The Joy and Perils of Writing Passionately, Part 2: Subject Matter

AI affords people endless opportunities to read and write about it. Now that everyone else has had their say, I feel like weighing in…but in line with my vocation as an editor, I offer my observations not so much on AI as on why we write, how we write, and the sort of impact we have in the cacophonous auditorium of human communication (as it happens, today I do also have some observations to share about AI as it relates to artists).

Last week we talked about tone: how you sound in your writing. Read about that here. Today we’re going to talk about subject matter: what you write about, and how this, like tone, affects your connection with readers.

Pattern Two: Writing to Oneself and Forgetting about the Reader

Key observation: Many essays and forum comments about AI write to the author’s concerns rather than those of the reader.

This is part of the reason why pattern one (writing with a polemical tone; see last week) exists. Once again it’s complicated, because we could easily add to the axiom “Write what you know,” the rider “and what you care about.”

So off the bat, I’ll clarify that I am not suggesting that you (when I say “you,” I’m talking to every writer, not just editors) not write about what matters to you. In fact I try not to say you should or shouldn’t anything. Unless I am helping you tidy up your spelling and punctuation or enforcing a client’s style guide, my aim is to provide insights, perspectives, and recommendations, then step back so you can make your own best choices.

Nor am I precisely saying you shouldn’t write to yourself. One of my own favorite ways to get my own writing off the ground is to write as if I am the only one who will read it, and I can carry on in that spirit for quite a while before I remember the outside world. There’s a therapeutic side to creative expression that is precious and productive.

Instead, most of the advice which follows is aimed toward the tail end of the creative process, when you as a writer (and your editor as your companion) are reflecting and refining upon how engaging your writing will be.

By engagement, I am not talking about how to transfix people with a flood of hypnotic “content.” Instead I mean the writing equivalent of a shared experience, like looking someone in the eye, feeling the roar of a stadium together, feeling ice cream drip down our wrists at the same time, hugging someone or picking a painful splinter out of the communal palm. How close will you and your readers come? How deep does the resonance of your writing go?

Many essays and forum comments about AI which I have read are written by editors. They lament the failures of AI to edit writers’ work well, and its talent for making a manuscript worse, in pretty precise and technical ways. Such analysis reminds me a bit of when I used to attend friends’ conservatory recitals, and afterward they would mercilessly nitpick their own performances…I never perceived any of the mistakes that grieved them so much. But even assuming these analyses were obvious to the average naked eye, the overall trajectory of these pieces is normally that AI unjustly steals opportunities from editors.

If the objective of such pieces is to commiserate with fellow editors, then mission accomplished. What I wonder is whether the average writer, even one who is looking for an editor, connects emotionally with such a deep dive that doesn’t seem to take writers principal interests much into account at all.

Now I know that part of what a good editor does is to help a writer see more broadly and deeply into what it is wise to care about, mainly by showing them why. But there is a process to getting there. What is the writer’s core concern, and why? Is it budget? Timetable? Making sure that whomever edits their stuff respects their vision and autonomy? In such instances AI might not seem like such a bad option: it seems to afford a writer something cheaper, faster, and less potentially interfering than another human being getting in the middle of their creative process. From this perspective, the editorial diatribe against AI may antagonize or simply bore a writer, and in either case alienate them.

So if one were an editor writing about AI’s impact on a writer’s creative journey during the editing stage, and if one wished more than anything to connect with writers where writers are, how might such an essay be framed?

What if, alongside the complaints about AI’s failure to properly perform editorial functions, this theoretical essayist pointed out, say, that AI harvests the output of hard-working writers (and photographers, and painters, etc.) like the reader in order to generate derivative products? What if the essayist wondered aloud whether the reader’s own artistic output might wind up in AI silos and might further end up reproduced, against the artist’s will, in the works of thousands of other artists? Some of these essays do, in fact, cover such territory, and this seems to me to come closer to connecting with a wider audience of readers than those already in the writer’s subset.

In short, if you want to connect with readers or convince readers who are not already just like you, then consider the following:

Remedy 3: Acknowledge and incorporate the needs and interests of your readers into your writing.

Again, this is tricky! We acknowledged last week that your particular passions help bring your writing voice to life. Your personal passions infuse your words with the value only you bring to the world. In the same way, the topics that interest you matter.

So just like last week when I stressed that don’t need to (and probably don’t want to) bleed your passion out of your writing, I am now reiterating that you need not set aside what matters to you. Focusing completely on someone else’s passion would be its own mistake; maybe even a sort of pandering.

But there will come a point in your writing process where it may be very much worth asking yourself questions like “will this interest readers?” and “how or why will this interest readers?” Concerning AI, for example, our theoretical editor who really desires to connect with writers might pay a little less attention to whether AI puts commas in the right places or formats citations properly and pause to ask themselves what fire is burning in a writer’s belly.

