Rebecca’s writing and her workshops are magical, showing what happens when we let go and are open to making discoveries.
Magic by Rebecca Evans:
I am an AI Rebutter.
I am a Long-Hand-Writer Endorser.
I pen pages each morning in a journal, jot a list of tasks to (almost) complete, scaffold essays and poems across composition notebooks. In separate journals, I copy beautiful lines from artists I love, wishing to transfer talent by osmosis.
For me, magic begins within this first planting.
I lean into an unfolding. Instead of writing towards an idea or theme or popular topic, I follow the words where they lead. It is from this space in my first drafts, I discover seedlings. Tiny sprouts. Sometimes one piece feels as though it could be in conversation with a piece of work I developed earlier. Other times, I might recognize the start of the poem. I rarely see the entire piece, near completion, in that first long-hand written scratch. And when I do, I most likely have been working out that essay or poem in my head and heart for some time. Perhaps decades.
From these drafts, I transfer work—out of my notebooks and into my computer. I sort them, temporarily name them, file them, hope to return and flush them out and into some semblance of literary art. Some of them make it out alive. Many appear dormant. They are not. These are transplanted seeds now contained and, in their incubation, like a compost-covered perennial, they rest until ready to bloom.
Every artist holds a process of their own. This is mine. And this early delicate care is critical for my art. This is the beginning. The revision and the polishing—the places I thin and prune or add nutrients—come much later. THAT process requires highlighters and research and sitting with my art as if I’m with an old friend from far away.
The argument I’ve heard from my writer-friends who use Artificial Intelligence seems reasonable. One friend shares that she uses AI to get the first draft down and save time. And I think, Oh! She wants quantity. She’s writing for a page number, not the process of art. Another writer explains that AI works with her initial idea and AI helps expand her thoughts into a draft that is further along, something she can begin editing. And I think, Ok, she’s looking for a short cut.
I know I sound judgey and each writer has the right to produce a product for the world to enjoy by whatever means.
And yes, I’ve heard the AI argument trickle: Well, I built the foundation, which is my idea, with a new medium—the computer. And from there I revise. And, isn’t true art in the revision?
I couldn’t agree more. As we polish, we begin to see the shape, the story line, the narrative arc, the angel in the stone. Someone, somewhere taught me this same concept, Art is in the revision.
I repeat this to my writing students. I say this aloud to myself.
Yet when I hear this phrase resurrected in the context of an AI defense, it feels as if my child is misquoting me.
If you extend the argument that generative AI is still your work, your heart-art, and working with a draft generated for you is still your art, then I believe you’ve lost your artist’s way.
If you share your idea with another writer and paid writer to write your first draft, yet you polish the draft, are you still the artist?
Isn’t this now a collaborative?
Perhaps your name is on the byline, but the piece is ghostwritten.
Aren’t you editing AI’s work?
My worry for future artists is their need for instant-gratification. Our society pressures this fast-paced finishing, pushing artists to produce more and produce it as quickly as possible. I think we lose something special in our hyper-production mentality. It’s the difference between delicately placing a spotless ladybug on a rose bush, allowing her to do her job, versus spraying that rose with chemicals that harm us—you, me, our soil, our air—to quickly rid the buds of aphids.
We’re losing the slow-infusing, benefits of nature.
The investment of curation has been replaced. We’ve the cut-and-pasted Happy Holiday text message sent to the masses instead of our soft-curly strokes of the handwritten card. We’ve lost the home-made bread aroma, the gathering ‘round a table for a game, the random phone call, the old-fashioned family portraits.
Time is our greatest commodity. The way we use time defines us. This sets our tone, our day, our hearts. We will feel the dew of grass beneath our feet? We will stop and smell the roses…or anything? The micro moments are where we live and absorb the world. The pause is often the loudest note in a song. The space between the first long-hand under- or over-written draft becomes the pulse of the poem.
I want the entire art experience. I want this whether I’m the artist or the audience. I want to feel the duende in the flamenco, the fire in the cello, the tears in the writer. I want to feel this as I create—one slow step to the next. This intentional early movement helps me discover me, helps me understand the way I’m ingesting the world around me. Helps me.
Originally published January 29, 2024 as “A Little Letter from an AI Rebutter” in The Brevity Blog.
Rebecca Evans, memoirist, essayist, and poet, writes the difficult, the heart-full, the guidebooks for survivors. She teaches writing in the Juvenile system and co-hosts the Writer to Writer radio show. She’s also disabled, a military veteran, and shares space with her sons and Newfoundlands.
Her work has appeared in Narratively, The Rumpus, Hypertext Magazine, War, Literature & the Arts, The Limberlost Review, and more.
She’s earned two MFAs, one in creative nonfiction, the other in poetry, University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.
She’s co-edited the anthology, when there are nine, a tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Moon Tide Press, 2022).
She’s penned a memoir in verse, Tangled by Blood (Moon Tide Press. 2023) and has a book-length poem forthcoming in 2024.
