\r\nThis was written December 23th, 2025<\/i>\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\nCreative Bankruptcy<\/h2>\r\n
\r\nHere he was, the author, staring at his blank canvas. He was hoping ideas would\r\njust flow out of him, straight onto the page (or screen really), yet nothing would\r\ncome out.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nNo matter how much he thought, no matter how much he tried to get inspiration, nothing\r\ncame of it. Maybe it was the worry about people’s expectations, maybe it was choice\r\nparalysis, or maybe he just wasn’t inspired at all. Yet it’s probably the former, since\r\nwhenever an idea popped into his head, he found excuses to discard it. Instead of trying\r\nto find a nugget of gold within the idea, he simply saw the flaws associated with it.\r\nHe wanted, alas, pure perfection.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nUsually, his creative bankruptcy didn’t last long, a few days at most really, and he could\r\nuse that time to handle other duties, like editing other texts or parts, which didn’t\r\nrely nearly as much on creativity. Yet, with the looming deadline, he simply couldn’t\r\nfind it in him. Whenever he started reading, all he thought about was how little time\r\nthere was left, how he simply _had_ to complete this.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nYes, expectations lead to anxiety, which in turn can lead to inaction, paralysis. But no\r\ntime for such concerns, he _needed_ results. He felt desperate. And at last, he gave up\r\nto temptation, and opted to use the forbidden tool: AI.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nHe was really worried about its impact, and the morally grey area surrounding it, yet\r\nhe felt he had no other choice. So at last, he complied.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nHe was greeted with a simple page, a simple text input he would have to use. This one\r\ntime, he opted to only use it for basic creative ideas. He stated some of the parameters\r\nfor his story, what was happening, and what he wanted solved. And then, a brief torrent\r\nof ideas came out. And most of those ideas felt really good and wonderful, such a big\r\ndopamine hit, he could barely choose which one was the most compelling to him.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nEventually, he chose one, and moved on with his story. Oh how pleased he was, having\r\nfinally found the right tool for himself to get out of the drought of ideas. This would\r\nbe revolutionary for him! And so he went back in front of his blank page, and managed\r\nto fill it within a session, inspiration having been renewed.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nYet, it didn’t end there, oh no. The slippery slope might be a fallacious concept, yet\r\nthat doesn’t mean it never does apply. So, how did this progress? Well, with such great\r\nresults, and the initial barrier having been breached, it became rather hard to resist it\r\nthe next time he was confronted with a writer’s block.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nAnd at first, that’s all he did, more and more frequently would it head back for the\r\nlanguage model to request new ideas. But gradually, he started to interact with the AI\r\nto ask which ideas made the most sense, what would be best, and how to best utilize them.\r\nAh, one more thing he wouldn’t have to worry about, he could explore these ideas to the\r\nfullest before even getting started with the writing.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nAnd yes, it did make him more efficient, he pumped out stories faster than ever. Yet,\r\nhe also became more and more dependent to this tool. The second he would stress out over\r\nhis writing, he would immediately turn back to it. What once was an unblocker had now\r\nbecome a necessity.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nAnd yet, that’s not where it stopped. For why stop it at the ideas themselves? Eventually,\r\nhe started worrying about the phrasing itself, and the flow of his paragraphs, and simply\r\nhad to see if this new tool could help him. And it sure did!\r\n<\/p>
\r\nYet, it did come at a cost. Eventually, he decided to look back at his previous stories,\r\nand realized that while he remembered most of his original stories written prior to his\r\nuse of Generative AI, he barely remembered what he’d written since. What’s more, when\r\nrereading some of those stories, not only could he not really remember where it came\r\nfrom, he also felt no sense of ownership. This felt devoid of his own contributions, of\r\nhis own voice. And well, this was also reflected by the critics, that complained he’d\r\nlost his voice, that his stories had lost their magic. He finally realized that some of\r\nthe imperfections in his stories were what made their charm.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nSo…what happened in the end? Did the author simply realize that using AI served as a\r\ncrutch, simply caused even more creative bankruptcy, abandoned it and things went back\r\nto how they were before? Well, of course not. Having used such a tool, its allure was\r\noften too hard to resist, and even if he did, he’d gotten so dependent on it that\r\ncreativity didn’t flow nearly as well as it used to.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nYet, it’s not all gloom and doom. Eventually, the author went back to reading his older\r\nstories, seeing what worked well with them and why he liked them. He went back to writing\r\nshort stories just for the hell of it, and trying to explore ideas, without any aiming\r\nfor publication. As with anything else, creativity can be considered a muscle, one you\r\nneed to exercise. And thus, he gradually rebuilt it over time. Yet, the Siren Song of\r\nAI remained in the back of his mind, and like with any addiction, from time to time he\r\nwould fall back into it, and have to restart the process of growth from the beginning.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nYet, he still managed to once more find joy through the creative process itself, instead\r\nof purely worrying about the end-result and the expectation.\r\n<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was written December 23th, 2025 Creative Bankruptcy Here he was, the author, staring at his blank canvas. He was hoping ideas would just flow out of him, straight onto the page (or screen really), yet nothing would come out. No matter how much he thought, no matter how much he tried to get inspiration, … Continue reading Writing Challenge 2025 \u2013 26 – Creative Bankruptcy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2589"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2600,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589\/revisions\/2600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}