Escaping the Page
This is the story of a boy who dreamed of being a writer
The Joy and Promise of Books
For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a writer. Like many of us who spend too much time on the internet, I struggled to socialize growing up, so I turned to books. I devoured countless fantasy and sci-fi series, and by the time I was halfway through middle school, I’d read or at least skimmed nearly everything of interest in my local library.
When I started buying books, things got a little out of hand—one summer, after getting my first Kindle, I spent over $500 on books in just two months. My mom loved that I was a voracious reader, but after that she, regretfully, had to cut me off. Instead of finding new hobbies or slowing down, I simply learned to pirate books and ended up reading even more.
While some may see this obsession as a negative, a child simply escaping the world and refusing to deal with problems, I disagree. For me, reading was a blessed gift. Books gave me a glimpse of a world that made sense, showed me characters I could empathize with. Gave me role models that I just didn’t have in "real life." Quite frankly, if I wasn't able to escape into the world of the written word, I consider it likely that I would've ended my life at various points. That's how seriously it impacted my life.
Banging my Head Against the Writing Wall
Because reading meant so much to me, I dreamed of giving back by writing enthralling fantasy novels to help kids like me escape and imagine a better life. I spent years drafting worlds, creating characters, and building magic systems. But there was one problem:
I hated the actual process of writing.
Sadly, over the years even though I tried over and over to write, I could never quite get past the first few dozen pages of a book. I would always lose interest, or lose that spark due to some big event happening in my life.
This isn't a phenomenon unique to me either. All sorts of programs and blogs such as NaNoWriMo and plenty of others exist to help people get over the writing hump. It's a very common issue. Over time, as I continued to fail to get over the hump, the passion and joy of writing continued to wane.
I started socializing more and engaging with the real world, deciding to put my efforts into making friends and developing social graces. Eventually, my focus shifted. I found interesting friends who would let me ramble about weird stuff, and ramble at me in turn. Realizing I could have genuinely insightful and fun conversations in person drew me even farther from my dream of writing. I continued to follow the trail of new and unique insights.
This trail eventually led me to the world of the rationalists - Slate Star Codex, LessWrong, and others blogs and forums, where I finally felt like I’d found my people. For a time, I thought I could become a blogger. It seemed less daunting than writing novels, and I enjoyed diving into random ideas in a super nerdy way. But eventually, the same problem resurfaced: I just didn’t enjoy the act of writing.
I tried everything—morning writing sessions, daily word count goals, accountability partners—but nothing stuck. For a while, I thought I was doomed to never be a writer.
A New Age of Writing
Luckily, I was wrong. A couple of things changed. First, I discovered Twitter. Writing short snippets and threading them together made the process more manageable, and it helped me organize my ideas. Plus, being able to mess around and joke with others adds a ton of fun and excitement into the mix!
Then, I stumbled on the idea of using voice notes and AI tools. Someone I follow mentioned recording their thoughts and having a large language model edit them into coherent text. I started doing this, and wow—it’s been a game-changer. I can just rant into my phone and let AI handle the tedious parts. In fact, I’m doing it right now!
This multimodal creative process unlocked a huge well of potential for me. Now I'm able to be a lot more prolific, more than I thought possible. Even though sitting down and writing long articles is still no fun for me, I'm able to quickly edit rambles that I speak to my phone, in a way that's engaging and interesting.
The crazy thing is, today we’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible. Soon, we’ll have even better tools for turning written words into videos or other forms of content. And of course millions of people are already using AI to turn written documents into audio via text-to-speech.
Some might say this approach loses a bit of the the magic of traditional writing, and sure, they're probably right to some degree. I'd bet with this process there are more errors than if I painstakingly wrote and edited every word. But I’d rather get my ideas out there in a way that’s fun and engaging, than not write anything at all.
My hope, dear reader, is that these technological shifts help you find a fun and effortless way to express yourself, too.