Are You Building a Mansion or a Concrete Jungle?

// Discovering what you believe.

I've been writing weekly now for nearly two years - it's been nice recently to look back on articles (as I'm redoing my website again - but this time properly, not rushing it) and see what I've been talking about and understand how I'm evolving as a person - writing does that for you, it becomes an outlet and you get to see how you evolve over time as life interacts with your creative outlet and you become better and more deliberate in how you articulate it.

This is different to when I first started as I did what everyone else does when they started writing, I just wrote 'stuff' - I didn't know what I was writing about and I definitely didn't understand what I stood for - I just kept going because thats just what you're told to do.

I've come up with something profound by writing every week - writing isn't about expressing what you already know, thats the easy part - thats what you do in the early days. Writing every week (or as consistent as you can be) is about discovering what you believe.

If you decide to prep an AI tool to write for you - you're not discovering anything - you're just telling people what you know.

// Owning your space

The important thing to remember is that when you show up and every single time you show up, you're creating your own world - think of your opinions and experiences as stakes in the ground around your own space and the more times you post, the bigger your real estate portfolio becomes.

The thing about building your own real estate is that it's varied, it's individually crafted and its valuable - think of it as being a large mansion on the Californian coastline. It's rich with variety, it's worth more and other people wish they could live there.

There is a new tide of 'growth' however - it's a wealth of AI generated content - authors and people I know create large swathes of AI generated content through clever uses of prompts and basic thoughts telling people a mix of what they know intertwined with what the AI knows.

The beauty in the construction of my own landscape and real estate has been that I have refused to outsource my thinking - the hard work in trying to work out how I express myself has led to a path of discovery rather than relying on a computer to find the next best word, and the word after that and the word after that..

AI generated content is like Glasgow's council estate skyline - the rise of tenement blocks - multiple people living in the same space, all looking the same and with very little soul - AI creates a soulless, bland landscape and it's encroaching further and further onto the shoreline of our gloriously built landscapes.

When you live in a tenement building, a literal council estate - people have a perception of you - you're seen as a lower class and you'll struggle to break out of that environment. It's true with AI generated writing, the more you rely on AI, the harder it is to break out of that environment and your thinking will always be shaped by the output of a computer.

Everything you 'write' will become more like everyone else's land and you'll fade into a grey, concrete jungle of boring.

Who wants to live there?

// Your Fear.

I understand - just like doing your first 'live' on a social media platform and just like recording your very first video - putting your unfiltered thoughts into the world is daunting.

If I was going to continue on with the analogy of a council estate - if you've grown up on a council estate, breaking free from the estate and going out of your own is hard. You'll be fighting against your own societal norms and those around you won't believe in you - it's a socially accepted belief that it's extremely rare for someone who is working class to move into upper class in their own lifetime.

If you're comfortable living in a council estate and you're happy to create bland content - good for you.

Social mobility is comparable to branching out away from AI driven writing (especially if that was your first experience of creating writing) - I get it, it's safe, you don't have to put too much thought into it and it allows you to have a degree of separation. You can have a gap between your readers and your own fear, judgement and the worst, the rejection of your writing.

You're writing with AI because you're seeking immediate perfection - you don't want to be rubbish at something.

The more your work is created by AI, the more grey concrete is erected on your land - the more you start to look like everything else and the world you're creating won't ever stand out. AI can mimic polished writing but it can't replicate nuanced human experiences and it can't express the messiness that makes your stories relatable.

When you write as you - your home becomes a mansion with a central staircase - it will have plenty of rooms which you can visit and each room becomes it's own experience in itself.

The difficult part though is making that shift to break away and not do what everyone else is doing - taking your time, learning how to write and being fearless is hard.

But you HAVE to do it.

// Trust is built.

Over the last two years of writing, I've seen people show up - some people seem to have grown a voice overnight and believe that if they show up consistently (regardless of the quality), they'll build something worthwhile.

These people are using AI - they're showing up with their bland opinions without nuance (and with plenty of emojis) to post meaningless and often ill-thought out comments or posts about nothing but the perception is, if they keep doing it, they'll be seen.

We're all struggling to be seen - thats the wonderful thing about showing up regularly as you - the more you do, the bigger your mansion becomes and the more attractive it becomes to other people. Doing the hard things, writing, creating and thinking for yourself is the only way to separate real voices from the noise.

I've shown up again and again, even when I thought that no-one was reading, I showed up. The worst weeks are when you have no idea what to write about but you still have to show up - and you do. Even when you have nothing to write about - and because you do, you're finishing off another room..

The ability to craft a new room in your mansion is what builds credibility over time. The more work you put in, the bigger your mansion becomes and even though there might be rooms which you don't find that good, someone will like it and want to move in.

Over the last two years of writing I've also seen people quit - they stop that piece of writing, they don't do their podcast anymore or even worst, they pivot and begin using AI. They forget that their initial work was revered because they were being themselves and they think that the next step is quantity - it cannot be further from the truth.

// Take away the safety net.

As I started this blog - writing in your own voice (without AI) leads to sharper thinking and deeper personal clarity - you begin to move away from writing about what you know and you begin to move towards writing about your beliefs.

AI written content can't do that.

The weird paradox with writing is that the more you (and I mean you, not AI) write, the more you emerge from the shadows.

When you're writing about what you know, things never change. I mean, I know how to make a cup of tea but the method will never change - you still need hot water, milk, tea and sugar. The thing that will change will be the belief on how to make the cup of tea. AI deals with the raw facts and anyone can write about making a cup of tea with the ingredients but the way you make that cuppa, thats where you come in.

You're able to argue over the milk first or last viewpoint, you're able to experience the different flavours of tea (Yorkshire being the greatest tea) - but AI can't do that.

The feedback and the way you get acknowledgement for these experiences will build engagement over time and thats where you build the credibility because you're actually standing for something instead of giving people what they already know.

Even if I believe that what you're writing is wrong - (if you put the milk in first) - at least I know you stand for something.

// The Reminder.

I have to say - and I don't want you to be confused. When you gain clarity on what you're writing, it's an on-going process, never a one time thing. You can't suddenly have a revelation on a viewpoint and be right, your position will always change.

Allowing yourself to write about a subject means that you'll end up discovering yourself and what you believe in. You can tell me what you know but I'd much rather know what you believe in and from there, I can tell what type of person you are.

Over the last two years - I'm slowly discovering what I believe in and it's allowing me to shape how I sit in the world. When I started writing, I had no idea what I stood for, I just knew I was good at my job - that was it.

Now, if you asked me - I stand for something more, I want people to have their own voices and be brave enough to tell their own stories. Telling stories is a human thing, no other animal on the planet tells stories, we use them to shape our world and some of the greatest stories in the world have inspired so many other people.

Stories, tales, blogs, videos and podcasts have inspired so many people - why would you want to outsource that responsibility to a computer?

The best (and only) way to refine your stories, refine your message and inspire more people is to keep showing up - keep writing and more importantly, keep speaking in your voice.

Thats where my new headline on my new website has come from - my belief that you should speak for yourself. (I told you, I'm not half-arsing it this time, I've learned my lesson.

You Have a Story. Make Noise. Make Impact.