Try to resist every possible way generative AI is seeping into your life. Disable Gemini. Circumvent Google’s AI overview. Do not ask ChatGPT for writing prompts or for comparative titles. Do not use software that claims it can do the work of an editor and which, at its best, is a crude approximation of the real thing. Even if it wasn’t, what would be the point? Writing, even if begun in isolation, ideally doesn’t live forever that way: At its most rewarding, writing and art more broadly involve other humans engaging creatively with your work, and to outsource the other part of that equation to a machine is a betrayal of the creative contract. It will make you a worse literary citizen and a worse writer.
Instead, exchange your work with other writers and learn not just to receive feedback but to provide it as well. Let yourself get lost down strange research rabbit holes. Ask real people for book recommendations and read, read, read—there is nothing wrong with a classic but please familiarize yourself with what is being published today if you want to be a member of that cohort yourself. Understand that while the powers that be are not making it easy to opt out of this invasive, reckless technology, you must do your best: The minute you start to yield, saying no will get that much harder because your brain will seek the path of least resistance. After all, it is so much easier to not have to think. It is also infinitely less rewarding.
—Emma Dries, agent, Triangle House Literary