I moved to Spain in 2018, chasing a romanticised, laddish ideal of learning to fly a plane and being able to set off anywhere I deemed more interesting at the time than my current location (sorry, Ghent, it was me, not you). Soon, I discovered that the petrol-guzzling escape fantasy wouldn’t help me in the slightest, as most places are only as fascinating as one chooses to make them. (The sole exception to this rule is Reading, the London satellite town seemingly built entirely in greyscale – instantly increasing your sympathy for the colour-blind.)
Since I was there anyway, having taken my talents to Europe’s South Beach (loosely basing my quote on LeBron James here), I decided to take my writing career freelance, typing for tech and other businesses in exchange for money.
Now, nearly seven years later, I feel like I’ve lived several careers in a short time, moving through different types of writing. This shift has largely been driven by external factors. When I first graduated in 2015, my copywriting field didn’t quite exist yet, and now it’s at risk of being upended once again. Some fifteen years ago, a copywriting career largely meant advert and marketing ghostwriting, almost exclusively for print media. The idea of making a living ghostwriting blogs, think pieces and opinion articles that live almost entirely online, would have seemed far-fetched at the time. Translation jobs were already coming under pressure from competition of (then rather poor) online translation platforms, but these weren’t regarded as an imminent threat. Today, artificial intelligence has led to an explosion of content – the irony of the word alone – and translators must constantly adapt and explain their added value. Similar changes are sweeping through other creative industries: UX design and illustrator jobs, too, are at risk of DIY alternatives, as AI-based results have already moved from ludicrous to passable. The thought of putting AI back in its box is naive at best; the changes are already here.
To writers like me and those in related industries, this change could mean three things: rethink your career focus, return to the essence of writing, or retrain for something else entirely.
For experienced writers, the first two options might appear the most appealing. New tools and formats can be fun to play around with, as long as the results aren’t too overly dictated by what the research or – yuk! – best practices prescribe. From boss says no to computer says no doesn’t seem like much progress to me. Writers with a portfolio and a reputation can typically afford to push back, allowing them to focus on what they’re best at, confident that their writing will shine through. Their clients will be happy to pay for artisanal, glutamate-free writing and use it as a selling point themselves.
Personally, I’d hope a small but resilient counter-movement in creative industries might grow further. Just as those around me are slowly growing tired of algorithm-fed, mediocre movies designed to maximise our screen time (Netflix) and draw us deeper into their shopping ecosystem (Amazon), I believe writing might follow a similar trend. As I once read, “Why would I read something no one has bothered to write?” I feel there might be room for a smallish yet resistant counterculture of people willing to pay a premium for carefully curated stories of all sorts.
I’ve moved from streaming services to renting individual movies online again whenever I can, and I much prefer the weekend paper’s in-depth stories behind the news over the barrage of day-to-day events. At home, I have a stack of 1970s Playboy issues – the best present my first ex-girlfriend ever gave me. They’re beautifully written and designed, with a copy costing about a dollar (roughly seven euros in today’s money, comparable to modern magazine prices). The difference in their business model? About one-third of the issue was filled with full-page ads for whiskey, Brylcreem and cigarettes – advertising revenue that once covered the gap in publishing costs but has since shifted online.
So here’s my plea: let’s pay a little extra – not necessarily to support creators out of pity, but out of self-interest, so we can enjoy more creative work that’s truly worth watching, reading and listening to. In a sea of endless AI-generated rubbish, the paid good stuff is medicine to the soul.