I fell in love with writing in 2006. I was a sixth-grade kid, a school-going kid with few friends and limited outdoor access. My parents and teachers monitored me closely, and this atmosphere pushed me to associate myself with something creative that would never make me feel bored, even if I did it continuously for hours and hours.
That was the writing, and I realized that in the year 2006.
With limited vocabulary, and having no clue about the societal issues, human feelings, and emotions, it was not a good choice for my mental health.
The blocks that I had to overcome were not that easy.
I had to sit for hours in a single place and practice expressing my emotions in words.
My places were my bed, our house’s entrance door, and sometimes the vacated classroom and class breaks.
When everyone was playing in the ground, I would force myself not to join them, because I was also a victim of heavy bullying. That fear within me has pushed me to become a writer.
I learned it in my way of expressing feelings. I wrote prayers to God, love letters to secret crushes, notes to the teachers and about family members, and a few imaginative stories when I read them for the second time, they sounded so silly, impractical and inapplicable.
Those were the days when I spent some quality time with myself and there were no tools, especially AI tools to assist me with this.
The Rejection
Everywhere we have this part, in my life, rejection of my writing is seen from a family member to the teachers, not all, but few were treating me like a fool or a mad kid whose brain has stopped functioning, so he is writing.
The seniors used to tease me because I spent lots of time with the books. I was not aware of other genres except textbooks, I had limited access to the outside libraries, I went with my father only thrice to a city library, and that grabbed my attention and exposed my thoughts to the world of books.
I fell in love with writing, but it took 4 years for me to become a writer. It is in the tenth standard that I decided and dedicated myself to becoming a writer.
I wrote two fantasy stories and shared it with my school friends, some applauded me for the skill, and some threw that in the garbage.
The love for essay writing competitions has grabbed my attention and then I won school-level and town-level competitions within a less time on innovative topics like environmental issues and other social issues.
The Growth
Most of people today boast themselves as writers, to make things clear, I am personally fed up with the tags like content writer and expert in content writer where they use AI content creation tools like ChatGPT to generate the content.
I am not against the evolution of Artificial Intelligence and AI tools; I have a premium subscription and have access to many AI tools. But the only thing is, not all those who are trying to portray themselves as writers are called actual writers. I am not talking about the grammar here; it is all about creativity.
My growth as a writer only came to me because I chose that path to write, when everyone hated writing in my connections and when everyone called me a dirtbag for writing, I still did not change my stance and never got discouraged or distracted by those comments. The reason is simple, I love to write and when we love to do something, we only know what kind of limitations we can overcome, we can give our life for that one love, and my passion was and is writing.
The Creative Nerve
Being creative is not a thing that is taught, but it can be learned.
I was a person with huge stage fright, but later in my 20’s, I became a lecturer and a Project Director and took many roles where I needed to train hundreds and thousands of students.
My inferiority complex, stage fright, and every fear that I have created within myself have been defeated by my hard work. They did not just disappear from my life that easily.
For a public speaker, it is just like drinking a cup of coffee when he/she is asked to speak in front of the public, but the same speaker might fail if we ask him to perform a drama, the fear of the public might not be there, but the lack of expertise might lead him/her into trouble.
I beat my fears all by myself, and how I did that was not because of any inspiration, in those days, I did not have access to any internet and computer class was the biggest tragedy in my life.
Me and the Computer
The computer, the thing I only knew as a device that allows us to play games. This was my thought process earlier in the 2000s. I have no clue about the operations it can make and how it will change the world. I was not able to access a fully functional computer and know its importance and significance until late 2010.
The faculty who taught my sister a computer was the one who was assigned to my school as a computer teacher too. And monthly I was only handed one computer with some MS Paint in it and a few words in MS Word, and to type those or to learn typing, my hands were shaken like hell, I was sweating, I lost conscious many times because that computer anxiety has made me to hate it.
The relationship between me and the computer was not a good one until there was another computer trainer who joined our school and taught it in an innovative way, but by then also, I was only good at writing about the computer but not operating it.
In the year 2012, a transformation took place, I started to learn the computer all by myself, learning typing, my father, mother, and sister has encouraged me a lot. Knowing the importance of the computer, my father, being a government employee, pushed me to build interest on this machine, but my fear has prevented me from loving it and adapting to it.
After I started self-teaching myself about Windows, the Hardware, the operating system, and the accessories. Every week, on Saturday, I spent money on the internet cafes and learned things one by one.
It took me a month to learn that there is a left and right buttons on the mouse, and I am not ashamed to admit how fool I was to figure out those buttons. But the same things I had done in the theoretical classes and got good marks, coming to the application part, I fell flat.
Then year 2017, I became the first person to own a laptop, and then I started blogging on Google’s Blogger Platform. I learned how to create a blog, and website and how to maintain it on my own.
The power of self-tutoring is something that provides us the confidence, the mistakes we make during this process will act as bricks that construct a fort of perfectionism.
By 2020, I will be the fastest typist in my entire circle, 80wpm is my speed and it will vary from 80-85wpm based on ergonomics. I was the most feared person when I saw the keyboard, I had a fear of keyboards and created a kind of phobia within me. Those dark walls have been broken and then I became what I am today.
The Confidence
When someone approaches me and asks me “Prasanna Dasari, why are you so arrogant in a few things, that arrogant kind of behavior is not actually an arrogant one, it is the confidence that I built in myself. Even today, I have few limitations in, I am not the perfect person, but I am learning, each day is a new day to learn something new for me, I never seize myself from learning, and as I have gone through bullying a lot, receiving feedback is not a big challenge for me to handle it correctly and rectify myself.
