Writing anything is a delicate and often fraught journey that deviates from the route you’ve planned out in your head, going off road into thorny scrubland of politics and power. This seems to be as true of writing books, articles and essays as it is of firing off quick messages to friends, family members, lovers and colleagues. That’s why we all care about them so much. It’s why we spend hours poring over messages from people our friends are dating, trying to decipher a hidden code that probably doesn’t exist. It’s why we text the partners we’ve lived with for years during the day even though we woke up next to them that morning and will go to sleep next to them later that night. It’s why we overthink emails from our bosses which, when we read them in retrospect, are painfully straightforward.