Discovering Yourself

I was having lunch a few months ago with a couple friends, one of whom, Tony, has been writing professionally for his most adult life, the other, Leo, has been wanting to write professionally since I met him in a fiction writing class 20 years ago. It wasn’t long before we landed on the topic of AI. Leo was interested in it. You can use it to generate ideas, he explained. It gives you a kind of first draft that you can then edit and refine. Tony was curious in an academic way, but would probably be happy enough working on a Remington typewriter. I was more emphatic. No writer, I said, should be going anywhere near it. What’s the point? It would be like building a robot to make love to your wife.

Admittedly, I’d been reading some gloomy articles about the grotesque potential for this technology, often describing a world where human authors become obsolete. I was reminded, however, of how Socrates was supposedly suspicious of this whole “writing thing.” He, who was famous for his public discourse, feared it would lead to people never talking to each other ever again. Those fears, like all apocalyptic predictions, never came true. Quite the opposite I would say.

After lunch, Tony and I bid Leo goodbye, and wandered into a chocolates store to get our wives some truffles. Standing outside with our little packages of sweetness, Tony talked about his latest novel, which sounded very interesting. He shrugged when I told him so. “We’ll see how it goes,” he said. Then he turned to me. “Leo’s a really good writer, but he never finishes anything. Why do think that is?”

I recounted sitting with Leo over beers one night as he tried to tell me the entire plot for his half-written novel. I had told him he needed stop talking and thinking about it and finish a draft of the thing. You never know what the real story is until you get to the end. Leo was uninterested in my advice at the time, as I suspected he would be now. Either you embrace the discovery or you don’t, I told Tony. He shrugged again. “We’ll see. Maybe he’ll finish the next one.”

We said goodbye and I headed for my car. I was still a little irked by all the talk of AI, but I had to admit there was nothing to be done about it. The genie was out of the bottle and there was no putting it back in. I didn’t know what would come of it, but I did know I still enjoyed choosing all my own words. I’d continue doing so even if some software could do it better. You may have to get to the end to discover what a story’s actually about, but the finishing isn’t the point. Only the choosing matters, and the moment you forget that, you’ve lost track of what truly makes you human.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com