Speed Will Never Be Our Competitive Advantage

(An edited excerpt from the book “Confessions of a Résumé Writer”)

My buddy Andy Bridgeman is enjoying success from his first fiction novel, Fortunate Son. He recently published an article in Writer’s Digest called “My First Ideas Aren’t My Best—And AI Only Makes Them Worse”. Here are some highlights that resonated with me:

1. “The more I interacted with AI, the more I could see the possibilities—the promise of making my life more efficient. But could it write? Should it write? I can hear your teeth grinding from here. I know. Just toying with the idea made me feel a little guilty. Of course, I shouldn’t let it write. I’m the writer. That’s my job.”
2. “But, on the other hand, it’s just a tool, right? The ideas I give it are my ideas, coming from my unique understanding of the world. And there were already plenty of people on YouTube proudly letting AI write books for them. If it helped me write faster, my publisher would be pleased. My readers would be happy. And my bank account would be overjoyed.”
3. “Here’s the problem with passing the pen over to artificial intelligence. Every writer knows where the battle takes place. Literary wars are won and lost at sentence level. That’s where the brutality is—the hand-to-hand combat. It is in that place where my ideas generate and my creativity sparks. It is where my muse will show up…if she shows up.”
4. “Another problem? AI had praised all of my ideas. And, I, so desperate to hear a compliment, momentarily believed that I was brilliant. But here’s the thing. I know better. Life has shown me with great clarity that my first ideas are not my best ideas. And, if I’m being honest, neither are my second, third, or fourth. In my excitement to see words and sentences filling up the page, I lost sight of how my process works. AI had removed me from the depth of my story—the victory that comes from battling at the cursor.”
5. “My value (and your value) isn’t in producing more words per hour—it’s in the specific way our minds work through problems, the unexpected connections we make when we’re building our sentences. When we’re in the flow. And, most importantly, when we’re stuck.”
6. “Having AI remove my writing problem…is my biggest problem with AI. Speed will never be our competitive advantage as storytellers.”
7. “I truly believe that the more technology we consume, the more we will yearn for authentically human stories—written by authentic humans. My stories. Your stories.”
8. “So what did I learn in this brief test drive? Sorry AI, but I’m not letting you near my sentences. There, I will fight my own battles—writing slowly and inefficiently because writing is hard and, if I’m going to produce my best work, I must always lean into the ‘hard.’”
9. “My hope is that the literature of our tomorrows will not exit off a smooth, artificially paved highway but arrive with tree branches in the bumper and mud on the tires and scratches and dents from smacking into all sorts of things in the night.”

Résumé writers, take note…he wasn’t just talking about fiction.