When I first began to write, it was just to quiet what was burning inside.
The idea was there, urgent, insistent, but the right words hadn’t caught up yet.
Then I discovered the shape of thought. The craft of the sentence, the balance between rhythm and silence, the pull of an image. I learned to make words shimmer.
It was thrilling. You think you’re writing better, but really you’re just writing louder.
Many stay there. They’ve tamed the frame, mastered the rhythm, the effect.
But stopping there means missing something deeper. The moment when technique becomes instinct, and you can finally turn to what truly matters: making space for a voice to rise. Your own.
Why am I saying this? Because with generative AI, I sense a rush. Many skip the beginning and land straight on the polished phrase : words that shine but don’t light anything. Too busy reading over their shoulder to notice they’re no longer holding the pen. Or worse, the thought behind it.
It’s not the tool I question. It’s the lure of surface. The belief that style alone is enough. The confusion between form and what it’s meant to carry. Between writing that comes from somewhere, and writing that goes nowhere.
What I long for is something that stops me. A line I have to read again because it holds a world. One that shifts something in me, or moves me, gently, somewhere else. That stillness, that sudden clarity, the kind of moment James Joyce called aesthetic arrest, when beauty doesn’t ask for anything, except that you stay.
Lately, I’ve started to see those small lights again. They reminded me of the glowworms in childhood summers, just outside the holiday house. You could walk past and miss them entirely. But if you knew how to look, they were there.
Come, take a look…
They’re not just glowworms blinking in the dark. They’re small constellations, if you know how to look…
Sometimes, a signature stands in for a logo. It claims a space, asserts a presence.
Sometimes, it’s an article that teaches us to see differently, to shift our gaze.
On Raptitude.com, a quiet promise takes shape… getting better at the art of being human.
What do these pieces have in common? They move us.
Not because they flatter or soothe, but because they’re alive.
They’re not trying to make us feel good, they’re trying to speak truth.
This isn’t feel-good content. It’s feel-something content. It’s feel-touched content
In a world where — for better or worse — the machine gives us words,
it’s up to us to return their texture, their weight, their soul.
Let’s write not to perform, but to get lost with intention.
Not to capture, but to let things soften. The feed, the scroll, and the breath we didn’t know we’d lost.
MD