Work in Progress

Ultraprocessed Fiction

Why do I write? I’ve been thinking about this question a lot after editing a manuscript that I am 100% sure was written by AI. This wasn’t my regular gig. I signed on to do a quick and anonymous proofread and wasn’t warned that the manuscript was written (or heavily assisted) by AI—but when you know, you know.

While I was reading it, I felt… nothing. Not moved by the prose or engaged by the characters or even interested in the story. I only finished it because I was being paid to. It felt like eating something that looks like food but has no taste or nutritional value and leaves you still feeling hungry. An ultraprocessed novel.

I don’t want this to turn into a rant—even though the whole experience made me feel both sad and angry—but it did make me wonder: why bother getting a robot to write a book for you? Besides the fact that the end product is the polar opposite of a work of art, what do you get out of the act of writing when you’re nothing but a bystander?

Money, maybe? Though I doubt it.

I know why I write, why I’ve always written: to wrestle with questions and issues that bother me, to engage with ideas. If I’m lucky, to create something beautiful that I can offer to others. Even so, having a finished product at the end is only a small part of why I do this. For me, the real point is in the act of getting there. The effort it costs me. The insight I gain.

Beethoven might feel like a tangent here, but bear with me

While I was editing the ultraprocessed novel, I (re)listened to a Beethoven quartet that I’d recently had the privilege of hearing in person. Anything by Beethoven makes me happy—more than that. It moves me in ways I can’t explain. Maybe because he put his soul into what he wrote, and it comes through in the music. That’s what’s really missing from AI writing: a soul.

And isn’t that the real point of writing, anyway? To expand our souls. To give readers a gift, a piece of writing that expands their souls. Maybe that sounds a little grandiose for one poor poem or novel, but I’ll bet Beethoven didn’t think so. More likely he saw it as his responsibility. Every piece of music he wrote had to achieve that, else it wasn’t worth presenting to the world.

Endurance sports might feel like a tangent here, but…

Running a marathon or doing an Ironman is not all that different from writing a novel. The training involves significant commitment, discipline, sacrifice and struggle just to get to the start line. Sound familiar, authors?

Race day is much like publication—no assurance of success just because you put in the work—and while that final product might seem on the surface to be the goal, in fact the real prize is in who you have to become to get there.

If you’re getting a machine to do your thinking for you, no matter how much money you might earn from the final product, you’re totally missing the point.

Right now it’s painfully obvious when someone has used AI to write something. Reading that novel has honed my radar; I can spot the ultraprocessed Twinkies in the space of a few sentences, sometimes even a few words.

But I imagine the day will come when the machines will be better at this job and we won’t be able to tell so easily. We’ll be able to feed it an idea and it will pop out a novel in the space of seconds. No effort on our part; no sweat or tears, no wisdom gained. We will have a finished product, but who will we have become?

And finally, a tangent (or two)

We are running our annual Darling Axe writing retreat in February 2027 on the Sunshine Coast. There are only three spots left, so if you’re interested, sign up soon.

And… I am thrilled to announce that my poetry collection, Chef, will be published in 2027 by Caitlin Press.

I leave you with a mosaic I spotted in Philadelphia:

The fact that someone spent a significant amount of time creating random beauty on a tiny side street makes me happy.

Let me know why you write. I’d love to hear about it.