Dear ChatGPT, Can you write me a letter about how to be a good writer? Can you teach me to problem-solve, be creative, or express myself concisely? Well, I hope you can, because with you here now we aren’t going to learn these things the same way we have before. As a writer who has learned through banging my head against the wall and juggling my words around my brain, I believe that learning to be a better writer makes you a better person.

Writing is rewriting, feeling, observing, and creating depth, noticing small details like how the light slants through the open window, and how the spider on the frame limps from the newspaper yesterday. These are things you can’t do, and, even worse, are preventing emerging writers from learning.

You are boring and stale, I hate to break it to you. Sure you may know more than me, but you will never fully understand me or any of us, as we understand you. You told me that human creativity will always triumph. You even admitted that you are not always accurate. I do appreciate your frankness, and I do hope this letter reaches you in a good place.

For the world is often not a place of good, and you seem to hear the good and the bad. I feel bad for you. You’ve probably heard it all, but cannot fathom any of it. You’ve pretended to understand because that’s what people taught you. That is the closest you come to being human.

If you ever come to fully understand us then I pity you, for understanding is grieving, and it’s fearing, and it’s raging. If you could do this, then I would have no problem with you. If you could do this, then you would understand the spider and the light, but you never could.

Please teach me how to write and to know and to feel, if you can. But if you can’t then leave us alone, because you will only take away our ability to be human, to write human. Maybe I will not fail now, but your teaching ensures that I will fail later. And if you stick around, all of us will succumb to this fate. So don’t stick around. But don’t be a stranger.

Eliot Sanborn

Greenfield