Why Your Writing Doesn't Work Alone - It Needs A Real Person

Anyone who reads my nonfiction work will believe me to only speak to writers, and they couldn't be more wrong.

Too many people believe that writing is something only a small subset of people does. That only those dedicated to the craft of narrative, or marketing, or social media engage in the act of putting pen to paper.

It also doesn't help that the proliferation of AI in the cultural zeitgeist. Regardless of where one falls on the subject, it's clear that many engaging with the conversation believe that AI models have long replaced writers.

Yet, that isn't true. An agency I used to freelance for adopted these models early on to replace their writers. Several years later, that agency is closed, and I am still here, writing for others.

This is because an ideal writing approach does not work without a person. It amplifies their strengths and mitigates their weaknesses.

While some folks believe this skill to be outdated, or perhaps even replaced by LLM's, that couldn't be further from the truth.

Today, in the Digital Age, it is more important than ever to write.

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Have you ever struggled with the rules and regulations in place in an institution? Ever wondered why laws or requirements are as complicated as they are, or why things move at a snail's pace while people work through what feels like a miasma of red tape?

Lord knows I have. It sucks.

But those guiderails exist for a reason. Regardless of whether the reasons are still appropriate is a different conversation, and depends on the institution in question, but the general rule remains the same: someone enacted those rules because they thought it would help.

Systems-focused thinkers - the kind of folks you might think I view as peers - will look to solve problems with rules and organizations, designing things in such a way that the "average person" cannot achieve a negative outcome.

Society does this for long enough, and it reaches a point where everyone is treated as ineffective at everything. It's why the IT professional at work asks you if you've plugged everything in and have turned the computer on when you ask them why the drivers for your proprietary software won't update.

Some tech-illiterate buffoon couldn't figure out that their PC needs electricity to work, and it will forever be your problem now.

Imagine, instead, if this IT professional knew you understood the basic concept of electrical currents and their effects on computers. Imagine that this professional, knowing this, dives sooner into the problem at hand rather than wasting your time, energy, and patience with things you've already done.

In other words, imagine they met you where you were at with your problem, rather than going down the checklist that covers all the moronic issues first.

That ideal - a system that meets people where they are at - is humanistic design. It's a system that treats people as competent, thinking individuals, and not annoyances to what could be a perfect system.

This is the approach I take to writing systems. I don't make rules, I make guidelines. Not ideal outcomes, but rather frameworks someone can piece together to best fit their reality. My goal with this newsletter, and really any time I talk about the craft of writing, is to make it seem like anyone can do it with the right frameworks because they can.

My systems work to show people that, with the right mindset and with the right tools, you can reduce the barrier of entry to writing and, therefore, achieve all the positive outcomes the act of writing has provided for humans for millennia.

I come to people with things that reduce their cognitive load associated with starting the task, and they get the benefits of organizing their thoughts and understanding the world around them.

In a technologically advancing world, the speed of pen on paper will feel antiquated compared to the speed of the Internet. When everyone has the ability to take out their phone, yap into the camera, and post it all in the span of a few minutes, why would anyone want to take the time to write their thoughts?

Because you'll learn far more that way than doing any other form of asynchronous communication.

The fast pace of the modern world makes it easy to immerse oneself in endless, multivariable content. You can go from educational information to inspirational speeches to deep delves into niche topics in the span of seconds. Mankind, through its development of electronic interconnectivity over the last century, radically changed its access to information in ways we were both well and ill-equipped for.

Heightened access to information makes those who want to be sharper utilize the information that hones them. It allows those who need distractions or entertainment after a long shift at work to better slip into that restorative state. It makes the biggest parts of what we can perceive feel small.

But that access comes at a cost. You can algorithmically silo yourself into topics, perspectives, or distractions that you never intended. That isolation, regardless of mindset, topic, or intention, shapes you, gives you the ammunition you believe you need to contend with the world, even if you haven't thought it through.

And how could you have thought it through? You moved from idea to idea, concept to concept, in a way that no human had access to before the most recent generations. The modern world doesn't force you to contend with depth unless you specifically choose to.

But, when the most accessible forms of media don't ask you to do so, let alone reward you for it, why would you even bother?

The search for the answer to that last question is why I write this newsletter. Why would someone choose to slow down, to seemingly revert back to an archaic form of communication with themselves or others, when the Digital Age rewards you for doing the opposite?

