Today was going to be special. I was going to publish my 30th blog post, thus reaching a personal milestone of publishing one post every day in April.
As I have done in the last 30 days, I started by going through my running list of blog post ideas. For someone who has never managed to write consistently, a blog post idea tentatively titled "How I am building my writing habit?" caught my attention. I decided today was a good day to articulate all the things I did to build this daily habit of writing and publishing. My additional thoughts on the idea included a line on the role played by ChatGPT as my de facto personal editor.
I was not prepared for what happened next. Before I got to my 30th post which turned out to be something entirely different, I added a page on AI usage to my website and updated the homepage with an explicit goal on learning to write well as I build surajsudhakar.com, my home on the internet.
Eager to detail the small things that built my writing habit, I moved to the next step of my routine. I started closing down all the tabs open on my browser so that I could open a blank document and start writing.
One of the tabs open was Derek Sivers's website. I have often quoted Derek's TED talk on how to start a movement and his insight on why we are all not billionaires with perfect abs. I recently discovered his website, which has been nothing short of inspirational to me. His post on tech independence was the final push I needed to get my act together and start working on my website.
I have been returning to Derek's website, but I just could not remember why I had an open tab. I decided to scroll down to see if some link would help me recall why I had that tab open. I reached the end of the page, and while nothing rang a bell, I was surprised to see a link on AI Usage. Curious, I clicked.
In a nutshell, Derek talks about his use of AI on the website, and informs the reader that while he uses AI for research, all the words on his website are his. It was a revelation because I had often wondered about AI use but had not seen such a transparent declaration before. Derek gives credit to Damola for his page on AI use.
Not to leave this rabbit hole unexplored, I clicked on Damola and I was taken to the AI Manifesto. I was blown away by the idea: a page on every website explicitly mentioning how AI was used on that site. I was sold and decided that the first order of business was to build an /ai page for my online home.
Thanks to the AI manifesto, I discovered many other /ai pages and it was refreshing to read how many people out there are proud about publishing their words, and not just posting AI-generated content. Suddenly, I started feeling a pang of guilt.
Just 10 minutes earlier, I was all set to write about ChatGPT for taking on the role of my editor and now I was starting to feel guilty about using it. Damola's manifesto had a link to another post on how generative AI was killing the internet. It was a sobering read and a much-needed jolt to my system that one of my original goals was to learn to write well. Was the use of ChatGPT helping or hurting this personal goal of mine?
It is definitely helping me right now— ChatGPT's feedback edits are improving my writing by nudging me to be clearer and improve my tone. ChatGPT's ability to catch my spelling and grammar mistakes before I publish definitely helps with my confidence. But there is a definitive possibility that I become too dependent on ChatGPT if I don't put in the effort to improve my English.
And all of a sudden, I realized that I had set no goal on learning to write well, on my own. I am not going to stop using ChatGPT overnight, but during the next 12 months, I will put in the effort to better my grammar, learn the rules of writing well, and improve my vocabulary. I will have to remind myself that the goal of writing and publishing daily was not to work on my ability to use AI tools but to sharpen my own thinking and ability to communicate.
Writing well, on my own terms, starts today.
PS: I wrote this post with the help of ChatGPT — but the words, the guilt, and the commitment are all mine. /ai