On AI-writing woes and “how can I monetise this?”

I had a chat with a potential writing client this week.  It was a depressing chat, because as it turned out, they didn’t actually want me to write for them.  “It’ll work out cheaper* if you just feed our brief into AI, then quickly go through it and correct anything you think it needs,” they said.  It was a statement, not a question.

I politely explained that, as a writer, I do the writing myself.  “Well… we’re on a tight budget here,” the potential client sniffed.  “We can’t pay you to do it all.”

(Funny how the people who grumble about being “on a tight budget” before you’ve even told them what your rate is don’t mind charging the full unadulterated whack for their own services).

I wasn’t about to drop my rate or sell my writer’s soul, so the conversation ended there.

I felt strange and empty and angry afterwards.  I still do now.  Because here’s the thing: if you want AI to create something for you, fine.  Just don’t ask a writer – or a designer, or a musician, or a photographer – to smother their own experience and creativity with a grubby AI blanket.  It’s a great big ball of wrong.

(I write a monthly Substack newsletter about human writing vs. AI-writing, if you’re interested.  I also write a personal email newsletter, which prompted someone to reply last month with: “not sure about the context of your email, would you please elaborate on.”

You can sign up for that at the bottom of this page – and really, why wouldn’t you?).

Monetising everything that moves

I’ve been learning how to meditate.  I kept hearing how good it is for you, and now I’m in mid-life I could do with a few tools to circumvent all the new-found rubbishness the years have brought.

Meditating every day has been amazing so far.  My teacher is absolutely brilliant.  He’s not at all religious or spiritual (which is good because neither am I), just a lovely combination of patient, caring, funny, and practical.  If only he wasn’t so hell-bent on trying to get me to teach meditation, too.  I’d be rubbish at that for so many reasons; the biggest one being that I’m still a beginner.

I’ve noticed that learning something new often goes hand-in-hand with “…and the great thing is, you can do this for money!”

You don’t have to, though.  You can take the pressure off.  You can revel in how good something feels to do, without feeling like you have to be ‘good enough’ at doing it.

Excerpt from Joshua Rothman’s thought-provoking article in the New Yorker: “Do We Need Hobbies?”

Resisting the temptation to monetise everything we do can feel extremely difficult.  But we can – and should – give it a try.

*This is beside the point, but it wouldn’t work out cheaper.  Wading through AI-slop takes longer than writing something interesting and readable from scratch.