Writing content that connects: the intelligence tool you'll want to prioritise

When it comes to writing content that connects, tech has allowed us to write at speeds we’ve never been able to achieve before. It checks our work, helps us to structure our ideas and is useful for editing, summarising and reducing word count.

Great stuff.

But in the race for cheap and fast, some people are using AI to write it from scratch. As someone who has been a writer for years with an uncanny knack for spotting plagiarism, I can eye AI-written content from fifty paces.

It's no coincidence that content can mean words online and fluff in a pillow but as all content has a carbon footprint shouldn't we be making it more about effectiveness and less about plumping the feed?

Who are people connecting with?

Humans learned how to talk not to share information about things but to share stories. We developed the apparatus to speak, listen and process to suppose, dream and imagine. As our culture became more complex, so did our stories. Our physicality, interactions and speech are all intertwined.

So where are we headed? What does it mean for our species if the unhuman-centipede reprocesses its own discharge in pursuit of writing content that connects.

AI disrupts our loop of development. Human beings had an unrecognisable individual capacity to hold information 100k years ago. Yes, shared knowledge has given us air travel, heart surgery and Sunday papers but at what cost?

What are we no longer able to sense, intuit, or cognate?

Our shared knowledge tells the stories of what’s already out there but nothing about what’s inside. Hence, the sentiments that coaches and therapists have voiced to me about humans approaching tech for healing, guidance and comfort. It has no ethics, boundaries or human inner workings. It cannot reveal the story inside. It can only talk of the collective whole.

An amorphous whole that many have suggested is also fractured, biased and off-centre.

When offline is online

I learned some time ago how to breathe with a tree. Based on the idea that we exchange gasses it’s a refreshingly simple way to ground yourself and improve overall well-being. The tree seems to enjoy it too.

Give it a go sometime.

Put your hands on the tree and you’ll feel its energy. In spring, coming from the ground out to the branches and in autumn, retreating into the soil. We already know that trees support each other through an underground network of fungi, something that was poo-pooed before science proved it.

It’s the wood-wide web. Something we can all log on to (pun intended).

Try this: when you’ve finished co-breathing with your chosen tree, try standing near a leafy branch and invite the tree to investigate you. Within time, it’ll move its leaves towards you. In our arrogance, we’ve supposed that we’re the only curious party: believe me, being immobile, trees love being allowed to experience something new. They attract what they want to know more about. That’s why the wisest of the trees where I live, the oak, supports an ecosystem of over two thousand species.

This is just one relationship we’ve lost touch with. We’re walking energy centres, on a ball of molten metal, hurling through other balls of molten metal and energy fields. We’re surrounded by organic compounds, waves and pheromones and yet most of the time, we’re utterly unaware of the signals and information around us.

We’ve disconnected from one network only to log onto another. The question is, has it done us any good? With the misery, control, harm, deprivation, anxiety, depression and over-accumulation that’s normal in our day and age, I’d say it’s questionable.

But I digress

We know that spending time in nature is good for the body and mind. It settles the nervous system, helps our autoimmune mechanisms and is even good for the gut. It calms children and helps us to stay healthier as we get older.

In other words, it’s a healthy network to log onto. We’re designed to do it.

But it also brings out our creativity. We were attuned to our senses long before we could speak. We understood the language beyond language: smells, rhythm, vibration, sensation, inflection in a voice or slight changes in a facial expression. Those meanings are programmed in our hearts, using the same systems that allow us to interpret the world around us.

So what happens to our identity, stories and understanding when the only language we have is words — and the words of everyone else at that? And if fear shouts louder than love, what’s more likely to reach our ears and with what impact?

And what of our connection to the world around us that keeps us whole? What happens to us if we forget how to speak in the metaphors that live inside us, crawl through the earth and ping through the atmosphere?

Not a story of fear but one of love

I’m not here to trash AI or the people who choose to use it. For some, it’s a valuable tool. For others, conscious of its carbon footprint, human impact and synthetic nature, there is an intentional choice to keep things organic in writing content that connects.

And here’s the crux.

If you’re interested in telling the generic stories that could be replicated with the same prompts, then use AI. The mesh of logo-centric information creates its own engaging and groundbreaking stories, headlines, hooks, slogans and solutions. But it's only ever the story of what’s already been told — even if it’s been rehashed into a different order to create something fresh. There is nothing new under its sun.

Your soul voice? From the soul that yearns to connect with other souls, that voice can only come from within. Our tales of love deeply rooted in the soil, the womb we grew in, our mother’s milk, the beating of a heart, the first warm day of spring, a lover’s hand, a parent’s last breath: these messages do not live in words. They fly so far beyond words that we can only attempt to catch whisps and glimpses in things like art, dance, poetry, music and craft.

And when we try to communicate with words from the heart, we hide these whispered meanings in metaphor, what we choose not to say and in messy, unregulated lexicon that breaks the order AI relies on.

This is the corner that AI cannot see around. It cannot see into my heart. It cannot see into yours. So, as writers, we’ve been handed this responsibility to, at all odds, elevate soul voice above the cacophony. It is our right, duty and delight. Particularly those of us who see souls and feel sadness when we see writing without a soul, like a shroud without a body.

And who knows, maybe one day we’ll be entrusted with teaching the machines how to breathe with trees. Perhaps our survival as a species will depend on it.