I miss writing.
That’s a strange thing to say because I’ve been employed as a full-time writer for the past 14 months. And I have spent many weekends to catch up on some articles. So technically, writing is all I’ve been doing with my brain’s depleting productive quota.
But it’s been a while since I write something for myself. The last time I felt proud of something I wrote is 10 months ago.
But in this role, I feel stifled and drained. I haven’t felt a sense of ownership over anything I was working on as at the end of it all, most of them are really my editor’s ideas and words.
I want to write about something I am interested in. Well OK, I am interested in the things I write about at work — that’s why I consider this job as a dream job. But I feel I can’t tell the story I’d like to tell, the way I’d tell it.
I am losing confidence in my ideas and my voice.
Thinking
For me, writing is both the vehicle for and byproduct of thinking.
And I’m not used to “thinking together”. So when my ideas get reshaped, I tend to submit to the pushback but ended up weakening my connection to the idea.
This is the same problem with “writing with LLM”. If an idea is not metabolized through you, it’s not your thinking and you are less able to express them clearly.
But I am learning to trust my editor’s instinct, judgment, and taste. I definitely see a learning opportunity here — to get a lot of practice in thinking in stories.
Expressing
Every edit I get, I feel like I have failed completely at doing a good job. Flow restructured, sentences rewritten, words replaced.
I started letting LLMs write more of the articles to minimise the sting, but not for long, as I find the distinct AI-generated tone distasteful and it took me more time to “humanize” the output.
So to minimize the lengthy editing process, I’ve been trying to make sure I express the ideas the way my editor would (or get it as close as possible). I have been taking notes and pointers based on what I see his edits are trying to do. I’m trying to deconstruct his way of thinking, based on all the writing techniques and principles I’ve learned.
The problem is, there are near infinite ways of saying exactly the same thing, and there’s no way to “one-shot” someone’s writing style, especially when it probably took the editor all their career to develop this editorial sensibilities and style, and it’s all tacit in their head.
As a result, I haven’t been able to write in flow state that much. The writing right now is not “my brain to my hands”. But rather: “my brain, modelling the editor’s brain, to LLM, to my brain, to my hands”. And I noticed I’ve been editing while writing, which is not helping at all.
But, perhaps this is literally what a professional collaborative writing process is like. This is normal and expected. Having to rewrite over and over again. Outline after outline, drafts after drafts.
I know I will get better with time and practice, but I wish I can preserve more of my voice and convey more of my ideas. I also know this is an unrealistic wish in the context of corporate writing 🙃.
Keep writing
I know the path out of this depression is to keep writing. I’ll break out of the mental lethargy, one rep at a time.
Doesn’t need to be novel, brilliant, clever. Just need to be honest and clear.
