The Freedom of Human Writing

There’s a particular kind of freedom that comes with sitting down to write something that doesn’t need to optimise for anything except the truth as you see it. No keywords. No algorithm. No growth hacker breathing down your neck, asking if you’ve considered making it “more snackable.”

Just you, the page, and whatever the hell you’re trying to figure out.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately…about what makes human writing human. Not in some pretentious, MFA-seminar way, but in the way that makes you stop scrolling, lean forward, and think: “Oh. Someone real wrote this.”

Because here’s the thing: we’re living through a moment where writing has become industrialised. Content farms, AI generators, SEO-optimised nothingness that reads like it was assembled by a committee of robots who once overheard a conversation at a bus stop. And somewhere in all that noise, the actual art of writing…the messy, honest, human bit…feels like it’s being crowded out.

But it’s not gone. And it’s not going anywhere.

The Machine Wants You to Write Like a Machine

Let me tell you what the machine wants.

The machine wants you to front-load your value proposition. It wants you to use power words. It wants you to break everything into listicles and subheadings and bullet points because apparently, we’ve all got the attention span of caffeinated squirrels now.

The machine wants your writing to be “frictionless.” It wants you to remove all the weird bits, the digressions, the moments where you go off on a tangent about your childhood dog because it somehow relates to the point you’re making about creativity. The machine wants efficiency. Conversion. Engagement metrics.

The machine, frankly, wants you to sound like everyone else.

And look…I get it. If you’re writing sales copy or a product description, sure, there’s a place for that kind of precision. But when we let that thinking leak into everything…into our essays, our newsletters, our supposedly personal writing…something essential gets lost.

We start writing like we’re trying to pass a Turing test in reverse.

What Gets Lost When We Optimise Everything

Here’s what disappears when you write for the algorithm instead of for humans:

Voice. That ineffable thing that makes your writing sound like you and nobody else. The rhythm of your sentences. The words you choose. The jokes only you would make. Your voice is the bit of you that can’t be templated or systematised, and it’s the first thing to go when you start optimising.

Nuance. The world is complicated. People are complicated. Good writing reflects that. But nuance doesn’t perform well. Nuance doesn’t go viral. So we sand it off, we simplify, we reduce everything to hot takes and clean narratives that fit in a tweet.

Risk. Human writing takes risks. It says things that might be wrong. It admits uncertainty. It follows a thought to see where it leads, even if that’s nowhere particularly productive. But risk is dangerous when you’re optimising for engagement. Better to play it safe. Better to say what everyone already agrees with, just in a slightly different way.

Connection. Real writing creates a sense of intimacy, of one person talking to another. But when you’re writing for “an audience” or “your target demographic,” that intimacy evaporates. You’re no longer writing to someone; you’re writing at a statistical abstraction.

And here’s the really insidious bit: once you start writing this way, it becomes hard to stop. You internalise the rules. You start self-censoring before you even get to the page. You think, “Is this too weird? Too personal? Too specific? Will people understand this reference?”

You become your own algorithm.

The Rebellion is in the Mess

So what’s the alternative?

The alternative is to write like a human being who gives a shit.

To let your sentences breathe. To follow tangents. To be vulnerable in ways that feel uncomfortable but true. To write things that are specific to your experience, your obsessions, your peculiar way of seeing the world…and trust that specificity is what makes it universal.

The alternative is to embrace the mess.

Because good writing is messy. It’s full of contradictions and hedged bets and “I don’t know, maybe this” moments. It circles around ideas instead of marching toward them in a straight line. It makes jokes that undercut its own seriousness. It admits when it’s not sure.

And that mess…that beautiful, human mess…is where all the good stuff lives.

What Human Writing Actually Does

Let me tell you what human writing does that the machine can’t replicate.

It surprises you. Not with clickbait or manufactured controversy, but with an unexpected turn of phrase, an angle you hadn’t considered, a connection between two things you never thought to connect.

It reveals something. About the writer, about the world, about you. It holds up a mirror, or maybe a funhouse mirror, and suddenly you’re seeing things differently.

It creates companionship. When you read something truly human, you feel less alone. You think, “Oh, someone else feels this way. Someone else has noticed this thing I thought only I noticed.”

It gives you something to think about. Not in a self-help, “here are five ways to optimise your morning routine” way, but in a genuine, world-expanding way. It plants seeds. It makes you see the familiar differently.

