1. There has never been a better time to be a weirdo. Truly.

Have you always wanted to experiment with form? Write a truly reprehensible (but fascinating) main character? Mash up three different genres? Step out on your established, successful work to dive into something new and terrifying?

Go for it.

The singular. The unexpected. The wholly unique piece that ONLY you can write is calling to you. And, more and more, it’s going to be what readers crave, because…

2. Mediocre is the absolute best that AI can achieve. And MEDIOCRITY is NOT your competition.

As Hans Zimmer said, “AI is a snapshot of the past being sold as the future.” It can’t think. It doesn’t dare. It doesn’t have disturbing dreams or gripping psychic wounds. It can never be more than the sum of its lesser parts.

And more to the point for we writers, it has been trained on existing works, great and terrible, which means its average creation (or more accurately, output) is going to be…average.

We are not here to be AVERAGE.

I haven’t spent 25+ years putting on the Writing the Generic Novel Workshop with Don Maass. Or teaching classes for writers who just want to get to “okay.” Or advise editing clients to think safe, take smaller swings.

Seriously, the hell with that.

There have never been any guarantees of success in this field, and it has never not been a crowded market. But the one thing you can do to stand out is compete with the absolute top of your abilities, not with the lowest common denominator of others’. You can keep getting better, keep dreaming on a grander scale. You can push yourself to heights that only a devoted craftsperson can reach.

3. It’s also helpful to remember that pendulums might swing wildly but always end up in the center.

From looking like AI is going to take over every facet of our lives to calls that we, oh, might need to slow our roll and proceed with caution, from data centers proliferating like bunnies to plans and sites being shut down, from finger-pointing accusations of AI use to recognition that this is all getting out of hand and that em-dashes are actually our friends: we are absolutely living in a time of scary extremes, of a lot of questions with few answers. BUT, we still get to say NO, to decide for ourselves how we want to use this technology, to question what’s being forced on us, and to find our way back to human-centered work that we do FOR THE ART OF IT.

4. Some of that pendulum swing also means finding ways to deal with all of the above. It might mean that we turn away from platforms like Amazon, which allow 100 books to be uploaded from one “author” in a two-week period. It might be that we change the way we write, saving more dated drafts to validate our work as we go. Or use programs that help verify solely human input. I know those are being developed. Within no time, I believe they’ll be seamlessly woven into our work.

Right now, we’re living in the wild, wild West, which I guess means we have to be our own sheriffs and restore order in a way that makes sense for us.

We’ll get there.

5. If you cannot (and don’t want to) keep up with the quantity of output made possible by AI, you can—and absolutely should—focus on the QUALITY.

Books are not widgets. You are not Lucy at the candy factory. If you’re on this mailing list, have been a student, client, or program participant, chances are EXCELLENT that you’re not writing just to make money, with no care for the people who come to your pages, hopeful and excited to be dazzled. You do it for so many reasons, and those reasons should be your touchstones.

No one can rob you of your passions, your experiences, your dreams. AI can’t feel the satisfaction of writing an indelibly gorgeous line or putting together plot pieces that create absolute frickin’ liftoff on the page. It can’t type the words “The End” and stare off into space with giddy wonder over this beautiful, HUMAN accomplishment.

You can. And you must.

And I’M here to read, to cheer you on, to carry the torch for you and help in any way I can.

Because I believe in the way your words, and your very real heart, can reach across miles and reach the heart of a person who needs that human recognition and connection now more than ever.

I believe in weird, brilliant, spectularly human YOU!