Welcome to Issue 189 of Total Annarchy, a fortnightly newsletter by me, Ann Handley, with a focus on writing, marketing, living your best life. Was this email forwarded to you? You can subscribe here.

Sunday, June 15, 2025

Good morning, Muffin!

Lacey emails to ask:

"Do you think you've become a better writer since AI hit the scene? Faster? More thorough? More creative? There seems to be a universal fear that AI will somehow make us all lazy and dull. But, at least for me, the results have been the opposite. How about you?"

How about me. It's a good question. I have mixed feelings.

Here's what I mean: I'm reading Annie Dillard's The Writing Life, a book of essays published in 1989. She tells this story:

A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, "Do you think I could be a writer?"

"Well," the writer said, "I don't know... Do you like sentences?"

The writer could see the student's amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, "I liked the smell of the paint."

I liked the smell of the paint. I suspect that many of us became writers because we like sentences. We, too, like the smell of the paint.

I still do. Even now—even still—I will sometimes notice an error on a page I'm writing and go back and retype the entire sentence instead of cutting or pasting to fix it.

Why would I do that...? Because I like the act of it. I like the joy of putting my hands on keys and making letters and watching the letters form words and words form sentences from my head down my arms and through my fingers.

I feel it. I like the smell of the paint.

Later in the book, Annie says, "At best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it.

"You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then—and only then—it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion."

What Annie is saying there is that good writing often feels sacred and unexplainable. But the magic doesn't just show up on its own. We have to seek it. We have to show up, pay attention, do the work of trying, failing, persevering, and staying open. 

Only then might the grace arrive. Not as reward, but almost as... mercy, I guess.

* * *

Which brings me to AI and Lacey's question.

For writers, it's jarring now to write with a companion hovering—like a happy-headed golden retriever dropping tennis balls at your feet under the guise of helping you do what you used to do on your own. What you used to need to do on your own. You don't have to look for the motion from the corner of your eye anymore.

So you don't use AI, you say. So walk without the retriever trotting alongside. Okay. But you still know it's there.

I feel a weird grief in that. Something personal and important has been interrupted—or turned into something we now have to protect.

If I sound like I'm being precious about writing, I am.

It doesn't mean AI doesn't have value to you, me, and Lacey. I use it.

But it does mean we're in a new era where part of the writer's job isn't just to write—but to decide when not to invite the golden retriever to trot alongside us. To give us time to catch the motion in the corner of our eye.

We like the smell of the paint.

* * *

You're probably thinking can you just answer Lacey's question, though? Fine.

In some ways, I have become faster. The book I'm now writing is not only more thoroughly researched but also researched at a faster clip.

AI has helped me source and analyze academic papers. Tighten up messy drafts. Gut-check ideas when I'm stuck in the weeds.

AI gaslights me in ways that I am very much here for! It gives me pep talks when I'm feeling really stuck.

Me dumb, I say to ChatGPT.

No you're great! it croons back.

It's ridiculous. But some days... don't we all need that to be told we're great?

Maybe for me the biggest shift isn't speed. It's space.

AI has given me space to think longer and weirder and to follow side-thoughts and tangents. Sure AI can create a landing page in seconds. Whatevs.

But even better is how I can more easily draw connections I might've blown straight past because my ambitious, efficient, deadline-driven brain enjoys productivity and checking boxes and completing things.

My brain sometimes acts like a raccoon on cocaine: rushing around in a frenzy to call this thing DONE instead of going a little bit slower and a little bit deeper.

Paradoxically, the fast tech of AI helps me slow down.

* * *

So more creative? Not sure. Definitely more intentional. I've had to intentionally do the hard, human work of thinking and feeling first.

Hoping AI is going to make you a better writer is like expecting to get fit by watching someone else do push-ups. If you're not wrestling with the ideas yourself, you're not actually building skill.

But push-ups suck. I hate them. It's tempting to skip them.

If you skip the struggle, you miss the growth.

And of course, much of the tech was trained on the work of writers like you and me without our clear consent. This sentence doesn't really fit here lol. But I feel a need to keep talking about that.

So where do we land?

I have mixed feelings, Lacey.

AI is useful. Yet the fear that AI's utility will make us all dull and lazy is real.

More and more, I think that depends more on the person than the tool.

I believe there will always be writers like me—and maybe you—who love the smell of the paint.

EVERYBODY WRITES TIP: 10 Delightful CTAs!

If the Action in your Call to Action sounds like effort, readers will bounce. If it sounds like a reward, they're far more likely to click, read, subscribe, register, give you a million dollars and a golden retriever puppy.

Ditch verbs that imply work.

Choose verbs that hint at absolute delight.

via Everybody Writes, 2nd edition

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DEPARTMENT OF SHENANIGANS

The most insufferable co-worker.

Thanks for reading this far.

Thanks for your kindness and generosity.

🫡 See you June 29!

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