Language is a magnificent, unruly suitcase: large enough to carry epics, love letters, recipes, lawsuits, and an emotionally devastating text that says only “k.” As writers, we’re expected to pack meaning neatly, though language has no compartments and regularly spills out in public.
Take “fine.” It can mean excellent, acceptable, punished, or quietly furious while smiling through dinner. I want words to be precise, but words have other plans. They wander off, change clothes, acquire new meanings, and return without permission. “Viral” left the doctor’s office for marketing. “Content” became an endless conveyor belt of clips, captions, and people gesturing at floating text. “Product”, once describing something specific, now seems to include anything used to cleanse, soften, condition, or exfoliate nearly every inch of the body.
New media speeds up the chaos. A phrase can be invented at breakfast, repeated ironically by lunch, become a meme by dinner, and be embarrassing by morning. Choosing language that will last can feel like labeling fish in a river: everything is moving, including the definition of “fish.” Emojis are not helping.
I also worry about readers. Reading requires focus, patience, imagination, and the willingness to stay with an idea until it becomes clear—or at least interestingly complicated. But our world is designed to divide attention into tiny, profitable pieces. A podcast offers music, movement, voices, and the promise of an answer before the next stoplight. A paragraph offers silence. It asks readers to imagine the voices, colors, pacing, and patience.
We are all curators now, sorting through more words than anyone could read, plus videos, alerts, headlines, advertisements, and opinions delivered like fire alarms. Deciding what deserves our attention is exhausting. Deciding what is factual is harder still. “Who do you believe—me or your lying eyes?” once suggested that experience was evidence. Today, even our eyes may need fact-checking. Discerning reality has become both a scientific field and a growing industry.
I have no simple solution. I want to preserve language’s beauty, music, ambiguity, and fullness without leaving readers outside my sentences holding a map, a flashlight, and a snack. My goal is not to defeat distraction or make language perfectly precise. It is to keep seeking balance: clear without becoming flat, rich without becoming exhausting, and honest enough that a reader chooses, for a little while, to stay. The gift of attention is the greatest compliment a writer can receive.