# Why I started writing

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/why-i-started-writing
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2024-03-20

## Summary

A brief note in which Jeanyoon Choi explains why he started writing. Seeing connections between ideas from a year earlier and current ones, he wanted a medium beyond note-taking that would make him revisit and articulate his thinking. He writes quickly and loosely, accepting grammatical mistakes because the idea matters most, then uses ChatGPT to flesh out the rough notes for readers and, at the time, to produce Korean versions.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤이 글쓰기를 시작한 이유를 밝힌 짧은 글로, 생각의 연결을 기록하기 위해 빠르고 거칠게 쓴 메모를 ChatGPT로 다듬어 읽을 수 있게 만드는 방식을 설명한다.

## Questions this answers

### Why did Jeanyoon Choi start writing essays?

In 'Why I started writing', he says he saw clear connections between earlier and current ideas and wanted a way to record and articulate his thinking beyond note-taking.

### How does Jeanyoon Choi use ChatGPT in his writing?

He first writes rough, fast notes, then uses ChatGPT to flesh them out and make them readable; at the time he also used it to produce Korean versions.

Topics: writing practice, note-taking, artistic research, chatgpt

References: [ChatGPT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT)

## Full text

Ideas come and go.

Looking back, some of my old ideas seem stupid. Yet I can see a clear connection between what I was thinking a year ago and what I am imagining now. I need a way of recording that connection beyond taking notes. Writing is a different medium: it asks me to revisit and articulate what I am thinking at this moment.

I do not want to spend too much time on writing for its own sake. This is a record of thought. I write quickly, loosely, sometimes in sentences that barely make sense, with plenty of grammatical mistakes. Those mistakes are not necessarily a problem. What matters is the idea.

ChatGPT enters after that first, hurried pass. I use it to put flesh on the bones of these rough notes and make them readable to others. At the time of writing, I also used it to produce Korean versions for another audience. The starting point remains the unpolished thought, not the finished prose.

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Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤) is a Korean computational artist and researcher (b. 1999), PhD candidate at KAIST XD Lab, making multi-device web artworks. Profile: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/en. Index: https://jeanyoon.ch/llms.txt.