I won’t lie. I felt my confidence shake and a growing identity crisis burning in my heart as I read various articles about ChatGPT back in December. From speculation to observations, some of the messages that rocked me were how writing appears to become obsolete. Let me reframe: writing was being made more “efficient” with the likes of ChatGPT and having writers was a lot less important because there was a machine to do the work.
I didn’t like how that made me feel. It made me feel expendable and easily replaced. While I don’t write as my sole income and for much of my life it has been an outlet, I felt like something was being taken from me. What chance did I have if there was a machine to regurgitate text at a more efficient rate than an ordinary human like myself? Stories like this one from Forbes or an earlier article from February 2023 where Clarksworld had to shut down submissions after an influx of AI-generated submissions don’t bode well either. As a result, I’m forcing myself to rethink my relationship with writing. Again.
I have written in the past about how writing has been an important part of my life:
In fact, for the past few years, I’ve been struggling to reconnect to that original spark that made me love writing to begin with. There was some emotional disconnect in addition to some things I needed to work through, but this past year, I was able to reconnect to that original inspiration.
I don’t have the money to go back and pursue a degree in writing, but there’s a wonderful local nonprofit that offers writing classes throughout the year. I had taken classes in the past, but in 2021, things just became too much with life and work balance. I decided to sign up for a science fiction and writing class this spring. Science fiction and fantasy were what made me write to begin with. For the first time in two years, I found myself writing. I managed an opening chapter to a longer work I hope to continue to work on. I also managed to start a short story I need to finish. This was more writing I…
