Who Writes This

I write to open up. To make my inner world accessible to myself. Afterwards I feel like after exercise, relieved and free. Writing is not my profession, it is how I think.

I have taken writing seminars and done writing meditations. I learned to sink into a context and feel it. When I write, I process. I understand things I did not understand before. Not because it sounds clever, but because the act of writing triggers something. It uncovers what is inside me and makes it visible to myself.

I am not good at reading. I forget what I read. A paper, a report, after a week it is gone. But I do not forget what I have worked out through writing. Writing is learning for me. Only more intense, more lasting, and I simply enjoy it much more.

What comes out stays as it is and does not get corrected. There are editors and writing tools, but that would distort the process. The text is the act of thinking, and what came out, came out.

The State

Once I am in it, I cannot stop. The sentences come, one thought leads to the next. It is a state that many describe as flow. It is not a technique you switch on and off. You need patience and experience. Then writing and thinking merge intuitively.

This state is fragile. Every interruption destroys it. Switching tabs, looking up a paper, checking a number, coming back. Then it is gone and you start over.

For almost twenty years I commuted between the US, Europe and Asia for work. I analyzed markets, tracked trends, compared sales approaches. I documented most of it. And throughout all those years I wanted to write about it. But every time the same thing: I needed a number, a finding, a source. So I stopped writing, searched, and never came back.

What AI Actually Does

I have been using AI for two years. Hundreds of texts have come out of this. All of them are mine, but without AI I would never have written many of them.

What changed: I no longer have to leave the state. My impressions, analyses and observations I have structured in databases over the years. AI helps me manage and access this data. When I need a number or a finding in the middle of a thought, I ask. The answer comes from my own system, matching the context. I keep writing.

This is different from googling. With Google I leave the state, search through other people’s knowledge, filter, come back. With my system I stay in the flow. The data is mine, the structure is mine, and the retrieval understands the context I am currently thinking in.

The Wrong Question

An estimated 99% of content on the internet is now synthetic. The debate revolves around who wrote all of it. To me the question is irrelevant. What matters much more: Who was the content made for?

I could answer that quickly. Because I realized that I write for myself. For my understanding, my learning, my processing. Whether it is equally valuable for other readers, only the reader can decide. What AI does in this process is making my own knowledge accessible in the exact moment I need it.

Authorship is not typing. Authorship is taking responsibility for what is said. Whoever decides what is relevant is the author. The tool beside it does not matter.

Every one of these texts was created this way. I wrote, the AI fed me my own experiences.