Well, what’s in your furnace?

Is it time?

Is it money?

Is it the capacity to make art? More of it? Better versions of it?

Most of the marketing around AI suggests that these are your biggest concerns. And even if they are not, if we trust the promises of those spending millions to market AI so aggressively, AI is even better for you artistically. Look at how much farther AI can help you get.

Are they right?

This savvy, connection-hungry editor of ours might wish to express their desire that you, the writer, have the most enriching and personally satisfying writing journey possible. They might pause to reflect on the framing in AI conversations which seems to prize efficiency above all. Is what you need most? Is writing for you about being done?

If you’re a business owner, the answer may sometimes be a sincere and emphatic “yes,” and I hear you on that (but do please check out my thoughts on the benefits of prioritizing your creative process over marketing bottom lines).

Creative writers may have a different answer, but then again, you, personally, may simply want to have that latest blog posted and behind you. Your newsletter delivered. Your book published. You may long to be sitting on the beach or backpacking in the mountains, relishing in the manifest fruits of achievement: more money, more options, more free time, more fans.

Whether you identify with these scenarios or not, if we accept the premise that the goal is to be done, then what became of your journey? What became of you? Where have you been, in every sense, if you surrendered your task to AI…if you allowed it to be you for you?

Whatever else AI may be accused of robbing, what if what it most seeks to rob you of is the experience of your life?

Right now most of us have power of some sort, privilege by virtue of being alive, and even if we don’t we have those we all possess that most precious thing, the opportunity each moment to express that self in words and actions. Whatever tricks AI may pull out of its sleeve, it can never really be for you or even express you for you, just as AI cannot exercise for you, fall in love for you, eat or go to the bathroom for you.

To the extent that we hand AI the reins, especially to decide how we express ourselves, but in any way to perform the stuff of life for us, we choose to fall still and silent.

But let us return to the matter of writing strategies. How do you as a writer take into account the interests and needs of your readers without giving up the ones that make you you? Well, the answer is context-dependent and can be involved. Not to be too cheeky, this sort of question is what editors are here to help you with. But here is some general, free advice:

Remedy 3 (part B): Ponder how to build a bridge between what interests you and what interests your readers.

As you write, consider ways to venture into the wilderness between you and your neighbors, readers. This is partly about enticing them to care about what you care about, and it is partly about exercising your own empathy; stretching out of your comfort zone. The alternative is the creative equivalent of two people from wildly different languages and cultures trying to talk. Some comprehension may occur, but it will probably be accidental.

Remedy 3 (part C): Remember that this thing you are writing is, itself, wilderness.

Yes, you wrote it, but part of the mystery of these things is that it does not quite entirely belong to you, especially after you publish it. Once a reader picks up your work, they become a co-creator with you of what is now a conversation.

This wilderness you make invokes the same implicit writerly contract we talked about last week.

Last week we looked at how that plays out in terms of tone. The way it plays out here is that, by writing, you agree by writing to create a space that both you and your readers can inhabit. That doesn’t mean in perfect comfort! Habitability only means that your readers can survive among your words and feel hope of growing in understanding, connection, maybe even strength.

And so we return to this core idea of the chaotic, jostling space of human interaction. With the polemic discussion we were in a crowded auditorium (and then an elevator), and now we are now under the open sky, but the central ideas are the same. You and your readers both arrive in the wilderness which you fashioned, somewhat sufficient, somewhat lacking, hopefully both of you sincerely curious. You travel together for as far as that wilderness extends, and when you leave, hopefully you have both rubbed off on one another.

Let’s bring the ideas of the last two weeks together.

Deep down, I believe that most people spend much more time wondering, “Am I seen? Am I heard? Does it matter that I am here?” than they do asking how cheaply and quickly they can get things done. In fact, I suspect that stresses and worries about time and money often boil down to deeper fears about personal worth and significance.

Our fears are sometimes based in all-too-real factors outside of our control, but I remain convinced that one of the primary paths of deliverance lies via our personal agency, which can never be altogether taken away from us and which we surrender at our peril.

When it comes to AI, if you are just looking for an expedient way to make money, perhaps AI will help. But when it comes to writing in order to connect with yourself and with others—in short, when it comes to a deeply human hunger to express and receive a genuine response, then you are in for a harrowing and fantastically rewarding adventure for which there is no shortcut.

There are deep rewards to be gleaned from hoofing it through the wilderness of your own insides. I wish you every sort of blessing as you pursue your special path, and yet more blessings once you reach the frontier of creation, interaction, communion: the greater wilderness of your art out there in the world, where we may encounter one another in ways beyond our imaginations.