I argued in yesterday’s post that enjoying writing means confronting the weirdness of generative AI directly. Being a writer means being good at AI, in the sense that our interaction with conversational agents like ChatGPT and Claude are conducted through writing*. But the threat of enforced automation posed by these systems, the brutal fact of human writers now being replaceable in some contexts and for some tasks, underscores the difficult balance between the aspiration for creative autonomy and the reality of writing as an occupational requirement.
To the extent we write for instrumental reasons, the capacities of generative AI present us with a serious challenge: should we use this new means to pursue our authorial ends? What is gained by writing more quickly by using these systems? What is lost by coming to rely on them in this way? Is this even our choice in any meaningful sense? Or will we pressured into it by competition with peers who can now write far more quickly? Or to stave off the threat that we will be automated out of existence by these systems? There are a cluster of practical questions which are opening up in the lifeworlds of writers to which there are many different responses. But I suspect that what is uniform is that some response is necessary.
This is why being clear about why you write will be so crucial in the coming years. In a post earlier this week I suggested this means being clear about the fact you don’t have creative freedom and you probably never will. If you are writing as an academic (the audience to which these posts are directed) there are all manner of pressures shaping what, how and where you write which are easy to disavow. The problem is that clinging to the idea of our intellectual autonomy, as if our creative work is entirely a reflection of our spontaneous inclinations, makes it difficult to negotiate been the extrinsic and intrinsic motivations for our writing.
This could be framed in Lacanian terms which cut across the intrinsic/extrinsic binary. There are embodied forms of satisfaction we take in our writing, the itch it scratches to (at least in my case**) take diffuse thoughts and articulate them, which constitute the drive. The sense of aliveness through process that comes when writing works for us. But there are also the desires which animate our writing, the fantasy of being seen and valued by others for traits we imagine they will identify in our writing. Much as clinical work seeks to untie the knots between drive and desire which make it difficult to enjoy our enjoyment, we can understand the practices which give life meaning as drive and desire being tied*** in satisfying and sustainable ways.
If our writing practice has to be renegotiated**** under circumstances where generative AI is understand, this means we have to understand the role of desire and drive in our academic writing. Here are some questions which I co-produced with Claude to help interrogate why you are writing in terms of drive and desire:
Desire:
- What fantasies or imagined outcomes motivate me to write?
- Do I envision my work being celebrated, my ideas being influential, or my status being elevated through my writing?
- How do these fantasies shape the content, style, and audience I target in my writing?
- Am I making choices based on what I believe others will value or find impressive?
- To what extent am I writing to fulfill external expectations or to gain validation from others, rather than to explore my own authentic interests and ideas?
Drive:
- What intrinsic satisfactions do I experience in the process of writing itself?
- Do I feel a sense of aliveness, flow, or enjoyment when I engage in the act of articulating my thoughts?
- How does the embodied experience of writing, such as the rhythms of typing or the sensation of putting words on the page, contribute to my motivation to write?
- Can I identify specific moments or aspects of the writing process that feel inherently rewarding or fulfilling, independent of any external outcomes or recognition?
Negotiating desire and drive:
- How can I balance my intrinsic satisfactions in the writing process with the inevitable desires and fantasies that arise around external validation and success?
- In what ways might my desires be shaping my writing in ways that undermine or conflict with my authentic drives and interests?
- How can I disentangle these knots and align my writing more closely with what truly enlivens me?
- How can I cultivate a writing practice that contains both the embodied satisfactions of the process itself and the aspirations I hold for my work’s impact and reception, without becoming overly beholden to either?
In the next post I want to look at why other people write, what we can learn from it and the dangers in taking other people’s reflections on their practice too seriously.
*It remains to be seen whether voice interactions will displace writing as the primary mode of interaction, which does pose a challenge for the argument I’m making here. Though I suspect I will still default to writing because the level of control it’s possible to exercise over the conversational agent will always be much greater through writing than speech.
**I suspect there are many forms which drive satisfaction take for academics which are shaped by the fantasies underpinning their having entered into academic writing in the first place. In my case overcoming inarticulacy is a very powerful motivation which cuts very deeply into my psyche.
***I used the term ‘tied’ to contrast with ‘knotted’ as a more capacious and helpful state, rather than to suggest this is a voluntaristic process in which one ‘chooses’ how to ‘tie’ in this way. The reality is more like steering a ship through stormy seas with a sense of destination that only becomes clear retrospectively after you’ve found yourself in calm waters.
****I’ve not established this in this blog post but I am realising this is the premise underlying this series, which I’ve only stumbled across explicitly in the 23rd post.
Mark Carrigan 