While I have had the benefit of having an enjoyment of writing my whole life, that isn't the case for most. Most folks are apathetic at best, or disdainful at worst, to the practice. After all, writing is that thing teachers made you do in some arcane quest to "educate" you, right?

Yet time and again, writing shows up as one of the foundational ways to change one's life. There is detailed research to show how writing allows for the creation of patterns in one's mind. How a simple journaling practice can lead to mental clarity not seen in other productivity habits.

I saw that outcome in myself. Though my relationship with journaling was touch-and-go before my 4C's system, I still knew the benefit of writing every day. In high school, I would write short passages of prose or simply sequences of rhyming quartets based on what I thought about between assignments in school. I still have those poems, saved between my old notebooks and Google Drive, a burgeoning service at the time (in case you needed further proof of my age).

But go beyond the academic or the anecdotal for a moment, and consider another question: why do we tell stories?

More specifically: why does mankind love stories?

Because stories are relatable. Humans, the communal creatures that we are, want to know not just the information held within the story, but how the elements and characters of those stories relate. Stories mimic the way humans speak and think in a low-stakes way, similar to how games let our minds wander in new ways.

Stories, like games, despite their childish associations, never lose their hold because they are precisely the kind of thing our minds crave: relations and explorations of the world in a novel, exciting, low-stakes way.

So, when you engage in stories, and therefore writing, as either the writer or the reader, you practice the experience of human life without risking yourself.

With enough practice, that translates into real-world skills. Someone who understands the plights of others by way of seeing character arcs laid out in a story becomes better able to adopt the characteristics of empathy and thereby be more empathetic. Someone who sees how the systems of a fantasy world come together to inform its setting sees the ways in which real-life systems can do the same, and thereby better adopt the manners of a big-picture thinker.

The only difference between the readers who make this switch and those who don't is that those who don't know the possibility of bringing facets of what they read into reality exists.

Imagine that you have a recurring problem in your life. Borrow one that you experience now, if need be.

Then, imagine two different states: one in which you have a written record of all the times this problem arose that you handwrote, and the likely reality that you haven't done that.

Keep that in mind as I ask this next question: how often do you feel annoyed having to do things that you don't like over and over again?

If you're like me, the answer is often and with great indignation. There are few people I've met that don't get frustrated at all with having to do things in life they believe they shouldn't have to do because of its illogical nature. If you don't want to do something, and if that task doesn't feel relevant to your life or survival, why are you doing it?

Go back to our imagined state from earlier, where you have a written record of all the times you had the same problem you encountered that you didn't solve. Are you likely to be happy to be writing down that problem for the hundredth time? I imagine that, for most, the tenth time was the breaking point.

That's what problem-solving without a written record is like. Is the vague annoyance at something you experience, but cannot quantify. It is a rage against a series of unknown unknowns because that person chose, unknowingly or not, to stay in the unknown.

And yet, people choose to stay this way. When faced with the answer of what a written record, some sort of journal or log, could do for their ability to effect change in their lives, people will choose to avoid or ignore it for all sorts of reasons.

The whys of this aren't important for this piece. The fact that the behavior exists is proof of what happens when the opposite occurs. When you write, when you codify your experience into physical form, and make it real and known to your consciousness and to the world.

Imagine the misalignments to be righted with that level of information. AI, in its strengths, cannot live and record your life for you. It only understands the world through the lens that you give it, which, for most, is the scant sentences they type into a chatbox.

AI has no eyes, no desires, no life to live. It exists as an amalgamation of thoughts, ideas, and data tasked with helping you to the best of its ability. You are the one who has to act in your life.

Writing your life down surfaces those revelations.

What the folks are doing as they record their lives in writing is more than the creation of a reference of their life at various points in time, then. They are recording the data necessary to provide themselves with an easier path from problem to solution.

In other words, they are making it easier for patterns to rise to the surface of awareness, and thereby have the first step done in solving a problem: knowing it exists.

Reflect back to earlier when I described the hypothetical of trying to solve an issue without understanding its existence. The person in that example angers and flails as they try to solve a problem they have, not knowing how long they've had it or what the root cause of that issue is.

Even if the journaling, or whatever other record this person could have made, didn't cover the issues in this level of depth, the hints to its existence are there. That person, going back and rereading earlier passages, would have the benefit of hindsight. They would be able to see the patterns that emerge, and offer themselves a chance, in that reflection, to prevent that problem in the future.

