Justin Reidy

As you build newthing you will discover that building a newthing is a strange act where the harder you go about trying to do it, the harder it becomes. It will resist direct force and control. The more you relax and allow it to speak through you, however, the easier it will be.

I think that the appearance of generative AI with its seemingly magical abilities to unleash the creative beast lurking inside all of us has broken our brains a little bit and it has become difficult to think straight when it comes to the intersection of the technology and humanity and what being creative involves.

One of my favorite commercials is an Under Armour spot featuring Michael Phelps with the tagline: “It’s what you do in the dark that puts you in the light.”

Putting ideas into words doesn't have to mean writing, of course. You can also do it the old way, by talking. But in my experience, writing is the stricter test. You have to commit to a single, optimal sequence of words. Less can go unsaid when you don't have tone of voice to carry meaning. And you can focus in a way that would seem excessive in co... See more

The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best—write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career: Whenever you’re at a loss for what move to make next, just ask yourself, “What would make a better story?”

But here’s the point, the promise of this technology is speed and efficiency, a shorter route to an end product, and the removal of barriers between you and your creative self.

For those of us who are not geniuses, it may be tempting to outsource some portion of our creativity to the AI, so we can get past the fact of our non-geniousness, but those... See more

Writing is hard, and it’s not surprising that the promise of removing that friction from the writing process is appealing. But we need to be able to recognize when removing the friction from the process might mean losing something important.