AI writing tools may be quick and convenient, but Elizabeth Levett Fortier tells us about the critical element they are lacking.
Words find me. I collect them and cherish them like shiny stones. I don’t search online for the right word. Words tap me on the shoulder or whisper in my ear when I’m reading. I especially love recognizing a writer’s choice of words. Word choice gives writing color, texture, tone. It’s the writer’s superpower– the sound from the deepest part of who we are.
We recognize the perfect word like a friendly face in a crowd. We collect and share them, and celebrate their uses. To find good words we go where they hang out. We read lots of books and listen to people speak. Just as painters study the masters, writers expose themselves to a diverse range of good writing.
Finding the right word has lately become the business of AI tools to make it faster and easier to sound more professional, more accessible, more edgy, but is it more you?? The greatest compliment a writer can receive is that readers recognize your voice in your work. Why then would anyone entrust the core of their creative identity to anything artificial?
Think of Guernica, Picasso’s most powerful painting and one with enormous social and political impact. Just as no other artist could have created Guernica, no other writer can write with your voice. Every artist’s work is informed by the sum of their experiences and has the power to inform our own. No one else has your words. No online tool knows your rhapsodies or your regrets. So, I will be content to let the right words find me. I know they will. I’ll read any good book I can get my hands on, and I’ll listen to people talk. I’ll keep an eye out for those precious stones and add them to my collection. I’ll keep them close till I’m ready to bring them out and hold them up to the light.