Opening Chapter -- New Ebook

Last week I released my new EBook titled How to Write With Fight About Business and Technology -- and Survive the AI Onslaught. It's accessible on the Amazon Kindle Store. I wanted to share with you the opening chapter.

One thing is clear. Old age nears. If it’s not already here. The closing days of a writing career.

The pressure mounts. Every word counts. As does every sentence and paragraph and chapter and news release and blog and byline article and book.

All of it spilling out from my heart. Tech tales from my heart. Decades of words, millions typed. So many so bad, a few good. I did what I could.

It’s a new time, a new world, and writing as a career may be in jeopardy because artificial intelligence (AI) is so damn fast at writing sentences.

Will I last? If not, will it end fast?

There is so little I know about writing. There is so little I know about AI. I wish I knew why.

This is just a book. Maybe it’s worth a look.

The more you write the less you know. The less you write the less you know. So which way to go? I don’t know. So I just go.

Where are we now, this thing called writing? Where am I with this thing called writing?

I am here. Of that I am sure. Trying to do more.

There is fear. AI is here. So are editors who love to smear.

This is a writing career. Are you here? Are you with me?

Are you in fear?

If you’re not, you’re probably not a writer because writers take chances all the time and don’t know much at all but keep typing for reasons they often can’t articulate. It’s a mysterious pull. There is fear. It’s always near.

This book is an attempt to help you figure out if you want to be a writer and, if so, how you might be able to go about it in a way that fulfills your creative urge while helping other people, your readers, grasp concepts more firmly, learn more easily, be uplifted more intensely.

But it starts with you, not them. What you write must be true to how you see things. It’s not about being right or wrong or commercially famous. It’s about being honest. That is all.

You are about to embark on a journey into the world I have lived in for the past 33 years writing about business and technology. I know a little; more than that, actually. I have failed. I have done writing the wrong way, according to others, and struggled with being constrained creatively while at other times have found ways to unleash how I truly feel.

It’s been arduous. It’s been fun. It’s been depressing. It’s almost done.

Life is arduous. Writing is arduous.?But usually worthwhile. If you remain true to your style.

Since 1991 I have been writing about business and technology. I wouldn’t call myself a technical writer because they tend to write computer manual instructions and more purely step-by-step computer-focused content. That I’m pretty bad at; you need a logical mind which is not my strength. Putting things in logical order makes me feel like my arms and legs are strapped together disallowing me to move.

Standardized test questions exposed my inability to be logical agonizingly frequently tricking me to select the wrong answer, hurting my ego.

?I have been a storyteller and news reporter and opinion essayist about the world of business and technology. In 1991 I got a job as a reporter and editor of a weekly newsletter called?Fiber Optics News. This was in the early days of the information age broadband revolution that continues to this day. Didn’t know diddly about fiber optics when I started but I was allowed to write and that’s all I cared about. The subject didn’t matter. I bought into the challenge and the threat that there are no dull subjects only dull writers. Wanted to fight to not be boring as Arizona sand. Wanted to share my feelings because that was fulfilling.

I was a news reporter about the fiber optics industry which encompassed the larger world of telecommunications. All day, all night, revising sentences at 5 am in the morning, reporting and writing. Bulldozing my way into the professional writing world. Was bad at it. Entered writing contests and lost to younger reporters. More fuel to churn inside my stomach. Anger at being inferior. Behind my peers, not as good. Desperately trying to catch up. Still behind.

After four years I shifted from journalism to public relations with AT&T, which became Lucent Technologies. Again my job was to write about business and technology in news releases and byline articles primarily about the semiconductor industry. About as technically deep as you can get: circuit boards, transistors, silicon (think sand). Writing about things you need a high-powered microscope to see. Entered the deep sea of electrical engineering and the logic kingdoms of electrical engineers. A million transistors crammed into a board the size of a fingernail. Completely insane. Thought about and talked about and wrote about these fingernails day and night.

After 11 years I continued the same kind of work with Accenture writing about the smartphone, consumer electronics, cloud computing, blockchain, and AI markets. Got spun around as if in a mean washing machine. Daily and hourly changes in these industries. Never stagnant. Always the need to keep up, never enough time to do so. The center of the technology wave, riding it and crashing into the ocean hoping I didn’t hit the bottom hard. Felt like I often did and it hurt. Got bruised; hit bottom. Struggled to come up for air. A life on the brink – writing. Did this for 11 years. Stressful beyond belief. The job: Get press coverage or go home without money.

Then I moved on to my current job which is writing about cybersecurity business and technology. Finally a pure writing role without all the reporting and pressure to get reporters to write about my company. Cruising along. Wanted it all to continue, glide into retirement without all the anxiety and self-doubt and worry about not being good enough.?

Steady state is never how it goes. ChatGPT hit the world like a thunderbolt, shaking us all. A technology that would research and write faster – like by a factor of 100 or 10,000 or some unnerving-sounding number – than people. Meaning you and me.

Prompting the question: Would people be needed to write any more about business and technology? From at peace to in turmoil – once again. Being threatened. Obsolescence came crashing into my consciousness. Getting replaced. Told to go home - you’re no longer needed, writer.

This is where we are.

It’s been a challenging career figuring out ways to make reading about technology and its related business compelling, educational, and inspiring. But I have to say I have enjoyed it despite the never-ending, ever-accelerating pace, and I’m somehow emboldened by the AI threat – no machine will replace me without me fighting with all I have.

In this book I will share all I know about how to write effectively about business and technology, and how to adjust to the reality that generative AI can write sentences faster than any person. I hope you can use these tips and insights in your business technology writing career.

This is all I have to give. It’s a little. It’s a start. It’s one way to think about all this. I believe you will learn something you could only find out from someone who has lived this career path since in my twenties all the way until right now.

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