Write Think Write
The value of struggle in the act of writing.
"Writing isn’t just the production of sentences – it’s the training of endurance by way of sustained attention. It’s a way of learning what one thinks by attempting to say it. An LLM can reproduce the appearance of that activity, but it can’t replace it, because the value lies not only in the object produced but in the transformation that occurs during its making."
This is a quote from Micah Nathan, who runs a workshop teaching fiction writing at MIT since 2017, published in the Guardian (May 2026). Full article here. It has some valuable observations about the act of struggle and learning and the battle against using AI to shortcut the process. He concludes,
Since that night, our workshops have changed in ways I didn’t anticipate. We talk more openly about frustration, about the moments when a draft resists its own author. I still teach craft – form, structure, revision – but find myself returning to the tension between thought and language, the stories where abstraction refuses to take shape. We discuss why their thinking matters, that their struggle to translate thoughts into word isn’t evidence of failure, but a sign of growth. Even when, and especially when, words fail. What my students and I now guard isn’t a boundary against machines so much as a sanctuary for authorship, a place where everything on the page and not yet on the page belongs to an actual person. Since that night, our workshops have changed in ways I didn’t anticipate. We talk more openly about frustration, about the moments when a draft resists its own author. I still teach craft – form, structure, revision – but find myself returning to the tension between thought and language, the stories where abstraction refuses to take shape. We discuss why their thinking matters, that their struggle to translate thoughts into word isn’t evidence of failure, but a sign of growth. Even when, and especially when, words fail. What my students and I now guard isn’t a boundary against machines so much as a sanctuary for authorship, a place where everything on the page and not yet on the page belongs to an actual person.
Very articulate. What I love reading the most is the importance of discussion with other humans during the creative process. I need more of this too.
