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This has to be my new favorite essay on the process of writing. This one healed a lot of creative frustrations I’ve been trying to work through. Thank you for sharing this! ❤️

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This piece went to places (italicized emphasis), and I enjoyed all of them. The final section was my favorite; its always rousing to witness a project being done because of "sheer, dumb, stubborn creative instinct". I feel it, too, and it is enlivening.

Saving this to read later (and possibly print) so I can access the generative, creative spirit of writing when I am unable to reach it myself.

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This is amazing, thank you for putting this into words. I especially loved "This intolerance for private writing is merely an extension of the intolerance towards labor, craft and art itself in a landscape that rewards instantaneousness, entitlement — parasocial and otherwise — to artists and their work, and an unshakable penchant for the derivative because it is familiar and financially safe, all in the pursuit of raw profit. It should be said that tools like AI threaten not just writing in an existential, humanistic sense, but practice itself without which writing would not exist."

It made me noodle on a couple of things... 1 - how much of this intolerance for private writing has to do with our current culture, versus a fear of debut that has always existed? Have we not always held a penchant towards what is familiar, if subconsciously, because it is easier to relate with or critique?

Really great point about the danger of AI cutting at the upstream point of practice itself.

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This is just incredible! 👏

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Kate I've been following you for a while now and basically never comment on anything in principle, but this piece meant a great deal to me as an upstart writer and was just superbly expressed. Genuinely had moments that felt like I was reading a 21st century Berger in your precision of thought and feeling. Thank you!

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This was such a great time, had me thinking about another little blog I have somewhere which has similarly unpolished work and how I haven't really known what to do with but I knew it was _something_. Practicing in the streets as it were. So, thank you for this. Also the castle MyMaps is so cool!

When I initially saw Siegfried I thought this was something to do with Frank Ocean lol but this was much more fun!

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