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Episode 10: Why Do You Write? · HumanPrint: How to Use AI Without Losing Yourself

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  Foreign.
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  Welcome to Human Print. I am Christine Whitmarsh,
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  and if you are open to collaborating with AI but you're not
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  interested in disappearing into AI, you're in the right place.
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  Each week we will look at one place where your authentic human signal is at
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  risk for drift and one way to shore it up.
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  Oh, and Human Print is brought to you by Abby AI
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  Brand bank intelligence that helps authors, thought leaders and
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  enterprise teams train AI on their voice and
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  point of view so written content stays unmistakably human,
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  consistent and on brand. Learn more at abbey.incabbi.ink
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  like you write with. Let's begin.
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  Hello and welcome back to Human Print. Now today we're
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  going to be broaching the subject of AI through some stories
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  about writing. So bear with me here in case you think you tuned into the
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  wrong podcast. So here we go. Today's episode is called why
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  do you write? I personally started writing when I was about 7 and
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  for most of my childhood I thought of it as something I was just good
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  at. I was the editor of everything and got the compliments and A's in English,
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  all the usual evidence of some sort of natural born talent. And because
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  it came easy, I never really fought for it. So I didn't understand yet what
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  it meant to me. Then my life went in a very different direction.
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  After a life and death medical situation, I was drawn into the field of
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  nursing, which I can see now was part of. You know, that was me trying
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  to get some control back over my own body after kind of being in the
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  healthcare system as a patient for many years. Nursing school
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  also introduced me to science and in a much deeper way.
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  You know, I loved chemistry in high school, but that was really the only non
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  humanities class that grabbed me. So nursing challenged me in a way that writing
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  never had. I had to work hard for it, especially the math part.
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  Then in my early 20s, I medically retired from nursing and through
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  a series of events, I ended up back in writing. This time through the doorway
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  of screenwriting. Now this was a new form I had to learn and struggle with
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  and make choices about scenes, dialogue, pacing, structure,
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  what belonged on the page and what stayed in my head. It was a really
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  great way to master the infamous writing rule that many authors know of.
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  Show, don't tell. And somewhere in there, with words and stories shooting
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  out of me like a geyser, I finally got it. Being a writer isn't
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  just a random talent I have, it's who I am.
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  Talent can sit on a shelf. Identity follows you around.
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  You can ignore it, build a different career, get busy,
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  decide something else is more practical, and yet it will still be there,
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  tapping its little foot, waiting for you to acknowledge it. When I
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  eventually built a writing business and turned this whole thing into a career, I developed
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  a very different relationship with writing. I started treating it as a skill
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  set instead of some magical ability I'd been handed as a kid.
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  I took great joy in working at it, studying it, self assessing and
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  pushing it into new forms. My reason for writing has never
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  been an easy answer. It was more of a distillation of talent, science,
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  creativity, identity, and finally returning to something I'd once taken for granted.
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  Now your reason Those of you who are writers may be completely different.
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  Maybe you want to write because you need to preserve a story that will otherwise
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  disappear. Or maybe there's something you've learned that could shorten another person's
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  struggle, like a life lesson. Maybe you want to teach,
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  investigate, entertain, challenge,
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  document, provoke, or make sense of your own experience.
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  Or maybe, shockingly, you have no desire to write a book at all and your
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  why for writing belongs in articles, social media posts, research, essays,
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  newsletters, scripts, podcasts, or maybe some form that hasn't even occurred to
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  you yet. The form can come later. That's fine.
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  So I've worked with authors since 2001 and I see
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  them get overwhelmed because they try to solve the whole book project at once,
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  and usually before they write a single word. They worry about publishing,
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  strategy, marketing, social media, speaking, sales, what color their launch
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  graphics should be before they've even built the writing habit that will actually get their
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  book writing project done. They're building the gift shop before they've built
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  a museum. Underneath that overwhelm, a lot of them do have something
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  they genuinely need to say. It's just gotten buried under everything they think they're supposed
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  to know and do first as an authority. Now those
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  with a powerful reason, you know, they find their way back. Their lives are still
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  just as complicated as the rest of ours. Jobs, families,
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  illnesses, financial pressure, confidence crashes, weeks where writing
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  feels physically painful. But their passion for sharing
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  their story stays non negotiable. So whenever they hit an obstacle,
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  they just keep looking for another route. The authors with
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  a borrowed reason tend to leave at the first believable exit. And the exit
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  always sounds rational. I'm too busy right now. The market's changed,
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  work is demanding. I need to grow an audience first. The timing isn't ideal.
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  It's never ideal. By the way. Sometimes that's a true that's.
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  That's True, and a project genuinely needs to take a break, but sometimes
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  rational. That's what we call a decision that never had any emotional fuel behind
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  it to begin with. This applies to any big goals,
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  exercise, personal development, business goals anytime we where a
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  habit can make things feel optional when things get hard.
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  The strength of the reason is what shows.
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  That's why I've told authors this for years.
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  Start with why writing
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  a book is hard. Anyone selling you a method that makes it easy? They're selling
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  you something probably with a free report or an email funnel waiting behind it.
