Thursday, 8.47pm
Sheffield, U.K.
There are no shortcuts in evolution. – Louis D. Brandeis
Someone on LinkedIn said something today that was pretty insightful.
Why do people use AI to write stuff when they don’t read stuff written by AI?
Taking a step back, why do people write books when it’s clear they don’t read them?
We spend our time creating things for one of two reasons: we either want to; or we want something else that we think we will get if people think we have created something.
Let’s say you want to write a book.
Do you want to spend every spare moment creating words on paper or on the screen?
Do you think about what you’re going to write when you take a walk, when you have a spare moment?
Are you the kind of person who thinks about writing when you should really be paying attention to your family?
Then you’re probably the kind of person whose drive to write comes from inside – if you didn’t write you’d burst.
Others write books because they see it as a business card – a way to sell something or be able to say they’re a published author.
There’s a formula to writing these books – one that’s been refined ever since the days of the little blue books.
You can tell that a book is one of these in an instant.
I picked one up in the library the other day – a cover that had a hook, the required endorsements – then I looked inside and recoiled.
You could instantly see that it was full of bland and superficial advice – the kind of thing that sounds good but on a little thought is meaningless. The kind of advice where you could say the opposite and still be right.
I’m not saying that every book has to be complicated prose and great ideas – those are hard work too.
I’ve struggled to get through a few that seem to have good ideas but take too long to get around to the key points.
The thing about good writers is that they are readers and appreciate an author that makes it easy for them to read and understand interesting ideas.
We don’t want impenetrable prose.
We don’t want useless advice.
We want to be intrigued, to have our preconceptions challenged and learn something new.
A writer doesn’t get to do that overnight – not even by turning into a robot.
It takes time to grow into the person you are going to be – to find your voice and style and get comfortable being yourself.
There are no shortcuts.
And I think that that applies to learning a skill, creating software and anything else that requires you to put in the time to get good at something.
We need to learn to tell the difference between something that makes it easier to get something done – and the things that try to do what you want to do.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 