Some days, starting feels effortless. A clear challenge or opportunity presents itself, an idea crystallizes, and then contracts into a single coherent thought. Today, frankly? That's not happening. I'm staring at a pristine white canvas while the cursor mocks me. That uncomfortable space-the blinking cursor, the first messy draft, the false starts-isn't a nuisance. It's where creativity lives. Today, the temptation is to skip past all that.
I use AI to help me write blog posts, LinkedIn updates, and YouTube scripts. It is part of how I share my design ideas. But there is something small that kept bothering me. Every time I asked an AI tool to write something, it added a long dash and the medium dash. The em dash. This one ( - ). And the en dash. This one (-).
I'm glad this letter reached you before you fed that assignment prompt from your Creative Writing professor into ChatGPT. I'd like to share some ideas that may be helpful as you decide whether to follow through on that plan. First of all, I'm sorry you've been finding the poetry unit of Introduction to Creative Writing so tedious and uninspiring. It's true that you probably won't be writing much poetry in your future career.
