Exploding into my (new) writing life

Oftentimes I find that waiting a while to write a blog post changes its direction somewhat, but makes it feel truer to myself and the moment. This particular one originated in about 495993 angry notes on my phone, until they swelled to a size that felt impossible to tame. If I had written this a few months ago, it would most likely have been an essay about how lonely I've felt the last couple of years in my bone-deep hatred for generative AI – most people were seemingly enthusiastic adopters, and others were of the less enthusiastic but not really seeing the problems variety. (The draft was titled "The peculiar loneliness of hatingshunning AI"). It's not the first time I've felt like an outlier, and it won't be the last, but knowledge is usually my response to feeling alienated. So I informed myself, and the more I informed myself, the stronger my convictions became. 

Anyway.

At this point in time, I don't feel like an outlier. The tide has turned, and I see my stance reflected everywhere, including, fortunately, among my close friendships. I'm loud about my views, and everyone who interacts with me in any way probably knows them. But entangled in all this is my currently grim-but-hanging-in-there career, obviously. In the last few months, I have, for one reason or another, found myself devoid of my regular clients that I've worked with since 2023 – the year when I finally started to find my footing and my purpose as an independent writer and editor (in the midst of a breaking marriage, no less), and also the year in which gen-AI began to rear its ugly head with its hideous zillion-legged bots and magical sparkly icons. This is all, to put it one way, inconvenient.

Let's rewind. One of the fallouts of this phase has been that I've put a lot of thought into who I want to be as a writer, and what I want to be known for. I made a list of everything I've published in the last 24 years, and the list is long. As a teenager, I was a prolific poet. I had some poems published in school and university magazines (alongside little essays and reviews and other pieces), but also in international publications. I was ambitious, and I wasn't afraid of feedback. You have to be a bad writer before you can be a good one. I served on editorial boards in school and college, and headed the Press at Model UN conferences across India. I started blogging 19 years ago, and without this, my uncensored little corner of the ethers, where I could express what I wanted in the way I wanted to, I'm sure I would have given up my writing journey a lot sooner. All of this taught me how to think, how to give form to my ideas, what I actually wanted to write about, and how to draft and structure so that people would want to read my sentences.

My professional career began in 2011, during the gap year I took between my Bachelor's and Master's degrees, with a paid internship at a UNESCO-affiliated project. Here, among other things, I was given the opportunity to write pieces that appeared in several magazines in India and abroad, in addition to conducting a few interviews and compiling and editing a publication inaugurated at an event at the India International Centre. It all feels fancy when it comes together, and usually not during the process. But we learn. After my return from London, I waited for months for the right job, knowing I had an overwhelming student loan for the foreseeable future, and unwilling to settle for jobs that paid what felt like chump change. Meanwhile, I founded and edited a magazine like I'd been dreaming of doing. Bricolage was a comparatively short chapter, one-and-a-half years, but it received love and was stimulating and attracted submissions from far-flung countries and even established writers and artists. We made no money and paid no one (it was all voluntary, like many online magazines of that day), but we were proud. Some of those contributors would become my clients years later. I tried to cast my net wider, writing a little for free, as those early in their writing journey do; applying for jobs, and wrestling with Skype during interviews.

I did get a job, of course. One usually does. It started as a freelance article (paid), which turned into a staff writing position (part-time), which transformed into a managing editor role, all in the space of eight months. I had the guidance of an amazing editor, whose lessons I still recall and apply. I was paid far beyond my dreams after I was promoted. I learned about art, but also about politics and history and the environment and things that art engages with in its artness. (Artitude?) I wrote to galleries around the world. I marketed and networked. I built a portfolio. I attended the occasional event in person. I diplomatically sorted out crises involving multiple potential crackdowns from governments of other countries. Sometimes an editor's job can be quite dramatic. I kept writing. Sometimes for free, sometimes in exchange for a subscription, sometimes for a small fee. The creative industry is probably the only one where exposure is considered a form of currency. I adapted to the rules – use buzzwords, write short paragraphs, use bullet points, use subheadings, no one reads these days, we need to rank on Google, let's see what's trending, can we syndicate? I thought I could still write meaningful things within those confines. I learned the value of crisp titles and strong openers, which serve me well whether or not I write for rankings. I grew our reach and global writing team manifold.

