Against the Polished Lie

My stories come out bent. They fray at the edges, carried by instinct more than outline. I write in spirals, in fits of remembering, in the hush between homework and midnight, where nothing is polished or easy, but where everything is most irrevocably mine.

When I read Tom McAllister’s essay, I felt something sharpen, as if he were defending a version of me I haven’t grown out of yet: the girl still learning how to say things the way they feel in her chest.

Stemming from simple, morbid curiosity, I tried the AI thing. Typed in something half-true and watched it come back too polished, too confident, and entirely lifeless, like someone hollowed out my voice and replaced it with one that never slips.

But my voice tangles in memory and pauses mid-thought. It distracts and digresses. It tastes like pink chalk and summer air, like poems scribbled on receipts and the backs of test papers.

McAllister wrote, “The writing itself can be an act of defiance.” I think that’s what I’m doing when I write—refusing to outsource the ache, the nuance, the maybe-I-shouldn’t-say-this-but-I-will.

Machines can mimic shape, but cannot mimic soul. Not the hurt of understanding. Not the part where you write just to prove you’re still here.

Writing isn’t a shortcut: it’s scraped knees and silence and pages that shake in your hands. It should be unorthodox and alive. Let it be imperfect. Let it be yours.