Hello world!

Why I Can’t Be A Lone-Wolf Wordsmith Anymore

Confession: I’ve gotten kicked out of almost every group I’ve ever joined. Six, to be precise. Not fired, exactly, or exiled. More like made to feel uncomfortable and subtly shown that my ideas and contributions were not welcome…

…because I have a lot of them! 

A lot of ideas. And a lot of comments, mostly encouraging but occasionally adding a point I feel the author might have overlooked.

Most of my previous groups were spiritual or metaphysical, and looking back, I can see why my perspective was too idiosyncratic to fit with the group ethos.

But I’ve never been a part of a group of writers, of wordsmiths, of people who love communication as much as I do – who like ideas and discussing them. And to be honest, this is a challenging moment for writers. I feel we need support. 

The age of AI is calling us to that. If we want to go the way of cooking (still important and a viable way to make a living), and not barrel-making (did you know that’s what the surname “Cooper” means?), we have to adapt. We have to make the human element more relevant and important than ever! 

Which I think it is. Here are my first two ideas on why: 

1. Humans need support from other humans to reach their highest potential – At the moment in mid-2026, AI is too much of a cheerleader and not enough of a critic. While AI can polish prose in a millisecond, it spends too much time telling people how great they are (so we’ll keep using it) and not enough time telling us the truth about how we and our project need to be better. Don’t doubt yourself! Your human-centered carrot and cattle-prod are still needed.
2. Current AI ideas are largely conventional and full of holes – I’ve gotten the best audience response from articles where I disagreed with what AI told me. When I took AI advice, my work blended in with the crowd – no wonder because they’re all asking AI, too and it is trained on what humans have already written. If we want to lead our fields, catch readers’ attention, and make our own contribution, we can’t rely on AI. At the moment, at least, AI is always reining you back to the group. Try asking yourself:

• What is this idea missing? How is it conventional, expected, or unimaginative?
• How can my human brain, inspiration, or wisdom add to this?
• What does my lived experience and critical analysis tell me about whether this is true? (Did you know that if you ask AI whether you should drive your car to the carwash, it will consistently tell  you to walk because it’s better exercise?)

This isn’t to say AI isn’t helpful. I think it’s a great tool and a godsend for many people who have specific challenges that make writing difficult. Personally, I’m a nut for AI’s research capacities.

But the development of processed food did not make human cooks obsolete because human cooking tastes better and is healthier than machine-made food.

“But what about ketchup?” you say…

Let me try again. 

The best human cooking takes machine-produced food and combines it with human inspiration, skill, and a refined palette to create something even better. How about that? I think many would agree that processed condiments, global communication, and human cooking has generated an era of delicious eats!

How can we move from awe at what AI is able to do towards identifying how human writers and editors add irreplaceable value? What is our special sauce?

I like to use AI for background research and fact-checking my intuition (I almost used “wagon-building” instead of “barrel-making” in the paragraph above, and I wanted to make sure that “Wainwright” really was the right surname). 

But I enjoy connecting with my inspiration and producing all the prose myself.

What are you better at than AI is? How can you merge those two pools of value – however you most enjoy – and create something you are proud of and your audience likes?

So “Hello, World of NAIWE writers and editors.” I think we have a lot in common. I hope we’ll have fun discussing how we can support each other to make human-centered, human-produced, and human-edited writing inspiring, healing, entertaining, and enlightening. 

I’m all in on that! Looking forward to getting to know you all…

Best Wishes, Robin

 

#NAIWE #humancenteredwriting