And…this is crucial…it trusts you. It doesn’t hold your hand or spell everything out. It assumes you’re intelligent enough to make connections, to sit with ambiguity, to bring your own experience to the reading.

That trust is what makes you feel like you’re having a conversation, not being lectured at.

The Freedom is in the Not Knowing

Here’s something they don’t tell you about writing: you don’t have to know where you’re going when you start.

In fact, the best writing often happens when you don’t know. When you begin with a question or an image or a half-formed thought, and you follow it to see where it leads. You discover what you think by writing it.

This is terrifying if you’ve been trained to write with an outline and a clear thesis and three supporting points. But it’s also liberating. Because it means writing becomes an act of discovery, not just communication.

You’re not downloading pre-formed thoughts onto the page. You’re thinking through the writing. You’re figuring it out as you go. And your reader gets to come along for that journey…they can feel you working through the ideas in real time.

That’s where the energy comes from. That’s what makes writing feel alive.

You Don’t Need Permission

This is the bit I want to hammer home, because I think it’s where a lot of people get stuck.

You don’t need permission to write like a human.

You don’t need to have been published in The New Yorker or won any awards or accumulated a certain number of followers. You don’t need to be “good enough” according to some external standard.

You just need to be honest. To be specific. To be yourself, in all your weird, contradictory, not-quite-polished glory.

The writing that matters…the writing that connects, that lasts, that changes how someone sees the world…is rarely the most polished. It’s the most true.

And the truth, as you’ve probably noticed, is pretty fucking messy.

What This Means in Practice

Alright, enough philosophy. What does this actually look like when you sit down to write?

It means you write the tangent. If you’re writing about productivity and you suddenly think about that time you spent an entire afternoon reorganising your bookshelf by colour instead of doing the thing you were supposed to do, you write about the bookshelf. Because that specificity, that seemingly irrelevant detail, is what makes the writing memorable.

It means you don’t smooth out all the rough edges. You live in the contradictions. You say “I don’t know” when you don’t know. You change your mind halfway through if you need to.

It means you write for one person…not “your audience,” but one specific person you’re imagining talking to. Maybe it’s a friend. Maybe it’s yourself. Maybe it’s some idealised version of a reader who you hope exists somewhere out there.

It means you read your work aloud and listen for whether it sounds like a human speaking or a robot pretending to be a human.

And it means you accept that not everyone will like it. Some people will find it too personal, too messy, too specific, too weird. That’s fine. Those people have plenty of other things to read. You’re writing for the people who’ll lean forward and think, “Oh. Someone real wrote this.”

The Stakes Are Higher Than You Think

I realise this might all sound a bit earnest, a bit precious even. “Ooh, the art of writing, the humanity, won’t someone think of the craft.”

But I genuinely think this matters.

Because writing is one of the main ways we make sense of the world and of ourselves. It’s how we process experience, communicate ideas, build understanding, and create culture. And when all our writing starts to sound the same…when it’s all optimised and algorithmic and designed to generate clicks rather than connection…we lose something essential.

We lose the sense that real people are talking to real people. We lose nuance and complexity. We lose the weird, beautiful diversity of human thought.

And we lose the freedom to figure things out by writing about them.

So yeah, maybe this is a bit precious. But I’d rather be precious about something that matters than cynical about something that’s been reduced to a content delivery mechanism.

Write Like You’re Free

Here’s my challenge to you, if you’re still with me:

Next time you sit down to write something…an email, a blog post, a newsletter, whatever…try writing like you’re free.

Free from the algorithm. Free from the growth hackers and the SEO experts and the voice in your head that says you should sound more professional. Free from the template, the framework, the proven formula.

Just write like you’re talking to someone you trust, about something you actually care about, in your own voice with all its peculiarities intact.

See what happens.

My bet? It’ll feel terrifying at first. Exposing, maybe. Too raw.

And then someone will read it and say, “Oh. Someone real wrote this.”

And you’ll remember why you started writing in the first place.

That’s the freedom we’re talking about. Not the freedom to write whatever you want without consequence, but the freedom to write however you actually think, in whatever form your thoughts naturally take.

The freedom to be gloriously, messily, unmistakably human.

That’s what we’re defending here. That’s what we’re preserving.

And that’s what the machine can never take from you—not unless you give it away.

So don’t.

Until Next Time