right words, when we try, in vain, and try anyway. When the words are raw and messy and human. When they are unfiltered. I constantly question the ability (or perhaps just my ability) to write words that capture this same realness, the same immediacy of experience without becoming forced or over-manicured with editing. This difficulty is what makes writing so frustrating at times but I think thats what keeps me interested and why I keep doing it.
When I write for clients, I aim for the texts to be professional, clean and legible, and at the same time, in this age where AI overpolishes and sterilises almost everything, trying to still leave in a bit of grit, some traces of life, feels all the more needed.