Does Writing Have to Be Hard?

February 20, 2026

TL;DR

The author, a history professor, felt threatened by the arrival of AI chatbots and delivery droids, seeing them as symbols of "frictionless ease" and potential civilizational collapse.
He defends the traditional view of writing instruction in the humanities, which emphasizes writing as both a craft and an art that requires sustained effort to yield insight.
Historical anxieties about the decline of writing standards and clear thinking, dating back to the late 19th century, resurface with the advent of AI tools.
The author observed that AI tools initially produced "weird" student writing, but eventually led to smoother, more uniform, and less error-prone essays, yet also less unique or profound ideas.
He concludes that the hard work of writing, despite its "torture," is essential for the formation of a thinking mind and that messy, handwritten essays revealed more alive thoughts than AI-generated text.

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