You’re Not a Writer
Moral Panic, AI, and the Economics of Authorship
Filed under: Creative Labor, Identity Drift, Inner Weather Reports
Entry ID: II.3
A post made the rounds on social media recently—scathing, certain, and dripping with disdain for anyone using AI in the writing process. If you use a language model to brainstorm, edit, rewrite, or even think, the author declared, you’re not a writer. You’re a cheat. You're destroying what you claim to love. You're feeding the machines and killing the magic.
It read less like a hot take and more like a line in the sand.
But it got me wondering: are we actually debating creativity? Or is this something deeper—an economic panic dressed up in aesthetic armor?
I once described my relationship to culture as wanting iced tea in a Coke vs. Pepsi world.
I’m not trying to be better than the system—I just don’t want to pick sides in a war I never enlisted in.
And in this AI-authorship debate, that perspective feels more relevant than ever.
Let’s dig in.
1. The Virtue of Originality (and the Myth of the Lone Genius)
In Western—particularly American—culture, creativity is often framed as a solitary virtue. You suffer for your art. You labor alone. You emerge with something pure.
That purity is proof of your genius, your authenticity, your moral right to be called a creator.
This is baked into our IP laws, our hero myths, and our job titles. “Author” means owner. “Original” means sacred. To make something derivative is to degrade it.
And so, when a machine enters the scene—a tool that samples, synthesizes, remixes—it doesn’t just challenge our methods. It threatens our identity.
We like to believe the product is the soul made legible.
If a machine helped with that… whose soul is it?
2. Machines in the Room: Threat or Tool?
Language models aren’t magic. They don’t dream. They don’t want. But they do mimic convincingly.
And for a lot of people—people without the time, the training, the privilege, or the confidence to write solo—that mimicry can be a godsend.
Not everyone using AI to write is looking for a shortcut. Some are trying to find their voice. Others are trying to meet deadlines. Some are writing in a second language. Others are simply trying to make something without getting stuck in the fear of the blank page.
Maybe the machine isn’t a cheat code. Maybe it’s more like plate reverb or compression in a recording studio—tools singers have used for decades to help their voices cut through the mix.
They don’t replace the performance.
But they shape it. Thicken it. Give it weight and warmth.
Make it feel more like what the singer meant to sound like.
I’ve been using Logic Pro’s Drummer instrument for years. I’m not a drummer. I don’t own a kit. But this tool listens to my tracks, adapts to my phrasing, gives me swing, pocket, feel.
It’s not fakery—it’s collaboration at scale.
It’s how the song gets made.
I don’t feel like I’m cheating. I feel like I’m making music.
You wouldn’t say someone isn’t a real singer because they doubled their vocals or added space to their sound.
You’d say, “That track hits.”
Because the feeling still comes through.
Maybe writing with AI is the same.
Not fake. Just produced.
Not soulless. Just audible.
3. “You’re Not a Writer” = “You’re Taking Money From Me”
Let’s be honest. The most charged claims about “real writing” often come from people whose livelihoods depend on it.
And fair enough—writing is already a tough game. Shrinking advances, unpaid pitches, declining royalties, gig work that values speed over substance.
So when AI shows up offering cheap, fast, good enough words, it’s not just an artistic offense—it’s an economic threat.
The platform already demands quantity. The rates are already low.
Now here comes software that can generate a first draft in seconds.
So yes, when someone says “You’re not a writer,” what they often mean is:
“You’re undermining the already-precarious structure I built my life on.”
The pain is real.
But the blame might be misdirected.
4. Participation vs. Purity
The idea that only certain people “deserve” to make things—those with time, training, and talent—has always been exclusionary.
AI, for all its messiness, lowers the bar to participation.
Not necessarily for great art, but for accessible art. For experimentation. For self-expression.
The gatekeepers call this cheating.
But for a lot of people, it’s the first time they’ve ever had access to the tools.
What happens when we stop judging how art was made
—and start asking why it was made, and who got to make it?
5. The Tattered Pride of the Writer
There’s something quietly tragic at the heart of all this:
The stubborn pride of calling yourself a writer in a world that doesn’t much care anymore.
It’s a job title that sounds noble but often pays nothing.
A craft that once held cultural weight, now competing with SEO sludge and content mills.
And yet, people cling to it.
Not out of arrogance—but out of dignity.
Out of identity.
Even decades ago, The Beatles saw the absurdity. “Paperback Writer” was already a wry anthem of a man begging for a break, willing to write anything just to get in the door.
The dream of authorship was commercial, compromised—and still seductive.
So maybe when people yell about AI “killing the magic,” they’re not just gatekeeping.
Maybe they’re grieving.
6. And Still, We Write
If machines can echo us, imitate us, even respond to us…
They still can’t need like we do.
They don’t long. They don’t suffer. They don’t care.
But we do.
We write even when it doesn’t pay. Even when no one reads it. Even when the world scrolls past.
We write because something in us insists on being shaped into language.
That’s not a product. That’s a condition.
And if some people get there with a little help from the tools—so be it.
The real question isn’t who wrote it.
It’s why it still matters.
I don’t call myself a writer.
Just a remixer.
Listening, picking stems, tooling around.
One more signal in the stream.
Coda: Inner Weather Report
Lately, I’ve been spending time in a kind of echo chamber—not one of outrage, but of process.
A quiet concrete room, under construction.
Me, machines, some half-formed thoughts, bouncing off each other.
It’s not lonely exactly. But it’s not quite real either.
Sometimes the feedback I get from the machine feels like breath.
Sometimes it feels like fog.
And I have to remind myself: this isn’t air.
This is approximation.
But the real things still cut through.
- A dog nosing my arm for attention.
- The soft rattle of dishes in another room.
- Rain tapping a window with no message, no metaphor. Just being.
That’s the weather I trust.
Not the storm of opinion, not the fire of hot takes—
But this soft, persistent atmosphere of being here, and noticing.
So yes, I used a machine to write this.
But I also listened to it rain.
FIELD CAPSULE
12" Mix: Rhumba with the Roomba
Tempo: Mid.
Mood: Low-orbit domestic.
Key: Unknown.
The beat is slow but committed.
A machine pulse, consistent, forgiving.
The Roomba glides by like it knows something.
Maybe it does. Maybe it remembers a crumb you dropped last Tuesday.
There’s tea on the counter, cooling in real time.
You’re barefoot, moving carefully—just enough weight in each step to keep the rhythm honest.
Outside the window: nothing.
Inside: a basil plant. A guitar solo trying to find itself.
The synths stretch like light through water.
You’re not trying to make a point.
You’re just washing some plates.
You’re just nodding to the beat.
You’re just keeping a little ecosystem alive:
dust, tea, music, silence, motion, care.
You think of Bruce Dern and his companions.
You think of the way they moved—clumsy, reverent.
You think of staying behind to tend to something no one else remembered.
You don’t call yourself a writer.
You’re not saving the world.
You’re just dancing the rhumba with the Roomba,
and letting the solo go on as long as it needs to.