Why do we write when no one is watching? What pulls us to the blank page when there’s no applause coming, no guarantee anyone will read what we put down? Sit with this question. The answer reveals something about being human.
When you plant a seed, you don’t skip to the harvest. You water it daily, watch for the first green shoot, feel the earth between your fingers. The tomato matters, but something happens to you during those mornings in the garden. You learn patience. You notice things. Your hands remember.
Writing works the same way. The words you publish are just one small part of what happened. The real story lives in those hours you spent staring out the window, thinking, crossing things out, trying again. That’s where you change. That’s where you meet yourself.
What happens when we hand that process to something else? When we type a prompt and let a machine assemble the words? Do we lose the encounter? Do we skip the garden and buy the tomato at the store? It looks the same, but you didn’t grow.
Think about learning to ride a motorcycle. Someone could strap you on and drive you down the street. You’d reach the destination. You’d feel the wind. But would you know how to balance? Would your body understand the lean into a turn, the way you lift off the seat when the road gets rough?
The struggle teaches. Not because suffering is noble, but because some knowing only comes through doing. When you wrestle with a sentence, trying to get it right, your brain makes connections. It pulls from your memories, your reading, that conversation last week, the way light looked through your kitchen window this morning. You’re weaving your life into the words.
Can a machine do that weaving? It never had a conversation that mattered. It’s rearranging patterns from billions of other people’s words, but there’s no person in there.
When you let something else do your creating, what are you saying to yourself? That your way of seeing isn’t valuable enough? That the hours it would take aren’t worth spending?
We live in a world always rushing, always measuring efficiency. But can some things be slow? Can some things need to be inefficient?
When you write something yourself, even if it’s clumsy, even if it takes forever, it’s authentically yours. It has your fingerprints all over it. Your hesitations. Your certainties. The way you think. Someone reading it meets you, not an approximation of what writing is supposed to sound like.
People talk about using these tools to “get started” or “overcome writer’s block.” But what if the block is trying to tell you something? What if not knowing what to say yet is part of the process?
Sometimes you need to sit with not knowing. You need to let your mind wander. You need to get bored, frustrated, stuck. That discomfort often comes before the breakthrough. When you shortcut past it, you also shortcut past the discovery.
There’s a difference between making and manufacturing. Making involves your whole self. Your doubt, your hope, your half-formed intuitions. Manufacturing is assembly. It’s fast, it’s consistent, but it’s empty of you.
If you write publicly, sharing what you make, it creates accountability. Not to be perfect, but to be genuine. When you know others might read your words, you can’t hide behind pretense. You have to show up as yourself.
Why do borrowed words feel strange? They wear your name but speak in someone else’s voice. This creates distance between you and your readers, but more importantly, between you and yourself. You lose track of what you actually think.
Blogging, sharing stories, writing letters: these acts keep us honest. They remind us we’re part of something larger. We’re not shouting into a void. We’re in conversation, even when it’s quiet.
So why write at all if it’s hard and slow and imperfect? Because the hard, slow, imperfect process is where life happens. Because your particular way of stringing words together has never existed before and will never exist again. Because creating something with your own hands and heart and mind is an act of faith that you matter, that your perspective has value.
Do you need to be brilliant? Or do you just need to be real? Real is what connects us. Real is what lasts. And real takes time, takes effort, takes you actually doing it.
The blank page is your invitation. Every word you put there yourself is a small act of courage, a tiny declaration that you exist, that you see things in your own way, and that’s worth preserving.
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