I moved on to edit for a bigger publication. I waded through a ginormous quantity of words every day, my eyes and senses honed to zero in on typos and grammar and doubtful claims and plagiarism. I still kept writing, and was paid better for each article. My critiques appeared in publications from Canada to Japan, and I didn't have to pitch much anymore; my work was seen and my voice sought. This wasn't all linear, of course. There were gaps, months of despair and uncertainty and nothing. But I think my intentional pursuit of well-paid opportunities more than benefited me monetarily overall. I mentored other writers. I got invited to judge contests. I watched my articles being replaced without permission, consent or notification with updated versions by other writers. I watched publications wither and disappear without so much as an email intimation, and with them my entire repertoire built over years was erased in an instant. (Obviously I had it all downloaded and backed up, but still.) There were articles I was commissioned for and I worked on them, never to see them published or paid for. Somehow I managed to shake it off every time, believing in what I was doing, and keeping my eyes forward. I may have cussed a bit, can't remember. It may have hurt a lot, too. I learned how to protect myself, but I wish I hadn't needed to.

After my final demanding and chaotic job – with my loan paid off, leaving me with some savings and tremendous burnout – I decided to try things my own way. I'd freelanced before, but this time I would have clients. I would decide what to take on, and what I got paid. And I did, but it was rocky. The first enquiry I got was within a month of launching, but three weeks have never felt longer when you don't know if there will ever be an end to the wait. I walked, though, because they wanted to haggle for Rs 500 ($5), which didn't seem like an association that would prove wholesome in the long run. Fortunately the next few clients arrived in quick succession, and I met my financial goals for the first quarter. And then it would be many, many quarters before I was able to do that again.

People often ask me how I find clients. There's no one answer; different things have worked at different times. I realised pretty early on that I was at a disadvantage in the international market. My name implies "non-native English speaker" to many people, which means that they often simply ignore my messages, and almost always pay me less than they would someone from another place. Never mind that I grew up bilingual in a country that has English as an official language, was educated in English-medium schools, have a degree in English literature, and was invited for a Master's to a UK university without needing to prove my language skills, where I was awarded a distinction for my dissertation and complimented by various professors for the clarity of my writing. My name is apparently enough for such judgement, while someone named Karen (sorry) will get opportunities, or at least responses, even if she thinks "should of" is grammatically correct. In a darkly comical turn of events, I found out that one publication I edited had hired writers from India but was trying to pass them off as an international group using the most cliched names from every culture imaginable as bylines. I demanded my money (it was late by months), waited till I got it, and quit. Even now, when I do get responses despite my name, my location often seals the deal. I can't even count the number of times I've been ghosted after initial interest when I mentioned where I live. Even if it were for purely practical and not unbiased reasons, surely a one-line response isn't too much to ask.

It barely even pricks anymore, though. We grow resilient. We compromise. We realise that pricing right – in my case, somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, allowing a wider variety of people to afford my services while meeting my needs – is half the battle. We negotiate on scope instead of money. We learn when to acquiesce and when to refuse. And through it all, we keep writing. I found my voice through all of these experiences, and I learned to shape and sharpen it till it complemented any project or client I worked with, while remaining my own. I learned the power of the right words, and how to shift meaning and create depth with small, impactful, intentional choices. I learned resilience, and to trust myself. If there's one thing I know, one thing that keeps me strong, it's this: I can write. I can write well. 

In May, as I made a list of my work, all of this flashed through my mind. The growth and evolution at every turn, and also the repeated erasure of my sincere work by people who didn't care, who replaced names and removed bylines like authorship was a joke, who thought their platform was providing a life-changing opportunity and that ought to be enough; who were playing a game of numbers, essentially, not of words or ideas, and certainly not of accountability. Bring gen-AI into this steaming mess and the entitlement is unbearable. I often write emails that I don't end up sending – although I've sent many of them too – and in one of them I reminded one of my bosses that the writers were what made the platform. Whoever landed there came to read our words. Dilute them, and it will show eventually. Most of those publications ended up abruptly shutting down soon after I left. (Not saying the two are connected. But I'm also not not saying that.)

Let's get into my loathing of gen-AI a little bit. I don't use it, because I don't need to. I have zero curiosity and interest in it. While research suggests that the more people know about AI, the less they like it because they lose the sense of wonder it first held, I never felt the awe to begin with. I've never been an early adopter. I always treat shiny newfangled tech with what I think of as a healthy dose of suspicion. I'm never seduced by it. I wait for people to try it out. I assess whether it will truly serve a purpose in my life. I think I'm pretty good at figuring out how it works, when I'm interested enough; I consistently came out the top of my year in computer science exams, and I usually don't feel overwhelmed by a new gadget or platform. I learn what I need to, I design and create my own websites, I have exactly the number of apps I need on my phone. I think the internet is magical, and social media and blogs truly changed my life. So my suspicion is not about feeling intimidated, and it's not about aversion. It's more about the costs, and of what we risk losing. 

This is a theme too; I'm a nostalgic person. In 2007 I wrote about how much I missed writing and receiving letters, and in 2012 I wrote about how impatient we've become as a generation. Sometimes I get nostalgic for things before they disappear. When Kindles first came out, I had nightmares about them. Thankfully they never did end up replacing print, but it was a popular prediction at the time. And when I first heard about ChatGPT, the foreboding was back, but like, worse. Could no one see what a terrible idea this was? How could this possibly improve life, and how would it not make it worse? I couldn't think of anything less urgent in the world, or more odious. 