This confidence has been seen in every walk of my life, from learning a bicycle to motorbike, I wondered how people will ride a bicycle by moving their legs and yet they are able to balance themselves and the bicycle as well and I considered the bike riders as the legends to ride their motor bikes with acceleration and controlling the speed through gears.
But, when I transformed my fear into passion, brought me the results which are outstanding, these fears converted into solutions, and when I made them my passions, then people who criticized me for my weakness started to observe me closely how I transformed myself.
The Consistency
When we develop determination and also nurture the love for learning, there is nothing that is considered tough to master.
I am a living example, let me also share one of the hardest pains that I had to handle.
Most of the students today will blame their parents for not providing them with the study of their choice. Well, I blamed my parents too, but when my mother passed away, I realized how big a mistake I made by blaming them.
As parents, they also fed my little mind that I must become a doctor, I was doing well in the science subjects, and I got 100 out of 100 in every unit test and exam. However due to financial restrictions, I was not able to appear for the medical entrance test as there was disbelief in my family that I may not be able to crack the exam, but also, they feared that in any case, if I qualified, they need to pay the fee. They have shifted my goals to Engineering.
I was not good at mathematics (even today it is a wonder for me because I didn’t like it, not even turn this subject into my passion) but in Engineering, the initial days for survival are too hard. The fast-paced culture, the change of location, and the challenges were unexplainable, the homesickness and my trials for suicide due to loneliness, and felt like I lost everything.
But, this Engineering life has taught me how to stay rigid as a metal and how to handle myself like a well-oiled machine. Reluctantly I have finished it, but the years it gave me time to write and improvise myself in writing is what I can say was a good time spent.
I never give up on writing in my life, whether it is a good day or bad day, ill or well, I have written, and I will be writing. I will write for myself, and I don’t know whether there are people who will read or who will have time to read what I have written, but I will never stop writing, I will keep on writing until my last breath.
The AI Content Generation and Creativity
When I was teaching earlier in my days, the students there were not at all interested in either reading or writing, they are not able to sit in a single place and develop their skills.
This journey was too tough, I was not able to plan my classes and day as these students were really too much to handle. Then I realized that that, I cannot control any of the students until I get a complete picture of their psychological approach. Then I pushed myself and jumped into their mindset just like anything.
Today, right now, being in a field where creativity is a daily dose, I found people in my life who are much more careful to use their brain. They might think that their brain may get corroded if they use it, or they might think about using the brain is like a crime.
With the invention of automated and highly powerful tools, these new generation kids, so-called, self-proclaimed writers turned to ChatGPT and started creating content like anything.
Now everyone can call themselves a writer or tag themselves as a writer, but the real writers are still out there with creativity in their words and minds are focused on writing.
With these AI tools, it becomes too much to resist for the newbie writers, and just as an experiment, if the access to these AI content creation tools is limited or their server is down for some reason, then the life of these so called writers will start to shake, they are tensed and not able to think or do anything.
As a researcher, I will never talk without the data that backups my writings, when it comes to statements like the above. You will see the research link here updated when my current research is done completely.
As a content head, and in-house and the external freelancers, client’s content writers and all types of writers will be associated with me.
I work with these all, I review their documents, I review their articles, and correct their first drafts.
I picked 20 of them and hid their names and prepared the sheet to track their creativity levels, and you will see the results and you will be wondered.
I can say that the word creativity has much more powerful meaning than what we all think, it is about how one can generate and showcase a thing that can draw someone’s attention irrespective of the number of audiences for a particular creative idea, if we are able to grab one mind’s attention too, then it is a great achievement for the creators.
The Creators We Have Today
Back in 2016, when I started my blogging career, Indiblogger is the first ever platform that has been met with all the standards. From the contests to quality content and the quality writers and genuine networking. I made best friends there who were real content creators and who have actively participated in many contests and proved their worth.
Let me compare to today’s content creators, let me called them so called. I will provide you with a real life example.
In those days, content creator is the one who actually creates the content, whether it is a blog, a video script, or even a short video within 30 seconds, the creators used to write themselves, even brands gave them the liberty to use their own tone without missing the brand guidelines, but now, everything has turned out to be a spoon feeding process, the content has to be provided by the brands, the ideation, poses and everything has to be provided by the brands and these so called influencers are only able to read what it is fed to them.
Individual influencers are also becoming more like copycats by copying from the platforms like Tiktok which is banned in India and creating a hype for the copied content.
I am not against the growth of the generation, but the way it is progressing is something concerned. With AI and all other tools, we are only going to murder our creativity, activity both mental and physical and we are giving stubbornness a big opportunity to ruin our brains.
Of course this is all provided in less time, but the quality of human touch is what will convert a person’s thought. Even if those ideas are generated using tools, then I doubt there will be no word called creativity in the upcoming AI ages.
End Note
I am not against the people who are admiring AI and the content creation tools, I am not against the growth, but I am only worried about the quality output that a person will generate from these tools. Lack of personal ideas, a mind that is not willing to work on the research will only end up with what we have and that might become one of the biggest mistakes in the history of mankind.
Everything is easy these days, the food we eat is instantaneously prepared and the groceries that we order also have the same process, the products we buy these days and the decisions we make are completely relied on the AR and VR (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality) functionalities.
Give it a thought my fellow content creators.
