The Art of Creation

It's hard out there. Seems like everywhere I turn there's theft masquerading as genius. There's people willingly giving up the most precious thing about us - our creativity - for a quick fix of a product. A product that misses the very point of art from beginning to end.

That it's not about the end. It's about what you learn along the way. It's about the joy you find in the sitting. In struggling through the words and the notes and the unfinished drawing that looks like shit.

Isn't it?

What the tech bro psychotics don't seem to understand is we make art for the sake of it. That it is something bought and sold has only ever been a side product, not the purpose.

I wrote my whole life before I was published. I will continue to write even if I am never published again. I will do this hard work, this screaming furious staring at a blank page work, and will do it over and over again rather than sell my soul into a theft machine to vomit out a product for me.

Because holding that up does nothing for me. It's a hollow victory, an empty trophy that will end up dusty and dinged up in someone's garage sale. Everything in this box is only $1!

I do this not for the finished novel. I do this because the finished novel is what the trans kid is holding in their hands when they whisper their new name to me to sign it. I do this for the people who've emailed to tell me that my books saved their lives. I do this for the people who've told me that I gave them hope. I do this for the people who comfort read the NeoG through the pandemic. I do this for the people who have told me that somehow, someway, the words I wrote from my own brain gave them the courage to live their best lives.

What a betrayal of all that it would be to let some theft machine cough that up instead.

And yet, here we are. Where far too many people so casually throw out "use ChatGPT" for everything from the most mundane tasks to something so desperately important like the creative process. Giving away the very thing that makes us human to a soulless, greedy, and frankly psychotic tech bro who thinks the only thing of value is the end product and not the process of creation.

They wouldn't know creation if it bit them in the ass. All they know is destruction. And we can see the impact it's having in every creative pursuit lately.

Resist the use of LLMs, of "AI", of things that take all the joy out of life. It's killing our planet, killing our creatives, killing our very ability to think for ourselves. In this world, every act of creation is an act of resistance. Don't stop.

Peter McKinnon on what matters: Why We Create

Love,
K

Currently Reading: 
Between the Blood and the Sun by Jennifer R. Donohue

Currently Listening: 
Chasing Twisters - Delta Rae
Last of My Kind - Shaboozey
From Now On - Zac Brown Band
Here - Mumford & Sons, Chris Stapleton

Where you can find me these days:
Bluesky: @kbwagers.com
Instagram: @midwaybrawler
Patreon: kbwagers