I’ve
heard a lot of talk recently about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and how new apps
recently released can write English papers and even books. “It’s the way of the
future!” is what we’re hearing proclaimed, with some suggesting that “anyone”
will be able to write a book simply by telling the AI software what they want.
Yeah. Right. Just as we were told twenty years ago that books would soon be obsolete
because we’d all have Kindles (or similar digital readers), which would do away
with paper books forever.
Yeah. Good thing I didn’t hold my breath for that to happen.
If you’re a writer who is sweating this stuff, please stop. Your craft is safe. Trust me. If it helps, consider what I wrote some years ago as a submission to a “Flash” contest for nonfiction. Maybe it will help. Here ya go:
(Prompt: Write 250 words on why writing is a mystery.)
Why is writing a mystery to me? Because when Shakespeare wanted Hamlet to express the depth of his depression, he could have written his line as, “Man, I’m just so sad about it all.” Instead, he wrote, “O God, God, how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of the world.” And when Milton described the domain of Satan as “darkness visible,” he reached for a phrase that had never been used before… and it worked for generations to come, as did Frost’s choice of the road “less traveled by” and Whitman’s cry of “O Captain, my Captain!” Writing is a mystery to me because we cannot resolve scientifically—even with all our super-technology—why one particular word order is more pleasing, more poignant, more profound than another. Nor can a machine, given every dictionary entry known to the language, replicate the creativity, the subtle dance with words that a writer produces with a simple pen and paper. Writing is a mystery to be because a craftsman with words can so set the stage that two words may bring us to tears… or to our knees:
“Hey, Boo.”
“Jesus wept.”
Writing is a mystery to me because when I write, I become enthralled, and when I emerge, finally, there lies my soul upon the paper—for all the world to see.
