Why Writing Still Matters

With advancing artificial intelligence, the blank page may be more important than ever.

Writing away at the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, CA.

Writing is thinking.

That may be the simplest and most important reason writing still matters, especially now, when technology can compose an essay, summarize a book, finish our sentences, and make us sound more polished than we may actually be.

The danger isn’t that AI can write and make us look like we've been studying the greats for a lifetime. The danger is that we stop writing, and, in the process, we stop thinking for ourselves.

As a new school year approaches, the National Writing Project's Teacher Studio is returning to something at the heart of education: writing and the teaching of writing. From August 10th –14th, educators are invited to participate in the Writing Still Matters Challenge, inspired by the book Writing Still Matters: Improving Student Writing in an Age of AI and Beyond.

The title itself is a reminder.

A relic at the Henry Miller Memorial Library.

Writing is more than arranging words into grammatically correct sentences. And it's more than putting ink on paper. Writing is how we wrestle with ideas, clarify our thoughts, discover what we feel, and occasionally find something inside ourselves we didn’t know was there.

The blank page can be intimidating: "Now what?"

But the blank page can also be inspiring: "Look at all the space I have to write, doodle, draw... what a perfect place to bring my ideas and thoughts and dreams and goals and quotes and insights from others... to life!"

“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things,

literature, music - the world is so rich,

simply throbbing with rich treasures,

beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”

~ Henry Miller

The blank page gives us a chance to slow down and make choices. It gives us the freedom to decide what we actually want to say, and why. And the page gives us the opportunity to preserve and share our thoughts with others, as I'm doing here with you now.

But whatever you do, don't come lightly to the blank page!

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.”

~ Stephen King

Good storytellers are intensely curious. They notice more. They read more. They pay closer attention to the people around them. They become better writers by becoming better noticers.

Nature's living sculpture: a Juniper branch high over Olympic Valley, CA.

“If a writer stops observing he's finished.

Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.”

~ Ernest Hemingway

Writing teaches us to look again.

It turns observation into meaning and experience into story. It gives shape to memory. It allows us to change minds, win hearts, preserve history, challenge injustice, encourage someone who is struggling, or remind another human being that they're not alone.

"Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge,

a place where you can get away from the world.

The more closed in you are,

the more you’re forced back on your own imagination."

~ Stephen King

Lost in my Journal while camping out in Sierraville, CA.

Words can wound as well.

But in the right hands, they can work magic and lift a person’s spirit from hell to heaven.

If you want to be a better writer, don’t take words for granted. Make your words sizzle off the flatness of the page and sparkle through your reader’s mind like lightning bugs in a bottle. Resolve to read good books and study how words perform for the masters. Write as often as possible. If you do the work, you'll become a better writer.

This is why young people need the opportunity to follow their curiosity, develop an original voice, and experience what it feels like to write something that truly belongs to them.

Leonidas: a thousand storms have tried to break him, yet this ancient Juniper still commands the ridge.

AI can be a valuable collaborator and catalyst. It can help us research, question, revise, and improve. But it shouldn't steal away the struggle that produces original thought.

Students should learn how to embrace these remarkable new tools and the latest technology without becoming tools of the technology itself.

Write and write and write some more. Write in a journal. Tell a story. Describe something you noticed today. Write a letter to someone you love. Cross out the weak words, circle the honest ones, and keep going until you feel and hear your voice on the page. It's a clarifying experience, not just a way to produce content. It's a way to remain curious, awake, aware, and original. And, ultimately, writing is a way to remain unmistakably human.

Writing still matters because we still matter.

All photographs by Michael Kennedy (unless otherwise noted) / BlueWolfGallery.com

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I’m Michael Kennedy, a resident of Olympic Valley, CA (in photo above). I’m a writer and photographer and I love exploring nature and getting lost along the way. We live in a world that demands our attention and I just want to say thank you for your attention. If you enjoyed this post, please share with a friend. For more photos and stories visit BlueWolfGallery.com.