After coming across that “writers against AI” image, I decided to put it into my micro.blog newsletter’s footer. Then, inevitably, I wondered “is that presumptuous to consider myself a writer?”
I quickly concluded, “Who cares? You’re being tiresome.” That’s the proper response and I am satisfied with it.
Later, though, I came across this line from Caspar David Friedrich quoted in The Romantic Revolution:
bring to the light of day what you have seen in the darkness, so that it can work on others, from the outside inwards
A writer, then, could be considered a person who practices bringing the inward outward through the medium of language. Nothing in that definition requires publishing or audience or even much talent–though it is a level of effort beyond simple communication. At its highest levels, of course, it is art. It can also be one way of meeting the work of life: “Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests. / I’ll dig with it.”