There was a time, not very long ago, when people would ask me, “What do you do?†and I would say, a tad shyly, because in my opinion, what I did wasn’t yet the biggest thing after sliced bread or before Google — “I write.†But apparently, it was a big thing then. Not everyone could coherently string thoughts and communicate them with clarity and panache. Not everyone could weave narratives that touched hearts. So when I said I wrote, people’s eyes would widen with amazement, some dropped their jaws, and others looked at me as if I could stand apart even in a carnival.
Writing, at that time, was as wondrous an occupation as chasing fireflies in the dark — elusive, luminous, and ignited from within. It breathed on its own and needed no ventilators or oxygen masks. It reflected the inner world in a cadenced manner. It described external wonders in a kaleidoscopic combination of phrases and words that only a wordsmith could summon in moments of deep contemplation.
Those days, alas, are gone. Now, hundreds of writers are born every moment. Stories appear like graffiti on a goods wagon and the reverence a genuine literary voice once evoked has dimmed. For every writer who labours for hours to craft a story, a new one now emerges in a jiffy, built from a few prompts. Today, the writer of yore stands like a lone artisan at a digital assembly line, watching machine-made marvels flood the shelves, while they still shape sentences by hand, chiselling meaning out of silence and memory. This is not a declaration drawn from hubris or conceit. It comes from a place of doubt, and a fear of becoming inconspicuous. It arises from a vulnerable spot that throws up a question aloud: In a world where beautiful language is freely available, where anyone can sound ‘writerly’ and poetic, how do I remain distinct? How do I continue to speak in a voice that carries the textures of a human soul? The angst is genuine, and it has already started to show on my nerves whenever I sit down to write.
What if my writing doesn’t surprise or matter to my readers any longer? Should I follow the trend and adopt the technologies to stay relevant, or continue in a voice so innately mine that anything else would feel synthetic and devoid of life? I do not have clear-cut answers to the predicament I find myself in. But this much I know: In a world where machines can become anything but human, I need to be more human than ever. I must feel deeper, process my emotions in a legitimate way no prompt can replicate and write with an openness no automation can emulate. I need to push myself to a point where, like Hemingway, I sit at the computer and just bleed. Word by word. Line by line. Squeezing my veins to get the essence of my thoughts out because it is the only way I know to be true. Some argue that the soul of the story is still theirs, that the thoughts are their own, and that all they ask of AI is a little literary finesse. A polish. A ribbon tied around their raw words. And perhaps that is harmless. Perhaps it even helps those who never had the means to say things beautifully, finally find a way to be heard. But for someone like me, whose entire being has been devoted to how something is said — to cadence, rhythm, nuance, and texture — I worry.
Not because others now write well, but because what once set me apart is becoming commonplace. I worry about the slow dilution of literary effort. The waning of the meditative solitude that writing demanded. These may soon be seen as obsolete habits. That my labour will be deemed superfluous. And yet, I cannot do it any other way. I still believe in the contemplative pause between paragraphs; in the tear that wells up uninvited when a sentence lands right; and in the thrill I feel when I end a piece with a final flourish.
Maybe this aching need to feel every word before I write it is what will remain mine. Perhaps, the only way to stay authentic now is not to write differently, but to feel more deeply. To be imperfect, sometimes messy and rough-edged. Because if there’s one thing I still trust, it’s this: Readers may forget ornate phrases, but they will never forget how I made them feel — with a voice that has been echoing long enough to still be heard.
(The author is a Dubai-based columnist, independent journalist, and writing coach. Views are personal)
