Apologies to Stephen King, On Writing

As a dedicated blogger of more than 17 years, I can tell you there are times when coming up with idea to write about can be...oh, what's the word...challenging. Fellow bloggers like George Tannenbaum and Jeff Gelberg will concur. But sometimes a topic will drop right in your lap. Or I should say, on my driveway now that I'm a subscriber to the physical edition of the Sunday New York Times.

Last week, on the front page no less, there was a lengthy piece, Students Lose Much More than Grammar Skills When They Use A.I. to Write. 

This naturally caught my attention. Though as my academically-inclined friend and former client Claudia Caplan suggests, I'm the last person on Earth who should write about grammar. My spelling is atroshish (intentional). And, my punctuation --- such as it --- is even worser. I don't know the difference between an n-dash and an m-dash. 

More importantly, I don't care so I use them interchangeably.

Others, who shall remain anonymous, might also posit that I'm guilty of vocational inflation by even calling myself a Writer. This too is true. And I'm the first person in that very long line of doubters. Despite having a long "career" putting pen to paper, or my one calloused hunt and peck finger tip to keyboard, I'm more writer-adjacent. 

I suspect Don Draper would fess up to the same. 

The article starts off with a banger:

"Drafting a basic persuasive essay was as mentally taxing as digging a ditch was physically exhausting. Writing an essay is so difficult that a person in the throes of it can do hardly anything else.  (Though at the moment I've kicked off my flip flop and I'm petting my dog, under my desk, with my bare foot. ) 

I've done both. And will confess that I'd much rather write an essay (even a bad one like this ) is more preferable than spending a summer in the mid 1970's digging a ditch around our modest home in Suffern NY in order to waterproof the bottom floor of our split-level ranch house.

"Why should I pay professionals when I have the Time Life books on waterproofing and I have two able bodied sons eating food that I pay for?" my father would say.

The article goes on to detail how A.I. is being used in classrooms and how certain companies have gone on to put watermarks on their A.I. written material to prevent students from ripping it off wholesale.

I don't know where all this is going. I'm 68 years old and will be feeding earthworms or deep sea carnivorous fish when it all gets sorted out. But I do know that good writing equals good thinking. And as the times we live in have shown us, that is in very short supply.

I also know that starting an essay, following its through line, finding little personal detours that add color and flourish, and closing with an as yet clever ending, is a satisfying journey worth taking.   

Sadly, I do not have that clever ending. 

But ChatGPT does...

A computer might construct a perfect, watermarked paragraph, but it will never know the glorious, stubborn triumph of writing a terrible sentence, knowing it’s terrible, and hitting publish anyway.