write without AI

write so honestly, curiously and playfully that no machine can replace your relationship with the craft.

This is just the beginning of an era where you are able to filter out what’s AI written and what’s not. Pretty soon, you will start forgetting the difference. The em dashes, three options in every sentence, it’s not x, it’s y format. All would blend.

AI will surpass them all. There will be no markers left for you to identify what’s AI and what’s not. Currently, thousands of books are getting published that are partially written by AI. In few years, that number will reach millions.

Now, you as a human, how will you stand out with your thoughts and writing?

In sports, there’s a concept of steroids. People ask people, “hey these muscles are natural or you juicing?”

Some will lie and sheepishly say, “Nah, man it’s all natural. These babies took hard work man!”

Some will say the truth that they are juicing, “Yeah man! You gottta do what you gotta do!”

Then there are ones, who are honest in their words and in their actions. They take a stand against steroids in public. They position themselves as someone who goes to the gym and eats right.

Fans feel connected to him and trust him.

Why? Because he tells them.

He shares his morning routine with them. He shares snaps of eating healthy. He creates an hour long video of exercising in the gym.

You can also take a stand in public that you write like a human to connect with a human. Your writings and stories come from your experiences and thought experimentation.

But for this, you will have to be honest with yourself first.

You will have to let go of the idea of trying to impress someone. To come across as an intellectual. When you are not trying to sound smart for someone else, you can feel free to do whatever the fuck you want.

And the moment you do whatever the fuck you want, you start writing bad pieces, experimental pieces, some good pieces thrown here and there.

It becomes a game that you like to play.

Richard Feynman’s childhood was filled with games he liked to play:

• He opened broken radios, traced the circuit and tried to think how current was flowing. He would then diagnose the problem & fix it. To him this was a game of playing detective.

• He built his own toys: Home alarm systems that scared his parents at night. A radio of his own, so he could listen to songs.

• He did math for fun. He created his own symbols. He would try to arrive at the formula instead of just mugging them up.

You can also make writing play for yourself.

(Mind you, games don’t always make you go happy go lucky. You can get frustrated at times, get beaten but the crux is, you are so deeply involved in the game that you don’t leave without figuring it out and moving to the next level.)

So, what can you do to make writing play & AI proof:

1. Spend time in nature

An hour a day outside, keeps the demons away.

Have atleast one day in the week where you are able to take out a few hours to just sit in the park & read something or draw something. Give a rest to your mind. Do things slowly. Read the passage twice or thrice to absorb it in.

Connect to yourself. How in tune you are with yourself is going to become your biggest advantage.

2. Read old books.

Time deletes all mediocrity. If you want to learn from the best writers of the world, you can do it by reading old books. Because they have survived the test of the time.

Be very very selective when picking books from the last 5 years. Most of them will become irrelevant.

Books are the source that teach you writing without you even knowing about it.

3. Learn how to break the rules.

The biggest advantage AI has over us is it’s amazing at following rules & plot structure. It’s trained on millions of stories, so it has analyzed how to write a good story technically.

But what if you break the rules. You write things that don’t fit into a template. You do things that haven’t been conventionally done and still come up with a good story?

4. Cherish what comes naturally to you while writing.

Trust yourself that you know better than others. If you always doubt yourself than where’s the fun in that?

Just don’t be rigid in your thoughts. Be playful. Don’t hesitate to change your thoughts when you resonate with something new. Humans are made up of contradictions. Why not just embrace it and move on.

Write pieces like, “I used to think this, now I think that.”

Let go of the ego that you are right.

(See contradictory thought: I began by saying: Trust yourself that you know better than others but ended with let go of the ego that you are right. There’s a subtle nuance between these two sentences. If you get it, you get it.)

5. Draw inspiration from your life experiences

You don’t necessarily have to tell your life story for this. You can just pick a emotion or a highlight from your day. Tune into what’s connect to you and then reflect that on paper.

I am slowly connecting with my 2023 version and all the versions before that who used to write about things I firmly believed in. The first time I was asked to write on “capital punishment” I was in 10th grade and I literally just thought on paper.

I had that play effect when writing that essay and it turned out to be one of my best pieces from that time.

6. Pay attention to language

Writing flowery language or writing stories hasn’t been my strong suit. I have tried writing Haiku for a year but dropped it later on. Right now in my essay, “The desire to be everything“ I followed the language of Sylvia Plath. I could feel a sense of poetry in the whole essay.

By paying attention to language, you are able to identify different writing styles. It becomes fun to know who’s writing DNA you are matching.

7. Write about complex & counterintuitive emotions

Why was Albert Camus was able to casually say, “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.”

That is such a strong line for a lot of people. Most people couldn’t fathom the fact how can someone be so nonchalant about their mother dying.

“Someone died. And you don’t feel any empathy. Nothing moves inside you? Why is that?”

But there were others who were comforted by the fact that they are not the only one being nonchalant about death.

We are in so much rush to make money from content creation. That neither we learn the craft, nor do we respect it. We just hang somewhere in the middle, looking at each other.. waiting for something to happen.

Move your butt and practice.

Thinking AI will do this, AI will do that will not help you. If you are so scared or feel useless that everything you want to do is being done by someone else or sooner or later AI will take over.

Then learn AI in depth.

Instead of running away. Go after whatever scares you. Move towards it. Because what the hell. This time won’t come back. This energy you have right now, won’t come back.

So fuck everything & write with abandonment.

Poitu Varen,
Akanksha