I believe everyone can be transformed by the written word. It arms people — teaching them to consider, to empathize, and to order their thoughts and emotions in a way that others can connect with. 

There is, however, a very real fear that people have when it comes to writing. The process itself can expose just as much as it liberates: To write is to lay down your mind on a piece of paper, one that others can see and critique.

The author Ta-Nehisi Coates posits that writing can be so terrifying because it literally requires “confronting yourself on the page.” Your faults, your errors in thinking and the base of your emotions are subjugated to scrutiny and fear of judgement. 

Generative artificial intelligence has highlighted this prevalent view of writing, and the shortcuts people are drawn to taking. Such a mindset can lead to apathy and formulaic ways of thinking. Data from Graphite Growth, a digital growth agency, estimates that, since May 2025, approximately half of all new online articles were created by AI. 

It’s a troubling statistic when you truly unpack how AI and large language models actually work. AI uses a vast amount of data to build sentences based on probability distributions and the likelihood of certain concepts going together; such that the intent behind writing becomes lost altogether.

Writing is meant to be a deeply personal endeavor, one that provides any person the platform to speak for themselves. AI taking over language is a travesty since this individuality disappears. Using probabilities leads to the dominance of homogenous writing and no real diversity of perspectives. 

This is even more of an issue as the rise of AI is also interwoven with a bleaker literacy landscape. In 2023, more than a quarter of American adults read at the lowest literacy level, an indication that we are beginning to lose our grasp on writing and reading as an art form, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. 

Thus, honing in on the human aspect of writing isn’t just a more difficult alternative to using AI; it has become a way to revolt against a media landscape in which language is more and more uniform. 

Part of the fight against the homogenization of language is to lean into the struggle, not against it. The typo, once a symbol of shame and fallibility, has become a charming indication of intentionality. It symbolizes a closer step toward taking agency and reclaiming our independence as thinkers. 

Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the most pivotal figures in 20th-century French philosophy, argued that the writer is free but must commit themselves to the act of writing. There is a beauty in embracing its struggle.

According to Sartre, writing becomes a responsibility — one shared by both reader and writer to question how the world can change. That can only be done through genuine reflection and a commitment to one’s ideas and how they can be presented. 

That process is hardly ever easy or smooth, and if it is easy, it risks flattening the complexity that good writing demands. 

On a deeper level, choosing to struggle with writing does so much for one’s own outlook and ability to think. 

Cognitive psychologist Robert A. Bjork first introduced the concept of “desirable difficulties,” which is a learning approach rooted in emphasizing areas of difficulty in your knowledge. 

Bjork developed this theory as a framework to optimize long-term learning, arguing that embracing areas of weakness in one’s knowledge may lead to worse performance at first, but will create true learning and lasting neural connections over time.

Applying this to writing, the struggle of the process is really where its value lies. Although the act of writing and creating sentences from scratch can be difficult, it allows you to understand how your mind works.

Laying down your raw thoughts on a piece of paper shines a light on where you struggle in expressing yourself, where your logic falls flat and what you need to do to make sure your arguments have legs to stand on.

Writing nowadays is a way to arm yourself with a greater understanding of how you can deliver your ideas and honor your unique perspective — invaluable skills that have to be earned over time.  

So question the shortcuts you use to make writing easier. Critique what it is your writing is truly trying to say. Doing so teaches you so much about the ideas you hold close and the parts of yourself you want to bear on the page. 

To write, and to struggle in the process, is the most authentic way to hone in on the voice that only you have.