We are what we write

 Given the title, come up with five different sentences using those same five words.

Although rearrangement might be your first recourse for solving this conundrum, you don't need to go to such extremes, because the sentence itself allows for emphasis on each of the words, giving sentences that really have different contexts or meanings, proving the point. I know this sounds like another 'he made her duck' scenario, but this is different, because it is reflective.

Each of the five nuanced statements leads to the one conclusion - the written word defines us, & yet we limit ourselves thereto, as if by choice.

Is there a way to escape what we write, or differentiate who we are from the resultant text? That is not an existential problem so much as a technical one. The language that we use is almost always that which comes from within us. To channel another - such as writing in first person - is hard work & rarely successful in creating a distinct personality, due to your own upbringing, etc. You can estimate reactions, gather up opinions, formulate thoughts, but the puppet-master can only give so much life to their puppet. The rest would require an injection of Disney.

The technology exists - & is used! - to determine authorship in reality over tradition. Thus, we now know a lot more about Shakespeare as a writer who co-authored plays than we do about the glove-maker himself. To misquote: the fault, dear reader, is not in our words, but in ourselves.

No mere pseudonym can hide the true author. No amount of linguistic jiggery-pokery will give the illusion of not-self-ness, unless we make the language so bland that it masks intelligence as much as it does upbringing. We can be empathetic, blustery, obtuse, outlandish, simplistic, or take on any other approach character formation or representation, but, when it comes down to it, it's us taking on that role, & then being the author from that aspect of us, not through creating a new 'ideal' writer with such attributes.

.tuo teg t'nac I & edisni deppart m'I pleH

I remember even defining a reverse font so that that looked better. The writer is trapped inside the writer. The brain that powers the pen, the inspiration that drives the content, are all trapped within the history that made the writer themselves. There is no escape. That which makes someone a writer, or makes them write, is what also defines what they write. The closest thing to an exception is fifty monkeys on typewriters for a millennium, or else a classroom full of naive students told to write about a war. The former might get Shakespeare, & the latter might get nowhere.

It would be unusual for me to whine about problems without offering pat solutions, so I'll start with this: we need to change how we represent ourselves. This has multiple aspects. The first is the written word, which, as a concept, needs a refresh, because we've hardly done much since the introduction of spaces (with the possible exception of punctuation). Written language does not reflect spoken language, still, because it was once a rare thing to attempt, whereas we now have fiction (& gossip). 

To jump out of text, vlogs & podcasts allow for the opportunity to express ourselves, as long as we're not following a written script! Poetry slams, being the equivalent of beatniks & modernism in the art world, allow for expression to manifest.

It is not until we understand how our internal language is reflected in the result, that we can do something about it. We can already generate soulless text using AI (& probably trace the output back to its training). We can use this approach to learn how to not be us in what we write. You can't necessarily be someone else, specifically, but you can be a construct. That's what AI is all about. Deep-fake text happens, I'm sure. I'm just waiting for Shakespeare's lost work to resurface.

The only danger is that we will at some point go so far down this road that we will have forgotten where we started from, as a writer, & that negates the need itself.

We write 'what are we?'