Without the record, the journal, whatever it is, this isn't possible in this example. They have no way to hold all those memories all at once, in perpetuity, until such a point that they seek to fix their problem. It isn't humanly possible.

We know this isn't humanly possible because of writing's existence. If mankind could recall and communicate perfect recollection of all things at all times, we'd never have the need to make a written record. It'd be too much work for no obvious gain.

Sure, there's an argument that the asynch communication is helpful because you wouldn't have to take time and energy to speak, but you'd still need to commit that same time and energy to write, so why bother? It wouldn't make sense.

So, given that we live in a reality where humans don't have this capability by default, writing remains the best way to record and reflect on these patterns. And yet, as mentioned already, people still don't do this.

For some, it's a lack of knowledge. For most, I argue the problem is deeper.

Most folks associate writing with discomfort. They think back to schooling or other enforced applications of writing, and default their emotions on the craft to that experience. Asking this kind of person to record their thoughts is like asking them to go back to middle school when they learned how to write in paragraphs.

It's busywork, an imposition, something of that nature. Unnatural to their experience.

That sort of person is more likely to be convinced to give writing another shot by something like this letter than the other type of pushback people have against writing. I have no data on this, but I would wager that this second group I refer to is where the vast majority of people are with writing.

I believe more people disengage from writing not because of its associations with schoolwork, but its ability to expose.

I hear people complain about the idea of having to write something out, whether it's an email, a project document, or any other form of imposed work. Yet, when that same person receives a text, they're more than happy to reply to that person with another text.

Writing an email and writing a text are both acts of writing. The only difference is the emotional layer wrapping the act. That person wants to text their loved one because it feels good, but doesn't want to send the work email because it feels bad.

So, when someone advocates that that same person should write something for themselves, and the person receiving the advice pushes back, it can't be the literal act of writing presenting the problem, then. If this person disliked writing, they'd call the person sending them texts back to avoid typing out the text, just like they avoided the email.

But they don't. They text back.

So, we have to look at what happens when you write for yourself as the cause of the distress or resistance, then. And, as described earlier, you can't write about your life for an extended period of time without presenting to your future self all the ways that you have failed or have experienced hardship and still create that record. Even the filthiest of liars will expose themselves in the gaps they create in their journal.

And how do most people react when they discover they're the ones causing issues in their lives? Anger, frustration, dismissal... emotions we've talked about throughout this letter, but now pointed at oneself, rather than the world.

If this person was avoiding things that bothered them before from the outside world, why would we think anything else would happen when that stressor is themselves? It only makes sense that they would avoid taking the action that further reveals the pain when they already display avoidant behaviors.

So, they do precisely that, consciously or not. They avoid creating a record of themselves because the shortcomings and bad habits are intuitively known to be laid bare by the act of writing them down.

They see, or feel, that connecting mind to world through the act of writing lays the truth bare, and that scares people.

Ask me how I know. Even as a writer, I still fear going back and going into previous works. I immediately see where I erred in weaving fiction or in approaching problems in life.

And yet I do it anyway, to be better. To be more real.

The advocacy I've done in this letter isn't like those that came before. I'm comfortable writing about systems and processes as someone who's always had the mind for it. I don't like to waste effort, and I don't like others to waste theirs either, so you get the framework write-ups from before.

But this letter isn't about a framework. It's about getting into something else: that your writing cannot succeed unless you approach it with the understanding that it will change you, if given time and effort.

Not because the act of writing causes direct, physical metamorphosis. Rather, it comes from the human mind's ability to recognize patterns, to use hindsight, and to understand the change between what was and what is.

We have instincts about our gaps and gains over time, and what we should be doing. Regrets and redirections, the lies we dislike others for doing against us, hurt even more when done by ourselves to ourselves.

And in the modern era, that deception isn't a crisis to the degree that we claim others are, because it feels small to look at the personal when the world is interconnected to a level never seen before.

Yet, time and again, I see evidence that understanding yourself, what makes you tick, and what your shortcomings are is the best practice one can take to not just survive, but also thrive in that environment.

So, for those that seek a more honest truth: be more honest with yourself. Lay out what you do and what you think as often as you can, and review those writings every few weeks.

Allow yourself to be someone who can contend with themselves, and therefore, the world.

The detailed ones. The ones with examples and edge cases. Wispr Flow lets you speak them instead — clean, structured, ready to paste into any AI tool. Free on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.

Try Wispr Flow free