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‘Hate writing, love having written.’
This is a saying I used to subscribe to. Despite being a writer, and relying solely on writing to support myself and my family, I never quite enjoyed the ‘hard bit’. The middle bit. The journey. But I loved the destination, and that’s what drove me to keep getting back on the horse. Even though I’m suspect of horses. I’ve only ever ridden a horse once and I’m amazed my testicles survived with enough integrity to eventually bear children given it felt like they were the subject of one of those pneumatic press videos on YouTube. I once shot an ad with a bunch of horses and despite having a ‘Russian horse whisperer’ on set, a gust of wind freaked one out and it reared up and bolted towards the video village where I was watching the split and for a momentary second I thought I was about to be trampled to death. What a way to go. Found mushed into the turf and tangled in a set of headphones next to a shooting board and a packet of chips. I even once started a blog where I gave myself ridiculous and fun topics and premises to write about so I could try to enjoy it more. I called it ‘Writing Sucks’.
I understand that things are scary right now and our trade has probably never felt more under threat. And believe me, I’ve had the moments of panic and existential dread. Googling ‘jobs involving manual labour where you just come up with silly ideas’. Not a lot going on in that sector, unfortunately. But as AI has increasingly seeped into our lives and become more and more welded on as part of the process (I use it daily, and was even an early adopter, and it has made me lightning fast in terms of getting to answers) something I never expected to happen, has. I’m actually enjoying writing. The hard bit. The middle bit. The sitting down to an empty page and just letting it flow.
Interestingly, I’ve been reading a lot of posts by people saying the opposite. LinkedIn is full of folks saying that they’re starting to notice themselves ‘writing like AI’ because they ‘read/consume so much of it’. Offering warnings on what phrases and structures to avoid and em-dashes and rules of three and encouraging people to ‘read lots of old books so you don’t lose your natural style of writing’. It’s only a matter of time before one of them launches a ‘course’ from the driver’s seat of a rented Lamborghini on how to ‘not write like AI’ (that is actually worth $979 but for a limited time only are willing to give away for just $79 out of the goodness of their heart). I work in advertising/marketing, I’m pretty sure I consume just as much AI slop as anyone, but I don’t really resonate with this in the slightest. Or maybe I’m just oblivious, you guys have been reading my stuff for a while now, so you tell me. Do I sound like AI now?
And honestly? That’s the real shift. (Joking.)
The issue with the above is that it proposes that writing is a purely mechanical task. An inorganic system of pistons and cogs and pulleys. Cartridges that can be inserted into a motherboard to churn out repetitive tasks. A CPU that can become infected with an ‘AI virus’. And maybe that’s the problem in and of itself. If you’re feeling this way, maybe you were already behaving like a robot and you just didn’t know it.
"Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” - Red Smith
No matter how heavily I use AI in the creative process, I do not use it ‘to write’. To create a ‘first draft’ and then edit it. Or to ‘clean up’ my initial ramblings. Writing is thinking. It’s a stream of consciousness. It’s, as Red put it (or whoever, because the quote is attributed to a few people), opening a vein. When I write something, I still just sit down at a blank page and let it out. Because the mess is part of it. The mistakes are part of it. The unexpected turns and intrusive thoughts and weird insights that emerge throughout the journey are all part of it. You can always backtrack if you end up in a bog. Nothing you’re reading right now was planned or prompted and edited or cleaned up. It’s just what came.
“Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.” - Martin Scorsese
Whether it’s in the name of efficiency or speed or cost or the avoidance of discomfort, what it is now clear is that if you don’t embrace the process of writing - you’re fucked. Because you’re rendering yourself redundant. Anyone can have a surface level thought, or steal someone else’s, and regurgitate it again in the same format now. You might feel briefly more capable but the democratisation of bullshit will soon render yours much the same. My advice would be to launch head first into the hard bit like you never have before. Strengthen your writing muscles. Because you still have access to that same exo-suit as everyone else, and if a system failure takes it out for some reason, we’re all gonna be left to scrap for ourselves anyway. And what no one else will ever have is your point of view, your lived experiences, your sense of humour, your perspective, your way of expressing yourself, your twisted brain - that’s the knife in your pocket in the post-apocalyptic plains. (See, I never expected to end up using cyberpunk and Mad Max-esque analogies here but it’s just what vomited out and tbh it’s pretty badass. I’m also giving myself a bionic laser eye and cyberlegs that can jump really high. I don’t need them to write but they’re cool as hell. Also I have a Landspeeder like in Star Wars.)
Remain open to influences other than reading. Whether it’s books or AI slop. Watch films. Listen to music. Overhear conversations. Put on an Alan Watts lecture. Meditate. Look at art. Keep your antenna broad, and then trust your subconscious to filter and extract what’s important. Spitting out a ‘first draft’ and then editing it is not writing. It’s not thinking. It’s not you.
"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means." - Joan Didion
It’s a great time to be a writer, but only if you shut out the noise and just write.
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