Yesterday, I wrote my first technical draft on what I was working on with the goal to share it publicly on here (well using an account dedicated to technical post), and did not realize how wanting to sound perfect actually steal the ''my voice" in the paper. Although 80 % of the content was my own writing, the fact that it was run in a LLM enginee for grammar and vocabulary cross-check, made it failed the "probable written by AI " metric; and it was rejected.
I am not complaining, well, it was kinda my fault after all cause the instructions did specify the no-use of LLM, when sending first post. And the rejection made me think: why did I even need the AI to validate what I worked on?
The scary part, is I love writing, I have been writing blogs and all sort of things since I can't even remember. Have some think pieces on popular sites, and other personal blog that I used to share. And you know, before 2023, my writing was so good that I rarely had to have a second read or correction to make sure the flow stays consistent, since english is my 4th language. I always sought external review or check with tools like : Grammarly or Quilbot, for mistakes or grammars misphrasing. But now, this "superskill" has faded away, like seriously. I can't even write a 1000 words think piece, without needing or wanting to know what AI thinks or how it could have phrase it better, even for my emails. I can't write poems as before, without sounding generic, and this is mainly because I have now trained my brain to rely on these automated tools that It can not be creative anymore or think of itself. My writing has deterioted, I attempted to write a slam-poem, recently for a competition I wanted to partake in, and upon the completion when I read it, my reaction was : Who is this? Who wrote this? This is bad !
Before, I would sit and write a piece and I kid you not, the first draft was always perfect that I rarely had to write, and my best poem that got me to some "art"ies festival, was just written while I was sitting outside my hostel, with a piece of paper and a pen, and a thought that was bothering me. But now, I am slowly realizing, it has been changing in negative way.
Sorry that this sounds like a rant, well, it is one ! But like, my point was to share it out loud, and kinda know if I am the only person experiencing this or if there are others? And for people who successfully taken back their creative writing skills, how did you do it?
This post, is written without any tools assistance I just wrote what my brain is instructing to type (might not reread it before posting). Obviously, you would see some mistakes, some paraphrasing issue, some article misuse; I personally do not see them but, hey, I am not expert in literature. So bear with me, also, I think that is the beauty of writing, the raw , unedited emotions of the person behind every words either for entertainment or educational purposes, is what makes it special.
So, thank you ''LessWrong" moderators, for rejecting my first draft, it is kinda a wake up call that made me realize, maybe I just need to be focusing on my own voice, and there is nothing wrong into sounding "more or less wrong". Yeah, I know, people advocate into embracing AI as it would be/is in every aspect of our life, but maybe it is good that most of us do not let this technology rephrase our own thought. Cause those words, that the AI told you: sound wrong or aggressive or less formal, are the ones that carry the ''emotions", you ought to share.
Have a productive week, dear reader !
P.S: If you see this! I am celebrating. It means, I passed the text. Yay!