Is AI the ultimate antidote to Writer’s Block?!
I’m still on about AI… in my defense, many writers & copywriters are.
There’s so much buzz about AI, ChatGPT and other pre-trained language technologies that we can’t really ignore it. We’re trying to keep an open mind, accepting it into our lives, seeing if we can use these tools to make our work faster and easier.
I’ve concluded that, for me, working with AI does not speed up the job of writing true, relevant, persuasive, engaging, distinct copy or content. Working with AI inputs and outputs takes me hours of rephrasing, editing, fixing and fact-checking. So far, my own writing habits feel easier and are faster.
I appreciate, of course, how fast AI can spit out titles, subject lines and first draft copy. It seems like AI is the ultimate quick and easy antidote to the blinking cursor and blank page.
But let me put this to you fellow writers, business owners, entrepreneurs, deep thinkers and impassioned doers….
Faster and easier might not be better.
When you ask AI to “Generate a list of 10 ways to Get Organized,” it will. If you prompt “5 email subject lines to launch my course,” you’ll get them.
And of course you can pick and choose which ones you’ll use. Maybe they’ll trigger something you want to say instead. Lots of copywriters are seeing if we can use this new human-sounding technology “as inspiration,” “as a head start,” “as an antidote to writer’s block.”
But wait…
What if your writer’s block does not need an antidote?
I want you to consider, for a moment, the value of sitting, staring at the blank page, getting increasingly panicky while ideas and notions and words spin wildly, or while the tumbleweeds skid by.
Whenever we come up against an activity we resist — it could be making a phone call, building a presentation, or hitting ‘publish’ on your sales page — in this group we talk about “the Squirm.”
The Squirm is that wriggling, itchy, uncomfortable feeling you get when you have to do the thing you don’t want to do for reasons you can’t explain and maybe don’t even want to think about. You’ve resisted the thing until you can procrastinate no longer; now you have to put your butt in the chair, your neck on the line, and squirm until you make something happen.
When it comes to writing about your business… Yes! Coming up with the words for your About Page, or a distinct value proposition, or a detailed description of the problem your client faces in their “Refrigerator Moment” is HARD. That horrible, agonizing, uncomfortable task makes us think, imagine, try things on and throw things out.
And maybe, just maybe, there’s no shortcut for that.
Employing AI can “make my content production process faster, more efficient, and more interesting,” as one copywriter put it. Maybe that softens the agony of writing a little.
What if the agony needs to happen?
I know, I know… it’s business. There’s a deadline. You need to send that email.
You don’t have time to sit and squirm; you’ve procrastinated long enough; the thing has to go out. AI could make the difference between posting on LinkedIn that day, versus agonizing for hours and falling behind on everything else. I see that.
Fast food isn’t as good as slow food but it gets rid of the hunger.
The leggings I bought at Costco aren’t flattering, but saved me one stop in a long day of errands.
And yes I go through the car wash.
These are all examples of time savers that deliver a result… but not the same result you get when you take the long way around.
Think of that sunny, warm weekend in June when you look at your car and ask yourself, is it really clean? The windshields are spotty, the chrome is streaked, and there are still bug guts caught in the grill. So you cover every inch with suds and apply a little elbow grease while the birds are chirping and kids draw on the sidewalks with chalk. You get to stand there and make rainbows with the spray. Sure it’s laborious to vacuum out every inch of the inside; and it’s so good to know every inch has been vacuumed. Sometimes you find money! That cold drink tastes soooo good going down while you catch up with the neighbour, and learn their grandchild has just been born healthy.
Now your car is clean.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly lazy. I don’t go around with a great scary grin insisting that hard work is its own reward. It’s not. A clean car devoid of hockey-bag smell that earns the question from your kids’ friends whether your car is new and the tingle of warm gloating you get knowing you’re marginally superior to every other kid’s parent at least when it comes to car cleanliness is the reward.
The same way squirming and trying and deleting and showering and landing on the car wash analogy a week after starting this blog post feels like a reward.
When you let AI cut the line in your thinking (even when that thinking feels painful) what very human feelings, insights, ideas and possibilities are you missing out on? My closest woo-woo friends would ask you: What downloads from the universe are you blocking as you race to fill the page with text?
I’m not alone in appreciating the value of squirming. Here’s something Anne Lamott writes about writing in her terrific book Bird by Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life:
“...don't care about those first three pages, those you will throw out, those you needed to write to get to that fourth page, to get to that one long paragraph that was what you had in mind when you started only you didn’t know that, couldn't know that until you got it out…. You are learning what you aren't writing and this is helping you to find out what you are writing.”
I believe that thinking about your business while you write about your business comes with the same agony, demands the same hard work, and delivers the same unparalleled rewards.
Use AI and ChatGPT and word predictor and auto-fill. Heaven knows some days we need and deserve the shortcut, the drive-through, the car wash.
And also… keep in mind that writer’s block might not be a poison that needs an antidote.
Anne also writes, in Bird by Bird, “Here’s the thing, though. I no longer think of it as block. I think that is looking at the problem from the wrong angle. If your wife locks you out of the house, you don’t have a problem with your door.”