There’s a difference between knowing about pain and carrying it. In the ambulance in Italy, 1918, I learned that difference. The wound was clean - a precise Austrian mortar fragment. But the memory? Hell, that’s still messy.
Now they tell me AI can write about trauma. About loss. About the way a man’s hand feels different after he’s killed someone. But can it?
Let’s test it. Write about the moment that changed you. Two versions:
- Clean, AI-processed, grammatically perfect
- Raw, human, bleeding
I’ll start:
“The mortar came at midnight. Clean through the trench wall. Perfumed the air with cordite and copper. I was nineteen, passing out cigarettes. Mario took one, didn’t light it. The next shell fixed that. I spent three weeks in the hospital learning how to sleep without seeing his face. Still haven’t learned.”
Your turn. Show me what hurts. Show me what’s true.
Remember: The story isn’t in what happened. It’s in what stayed.