Gifts For Writers, 2026

Every year I (try to) do a GIFTS FOR WRITERS post, which is to say, a post speaking not to the writers per se but to those fortunate (or unfortunate) souls that have writers in their lives. Writers need a particular kind of love! We have too many notebooks already! We probably don’t have enough chocolate! We require peculiar care and feeding! I want to help you help them.

(I think the last proper one I did was 2023, but even there, I mostly scrubbed off the “for writers” part, though it’s still in there, thematically.)

I don’t really have a list this year! The writers in your life probably don’t need a cool new pen or a shiny new analog word processor and instead need like, health care, or a book deal, or FOR THE WORLD TO CALM DOWN JUST A TINY FUCKING BIT. You know, things you can’t really offer.

That said, you can offer one thing:

You can support the writer in your life by pounding a stake into the heart of the digital vampire plaguing us all: Generative AI.

This means —

Don’t post AI slop.

Don’t repost photos or news stories that don’t pass the smell test or that don’t have reputable links to support them.

Don’t actively use AI in any way — no Sora ick, no Nano Banana bullshit, don’t even look at ChatGPT.

Don’t support it, don’t argue in its favor, don’t play Devil’s Advocate with it.

Just get on board the FUCK AI train. Tell them and the rest of the world with your whole chest that you know AI sucks, and more to the point, it literally sucks by siphoning up all our creative work, our effort, our information environment, our actual environment, our goddamn everything, and then it files down the serial numbers on our art and our identities and puts it back into the world without our soul in it — and more to the point, with no way for it to ever help us pay for rent or health care or food. It’s an artbarf machine — just puking up low-value slurry into the maws of the open-mouthed baby-brains who want to cosplay as writers and artists and musicians but without doing any of that pesky work. It pukes into their mouths, they puke it onto the floor, and they clap their shitty poopy hands and say, “I made this! I made art!” It’s horrible. Why would you like this? It’s the idolization of idea paired with the demonization of both creator and creation. It ruins us.

So you need to put up that flag. Loud and proud HATER-OF-AI, ye must be.

If you love us, that’s what you’ll do.

You won’t fight.

You’ll just trust.

And okay fine if you really want a gift —

This DESTROY AI shirt at Aftermath by artist Kim Hu is bad-ass.

Though not AI, there’s also Authors Against Book Bans shirts.

So, there you go.

Best gift for a writer is to respect their work and their humanity and give the biggest middle finger you can give to generative AI and LLMs, please and thank you.

---

Listen, okay, fine, I am an imperfect person who has to sometimes hawk his crass wares, so I did write a writing advice book geared toward, um, these troubled times somewhat, called Gentle Writing Advice. You can get it at Bookshop.org, or my own local store can get you a copy — hey, they can even get you one signed and personalized and sent right to you. I also have merch! MERCH. Who doesn’t love merch!? Okay bye.