I have been trying to slow down when it comes to writing. Since ChatGPT came out, I too have unfortunately been at the mercy of the temptation to generate parts of my texts using the chatbot, in an attempt to get things done faster.
Probably somewhere along the way, the enjoyment I derived from the process of writing itself diminished. I cared more about the final product instead of also enjoying the journey to get there.
Partly because I am motivated by the drive to make a bit of money from my words, and partly because my dopaminergic system has gone haywire.
So today I am trying to be more present, and to pay attention to the series of moments from one thing to another.
I could have taken the bus to get to the Indigo Hotel’s bar at which I am currently typing away. That would be much faster, and I would have started on my screen earlier.
But I am glad I decided to take a long and rewarding walk from my room all the way here.
I began at the Avenue with my recently bought trainers.
The sun was shining brightly, with rays of sunlight directly lasered into my eyes. Well that’s only because I chose to look straight into the radiant sphere of fire.
The houses were neatly lined up on both sides of the Avenue, with occasional crossing from one part of the Avenue to the next. Usually the houses right before and after the crossing are tilted at a 45 degrees angle. They also seemed to be a bit bigger, and were adorned with vertically well-kept bushes, secluding the house from the hustle and bustle of the car engines.
After the Avenue, I treaded through the traffic, pressed a few more light buttons when waiting patiently at the pedestrian crossings, before tunneling through a private woodland.
The congregation of trees with muddy roads deep in the woods had its entrance right next to the gas station and a mini shop, where the most unhealthy and chemically engineered food-like substances were sold to passers-by drivers.
The shop had this bright green color as its accent in contrast to the luscious hues of dark green and light green from the leaves of the trees. It was as if Nature herself was beckoning me into her soulful embrace. Man’s endeavour to imitate Nature always falls short, evidently.
So one step after another, my shoes were getting progressively muddier and muddier. There were patches of wet soil on the ground, which upon stepping, would make you drop a few centimetres like quicksand trying to engulf you. Except it’s much more gentle, and definitely not fatal.
If there had been heavy precipitation at night, my socks would eventually feel the moisture of Nature through the soles.
At times I’d stop at a particularly strong and big tree. Under the canopy, I could lean against it. Or I could flat out lie down. Sometimes my back could feel the little spikes from the plants or the small rocks beneath, or if I was lucky, I’d have a comfortable grounding session.
When I looked up, I could see the sparkles of daylight filtered through the interlocking leaves. As the wind blows by, they wobbled, and the lights seemed to flicker.
When I attended school, I’d have English class every day. About once every two weeks, we’d have a 2-hour session on ‘English Composition’. No we didn’t make music, but we did put together strings of texts into meaningful writings. It was honestly my favorite class. I always looked forward to it.
We wrote across genres, covering many topics. Our work was graded out of a full mark of 60, and we were told that a mark above 40 is excellent work.
I was a bit of a bookworm back then, and every page that I flipped through cemented my literary foundation of the English language. Thanks to my continuous effort in polishing my craft, I think I was the only one in the first year of school to achieve a mark of 50 out of 60 in the composition component of the final exams.
I was so proud of myself.
The difference was that I wrote by actually writing with a pen or a pencil. I don’t really do that anymore, and I suppose neither do most writers on Medium and other popular blogging platforms.
There’s something about looking at a blank piece of paper, and writing out each word letter by letter. It’s void of distractions, especially in a classroom setting. I couldn’t reach for my phone, let alone the non-existent ChatGPT back in the 2010s. It’s me against my thoughts. It’s me against the paper. Everything that flows from my stream of consciousness is a direct product of wrestling with one’s imagination, creativity and existing knowledge.
It’s confined to a finite amount of information, yet it seems to yield better results. More genuine. More original. More personal.
So it’s my goal to reinstate that frame of mind, where I can be present when I write. Where I find joy in the simple act of thinking what words to utter in the next line. I no longer want to reach for ChatGPT whenever I hit a mild mental roadblock about the right phrases to use. I know there’s value in exercising my own mind to create something beautiful. Something that speaks to the souls of fellow humans.
Any piece of writing is fundamentally some arrangement of nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, phrases, connectives, punctuations, and so on. The possibilities are infinite. Of course, within such infinitude, the likes of ChatGPT, in my opinion, can never dominate the full spectrum of arrangements of words. Their own coverage would still be infinite, of course. Except, some infinities are greater than others.
I think of ChatGPT’s ability to generate any arbitrary arrangements of texts as all the numbers between any two integers, say one and two. Well there’s infinitely many numbers there, but that’s it. It can never in a million years reach anything above 2 or below 1. All that’s out there resemble the boundless sum total of human potential, human creativity, human ideas.
The antidote to wanting to resort to ChatGPT starts from reading. By reading, I mean physical books written by real humans.
Recently I have been reading the prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins.
Certainly, I can’t focus as much or for as long like I used to in school. But I am actively trying to change that. To reduce screen time and to engage with my brain more.
Here’s a cool word from the book I learnt that I could remember off the top of my head — “magnanimous”.
A “magnanimous” person is someone who is generous, kind and forgiving towards a rival or an enemy. Such a person radiates a noble spirit.
I guess I will end my article here. I know it’s somewhat an abrupt end but yeah writing is not hard, but good writing is intentional, and requires effort, and most importantly, huamn.
Thank you.