writing as becoming
Why bother to write?
A few different reasons :
- You like the idea of being a writer
- You want to think through an idea on your own
- You are being forced to write for school/university
- You enjoy the process of writing, creating fictional worlds, or delving into history or your own journal
- You want to persuade or argue a point - although nowadays, given everyone is on youtube/tiktok, you’ll reach far more people that way than through writing (which is a huge problem )
These are all valid reasons. I think I’ve been each of these people in the list at some point in my life.
But I’d like to propose there is a more crucial function that writing plays. That of becoming.
Essentially, to write down a set of ideas, words, stories, memes - you have to become the kind of person who would think those ideas, use those words, live those stories and believe in those memes.
For example, only you could provide the unique human experience and lens to whatever you have written. And you are the primary person who is transformed by creating it. If you write publicly and with a mixture of talent and luck, you can also get other people to read it and hopefully transform them too.
Joan Didion wrote :
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means”
I would add to Didion, that in writing it down, knowing what I’m thinking, seeing, feeling, I am transformed into the kind of person who knows what they are thinking, knowing and feeling. It’s meta.
I could get an LLM to write this argument out. But I won’t be transformed in the process. This is what LLM-aided writing misses. You’re not thinking the thoughts, having the opinions, putting down your own voice and stories, hence you are not changed.
It might be fine to use an LLM if you are being forced to write for school, or you are writing to persuade or to ‘churn out content’. But in doing so, you miss out on a tremendous opportunity to explore your psyche.
You miss out the opportunity to be transformed.