The Whiplash of Being a Writer Right Now
Yesterday, I wrote a LinkedIn post that struck a nerve in the writing community. Reading the comments has made me realize I'm not alone — and that I also have more to say.
There’s a strange thing happening to writers right now. We’re being watched for signs of AI while simultaneously being told we’re behind for not using it. It’s a disarming tug and pull that has put countless writers on edge, worried for what’s next.
I realize there's a fear of AI stealing jobs in nearly every industry. That's not new. But when a model is pushing out words, it's hard for a writer to not feel distinctly victimized. Is our job now obsolete? Will the education and art of writing simply wither, knowing anyone can input the right questions to receive output passable enough to go unquestioned?
Writing is the throughline of everything I do. Brand strategy, storytelling, positioning — it all comes down to words. How they're chosen, how they're sequenced, what they signal about who a brand is and what it actually stands for. This isn't work I hand off, because it is the work.
So when someone side-eyes my em dashes (a habit I picked up well before AI made them a crime) it's not just annoying. It's disorienting. These are my instincts. I've been developing them for years. And here's the thing: AI didn't invent the em dash. It learned it from us. From writers who used it deliberately, stylistically, correctly. If a language model reaches for an em dash, that's not evidence of artificiality — it's a reflection of human writing at its best, fed back to us as suspicious.
And yet, if I'm not prompting and automating and scaling my content, I'm apparently falling behind. Make it make sense.
I am not anti-AI. I use it regularly to move faster on the parts that don't need my full attention (content outlines, topic ideation, early-stage research) so I can give full attention to the parts that do. A research and ops assistant, not a ghostwriter. The voice, the angle, the strategic thinking underneath it all — that stays mine, because that's what actually matters to the brands I work with.
And yet, and yet. There are plenty of hungry entrepreneurs who think they can handle it on their own. Plug a disjointed mission statement into AI and boom — you've got a full business plan. Need 30 emails by EOD? Done. But my clients are the CEOs and founders who value depth and connection, who understand that human touch isn't a nice-to-have. They know the difference. And they keep me in business (fingers crossed).
So no — writers aren't resisting AI. We're simply resisting the whiplash of being told our instincts are suspicious and our skills are expendable in the same breath.
We know how to use the right tool for the right job. That's not a new skill. That's just editing.