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  They're full of it. Because I know this, because I went through my own stretch
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  of trying to write according to what I thought a waste of quote unquote growing
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  business was supposed to sound like. I briefly tried to scale through
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  an agency model, teams, courses, marketing funnels,
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  engagement tactics, the whole entrepreneurial assembly line. I filmed
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  marketing videos that made me want to crawl out of my skin.
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  I posted content that sounded fake even to me,
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  free downloads and formulas and a version of professional language
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  that had nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with how I exist as
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  a human being. I'm actually, yeah, I'm getting a little nauseous just remembering it.
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  It's not that I dislike marketing. I just lost the
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  thread of what I actually wanted to accomplish through writing. My reason,
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  my why had gotten replaced by a pile of
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  shoulds, and that pile produced work that was technically functional but
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  personally empty. That era in my business, life could not end
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  fast enough. So when I ask you to know why you write,
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  I'm not asking you to invent some noble mission that sounds good in a bio.
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  You know, I write to inspire others. Inspire others. That might be true.
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  It might also be a phrase you've heard so often, maybe you've adopted it as
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  your own. That's fine. But what does inspire actually mean in your work?
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  Who are you hoping to inspire toward what and why do
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  you care whether whether they get there? What have you lived,
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  studied, witnessed, survived,
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  discovered, questioned? That makes this subject this
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  subject you want to write about yours. What happens if you don't
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  write about it? Those questions will get you closer to that fuel that
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  I'm talking about and your why it can change. The reason you start a memoir
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  might not be the reason you finish it. You. You begin because you need to
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  maybe make sense of what happened in your life. But then you keep going because
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  you realize the story might help someone else manage something similar happening
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  in their own life. My reasons for writing change by project.
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  My reason for scoliosis Research isn't my reason for doing this podcast,
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  and my reason for one social post might not be the reason for the next
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  one. The goal, the audience, the subject, the impact I'm hoping for,
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  all of that can shift. I don't need one sentence carved into a stone
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  tablet explaining every word I'll ever write. I just need enough
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  awareness to know what is driving the thing I'm writing today.
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  This whole conversation up levels once generative
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  AI enters the process. And yeah, I'm going to say Gen.
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  Gen AI from now on instead of just AI. Well, I'm going to try to
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  remember to throughout this show anyway, call it Gen AI, not just AI
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  because and this is kind of this has been a recent pet peeve of mine,
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  artificial intelligence AI. It is a much bigger field and
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  when people talk about AI, I think they're referring to LLMs and chatbots and generative
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  AI. But AI is actually a gigantic field. It showed up
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  back in a proposal for Dartmouth Research project back in 1956,
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  way before this current wave of tools that generate text, images, audio and
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  video calling every conversation about large language models.
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  AI for me is a little like calling Toyota the entire automotive
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  industry, or gastroenterology, all of medicine. You know, precision.
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  That's a thing. It helps so Gen AI
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  Key can organize your thoughts. It can suggest questions.
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  It can locate research directions. It can help you sequence an argument.
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  It can add layers to your thinking that you hadn't considered. I think of this
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  as structural supplementation. It can deepen the work that starts
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  with you, but it cannot tell you why you write.
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  Genai cannot tell you why you write.
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  It can hand you a list of maybe a few possible motivations
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  if it gets to know you really well, or maybe polish some answers for you.
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  It can ask follow up questions to help you kind of of probe your own
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  thinking. But what it can't do is look into your history, your life, your body,
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  your mind, and all the odd little experiences that add
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  up to who you are and decide what you feel compelled to say.
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  That's your decision. So your work
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  after this episode is not to write a sentence on a sticky
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  note about your why or some other oversimplified,
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  generally useless homework assignment. Start watching the
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  difference between the work you feel pulled toward and the work you feel pushed into,
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  whether by obligation, work, formulas, trends,
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  other people's expectations. For one One week. Just tried this one
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  week. Keep two running notes, two columns. In the first, write down every
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  idea that gives you energy, curiosity, relief,
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  urgency. The ideas you have a genuine pull to
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  explore so the left hand column, that's the poll column.
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  In the right hand column, that's the should column, that's write down every
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  task you think you should do. Again, for whatever reason, maybe something's trending or you
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  think this is how to make money off the Internet or whatever. So put what
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  you're pulled towards in the left hand column and your shoulds in the right hand
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  column. Now look at the language you used in each one.
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  You're beginning a much longer process here, figuring out the fuel
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  behind your work. See what that you know. How does your language
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  in those two columns reflect the fuel that is driving your. Why?
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  Because when the writing gets hard, and it will, especially those of you writing
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  a book, that fuel is what tells you whether to keep going,
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  change direction, or admit that the project was never really yours to begin
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  with. All right, that's it for today's,
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  I should say, this week's episode of Human Print.
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  Until next time, use the tool. If it helps,
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  just don't hand it the pen.
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  And that's it for this episode of Human Print. If you want
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  a practical framework for protecting your voice amid the AI noise,
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  please follow the show. And before you go, take a minute and ask yourself,
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  as the AI noise grows louder and louder, which areas of
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  yourself do you need to protect the most? I'll see you next time.