In the age of AI, how does one even call themselves an authentic writer?
That’s the challenge I have been dealing with for the last two months. You see, two months ago, I was put on “floating status” by my boss of almost nine years. She said the company was going to rely more heavily on AI copywriting, and she’d be calling me if there was something specific that she needed me to work on.
And just like that, I was… unemployed. Left in the lurch with bills to pay and a massive need to eat. Worse, I was booted out on the day I returned from a family trip to Shanghai. I used my buffer fund for that trip and came home almost empty.
I didn’t have time to grieve this loss. My financial situation meant I had to scramble. Fast. So I went to the freelancing sites I used to haunt almost a decade ago, reached out to former clients and contacts, trawled through LinkedIn.
It’s brutal out there.
Twenty years of writing professionally, nine of which specifically in digital marketing, and there’s nothing for me so far. I was either too old, overqualified, or not qualified for the work I was applying for. Also, most of the jobs out there either require you to rely on AI or avoid writing with AI like the plague.
I know how to use AI. Actually, I should have seen my situation coming when my boss began insisting on using AI for creating copy and graphics back in 2024. The writing was on the wall, but I got lulled by assurances that I was considered irreplaceable.
I know how to use AI. I consider ChatGPT my digital assistant, a tool I use for doing research, brainstorming ideas, and creating copy. And before you come at me, I had to write with AI because it’s what the boss and the pace at work demanded.
But my boss fell in love with Claude and gave it my job. And… well, here I am, complaining about life on my blog.
Since then, I’ve been trying to wean myself off AI-assisted writing. Here are a few realizations.
AI brain rot is real.
I used to write poetry and short fiction. I had a vocabulary that allowed me to weave words together like flowing lace.
Not anymore. Now I struggle to put words together without running to AI to check if my sentence structure and grammar are correct. It’s so messy that it makes me want to cry.
I’ve become suspicious of my own writing.
Because the job market is miserable and there seems to be nothing out there for me, I decided to create my own work by writing e-books. (That’s a process I’m going to talk about later.)
But I’m compelled to keep an AI checker app open while I’m working because I don’t trust my own writing anymore. And you know what’s crazy about it? The app has never given me a 100% human result yet, even if I wrote the entire block of text I had it check from scratch. It’s ridiculous.
My confidence as a writer is fractured.
I have built my entire life and identity on the belief that I was a good writer. I’ve been writing since elementary school, and I’ve been told time and time again that I was good. So, I believed it.
I’ve been a writer my whole life. I was a student journalist both in high school and college. I have a degree in journalism. For my first job, I worked as a part-time editorial assistant in a magazine. I didn’t become a full-fledged journalist, but I was writing my entire career, both in the corporate and the freelance sphere.
AI made me doubt myself.
But… it’s not over yet.
This is the first piece of copy that I have written straight up without AI in years. I just let my consciousness flow and my fingers work the keyboard.
It feels good.
AI is here to stay. There’s no denying that anymore. Even I can’t totally give up AI. But as long as I have that spark and that willingness to fight for my own corner, I can still call myself a writer. I am a writer.
Want to work with a storyteller who can write with or without AI? Contact me or hire me here.
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