I value connection, depth, self-reflexivity, discomfort, effort, creativity, process, slowness. I love the ability of the internet to disperse borders and bring people together. AI does the opposite. It removes connection. It's a response to the isolation we already feel, perhaps, but will push us further into it. Now we have studies telling us that it doesn't actually make life easier, and what it seems to do in quicker steps actually requires more supervision. Obviously the overlords don't want us to think; this is a tale as old as Orwell. (Okay, older. I just liked how that sounded.) Are we sure this fad is not about just... power? Having a minion and telling it what to do and the fulfilment of seeing petty orders carried out? 

Some might say I lack nuance, and they would be right. I've read all the nuanced takes. I've had the discussions and arguments and stepped away from projects that quietly (yes, humans can write that word too) embraced it. AI, very simply, isn't worth it. We can have all the legislations in the world and they would probably be the equivalent of trying to stop a waterfall with a teacup. Yet AI is "here to stay", as people like to remind me. But so are we. We don't have to invite things into our life just because they exist. I refuse to participate.

But then there's the constant encroachment. That does piss me off. I tried to live and let live, you know, for my sanity. I didn't invite it into my life, but soon I wasn't being asked. No one in this arena cares about consent. No, everything shared on the internet is not "fair game", and no, we did not "automatically consent to this by putting our work online." Consent involves knowing how something is used, and the risks involved, and making a choice. Anything used in a way that we did not know about when we shared it is an ethical problem. The fact that I have to go into the settings on every platform and app and toggle buttons to make sure the biometric data that is my face doesn't one day end up where I don't want it is an ethical problem. That I have to find ways to stop bots from creeping all over my decades' worth of writing and photography so they don't start regurgitating subpar versions and trying to act better than me is an ethical problem. (Fine, I'm probably not impactful enough, but still. It's the principles.) That I have to type "-ai" after every bloody search term to not have a bot cheerfully try to convince me of often very incorrect opinions is just ridiculous, to be honest. It is well documented that gen-AI is a bubble, or, as my friend Beth puts it, "an echo chamber without a door." We all know the bubble is going to burst, but we don't know exactly what kind of explosion it will cause.

Which brings me almost to the present moment in my career. The concern was never that gen-AI could replace writers and editors. It could replace content, that enshittification of writing, for which the bar had already fallen so far it was barely visible. It faffs – a word we used when I was studying literature to denote writing more than required to fulfil a word count without really adding anything of value – constantly. I see people thinking it has made them sound super smart when they actually sound unnecessarily dramatic without really saying anything at all. I receive summaries of historical records (indeed, summaries of every damn thing now) which are thrice the size of the actual data and don't have very much to do with it. You can't fact check with a tool that hallucinates and cherry picks its sources. In prompting, we also lose the story. The story comes from feeling inspired, and the process and struggle of creating. The emotions start with a blank page, not with a bot offering suggestions and outlines. Writing requires the lessons and realisations and frustrations and finally the euphoria of breakthroughs and perfect words and flow. 

So no, it won't replace us. But what it will do, what it has done, is compel writers (and many others; I speak to my own experience) to fight even harder for basic fucking respect. Please don't try to philosophise; "oh, but it might do the opposite, and make people realise exactly how valuable you are!" Just don't. I know what I'm saying because I've experienced it; it's the icing on the cake made of all the other crap of years past. And I'm done.

I'll keep writing, of course. You'll always find me here, and hopefully in a few other ways soon if my dreams come to fruition. Sometimes being put in a corner forces you to give form to ideas that you've been hesitantly mulling for slightly too long. So here are the promises I've made to myself, and I'm giving myself the permission and space to explore them: I'm not going to write for anyone else's projects anymore, and I'm going to hold creative control over my work. I'm going to keep blogging here the old-school way, not the marketing way. I'm going to do everything I know to protect my work. I'm also going to use the words and punctuation I like, and I'm going to edit my writing until it gleams. If that makes people question whether I'm un-human, that's their right, I guess. They probably do anyway, given my name ("non-native", hence "uses help"). I couldn't care less.

This explosion is slightly different. I don't know what kind of impact my promises will make, whether I'll find any support for my work, whether I'll be able to sustain it. But it has been ticking too long inside me. It's time to let it go. It's not easy to promise myself these things when I'm in what feels like a trench that will hopefully turn out to be a valley. But I think it's the decisions we make in difficult times that define us, and so... I guess we'll see. Hopefully there will still be some people who are interested enough in my words. And if not, well, I write for myself first and foremost.