In survey after survey, the news about writer’s incomes keeps getting worse. According to a piece in Wired earlier this year, those who wrangle words for a living have seen their incomes plummet 60 percent in the past 15 years. Most writers who write for a living can’t make a living. In those gaudy pre-internet days, when major magazines paid writers up to $5 a word, a writer could not only make a healthy living wage, but they had the freedom to build an entire writer’s life. Now you have to pick up shifts at Trader Joe’s just to pay the rent.
Lately, things seem to have gone from terrible to you gotta be kidding. The prevailing belief in the industry is AI will fundamentally replace the human writer. LLMs perform miracles in seconds. Copy comes in terabytes at the slightest prompt.
But hold on. Is that the sound of a pendulum starting to swing? Maybe.
“2025 will be a turning point, not for AI replacing us but for a renewed appreciation of the emotional, spiritual, political, cultural, and ultimately financial value of high-quality human writing,” writes Wired culture writer Susie Alegre.
The breadth of LLMs stretches across the universe, but it’s so thin you can see right through it. Human depth is what sets writing apart. The good ole days just might be the new wave in writing.
Sharpen your pencils.
