what are words for?
Friday, December 19th, 2008It’s a major deadline deadline day for the WingDangDoo. You’ll please excuse me for being less than enthusiastic about the writing ahead of me for the next 97 hours. What’s that? Only 8 hours in the work day? Oh. I guess it only feels like 97.
A new product launch!
Except… it’s not new. It’s recycled. And so are the words I use to describe it.
I dutifully write the copy, carefully timing my work so I send it to editing before the deadline.
There are only so many ways to describe what my product does. I recycle the words, discarding the ones that offend the people whose talents I attempt to describe.
“How can you say that I am a ______? I looked it up in the dictionary. Do you even know what that word means? Your use of that word is pejorative.”
Fine, I’ll find a new word.
A NEW WORD! I find it. I work it in. I sell it to the people whose talents I attempt to describe.Slowly, they buy it.
Shiny and new(ish), the words disappear from my screen. Attach. Click. Send.
Gone.
Until the next time we recycle a product. And the words.
