Vol. 51: Write What You Want
On writing, AI, and the challenge of creation in an oversaturated world
Note 1: All em dashes are mine and mine alone.
Dear Hungry Reader,
Yesterday, as the snow swirled and piled up in New York City, I tried to write. I sat with my laptop on mine and Perri’s couch and typed away at an article I’ve been working on for months. I must’ve started five or six times as the snow came down and later began to melt, but each beginning felt more and more constricting than the last.
This isn’t just any article. It’s one I’m co-writing with Marshall Goldsmith about why men don’t ask for help and what becomes possible when they do. Like the snow piling up in the Northeast, I’ve piled on the pressure when it comes to this article. With Marshall attached it’s felt like a golden opportunity to elevate my visibility and credibility. Recently, I’ve thought it could be a perfect one to pitch to The New York Times or The Atlantic—to get my writing beyond The Good Men Project and in front of many more eyes.
The problem is that the more I tried to write that article, the less it felt like mine. In the moment, all I experienced was frustration. And, I’ll embarrassingly admit, that to ease that frustration and make the writing easier, I turned to ChatGPT to help speed up the process.
I have a complicated relationship with AI. I’m using it more in certain situations and finding it immeasurably helpful. I also notice an unhealthy growing dependence on it—a knee-jerk reaction to put an idea, or paragraph, or a challenge into ChatGPT for its . . . thoughts. Speeding up my writing is becoming one of those knee-jerk reactions. It’s accompanied by guilt, because I’ve talked endlessly about how the journey of writing is what makes the final product rich and full of soul. And, yet, as I’ve felt this bubble of paralyzing pressure constrict around me to do more, be more, and be seen more, the joy of discovery writing has been overtaken by the pressure to produce and perform.
Unsurprisingly, that pressure hasn’t led to any quicker production or better performance. All it’s created is a paralysis where instead of getting started and trusting the long-winding process of writing, it’s felt pointless to even begin.
It feels to me like there’s an overabundance of writing on the internet. Each piece seems to have no lasting lifespan. The carefully chosen words or soulful effort has been replaced by volume and rage bait. For a writer like myself who values the journey of writing, this push for relevancy in a world where everyone seems to be screaming for it, is incredibly demotivating.
I long for the days when writing a piece for The Food Travels of a Coffee Snob lit me up simply because I wrote about something that I found so fun. Or for the brief spark when several friends and I began a site called The Nameless Bards to publish anonymous fiction online. Or, naturally, for the days writing all over New York City—on benches in Union Square, at cafés in every neighborhood imaginable, and in my apartments as night turned to early morning—as I dove into each of the forty-seven chapters of The Men’s Group and how fulfilling the process of creation was.
Last night, Perri and I were sitting on our coach—having moved little during the whiteout—and I described to her my frustration. She said something so simple and so profound that it reset how I was thinking about my writing.
“Write what you want,” she said.
Paired with a conversation earlier in the day with Nick—who spoke with such trust that our novel will make a difference and the reminder that we never set out to write this book to make a lot of money or be in the spotlight, but to impact peoples’ lives—I felt a great understanding of why that paralyzing pressure affected me so.
I thrive when I write for me as much as for my readers. My writing has always been self-exploratory and personal. Even in fiction, I write the truth of my experiences—just not the facts. Would I love my writing to be in places like The Times, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker? Of course, I would.
But writing for that purpose doesn’t work for me. And it’s no accident that as Perri cooked dinner last night, I sat down with my Freewrite Alpha and wrote three first drafts for new articles in less than an hour.
Were they good?
I haven’t checked yet.
But the words flowed, and I felt connected to why I love writing. And today, when I sat down in my office—surrounded by my books, photos of so many of the important people and places in my life, and the gentle tunes of the Sahnas Brothers—I wrote this Hungry Reader in less than an hour.
“Write what you want,” my fiancée said.
I’m going to keep doing that.
Warmly,
Coach Jake
Articles
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Living Fully: Why Nostalgia and the Present Moment Matter More Than Ever
How to Turn Holiday Conflict Into Connection
Three Ways to Find Male Friends Who'll Call You on Your Blind Spots (And Your Other B.S.)
Men, We Know You're Insecure. Stop Faking Your Confidence and Do This Instead.
It's Time for Men to Man Up. But Not in the Way You Think.
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