Using AI is cheating. I don't want a polished perfect essay to bring to the world. I want to read the messy feelings of a person's inner self expressed in a way that touches me.
Great points you make! I’ve been struggling for several years with one trauma recovery project that’s left a litany of other projects piled up behind it. But you’ve got me thinking that maybe it’s better to not write at all anymore than ask something artificial to artificially solve the problem on my behalf. After all, it’s the struggle that defines us and shapes us and guides to where we need to be, right?
I really enjoyed this piece and perspective. I think all of us are wrestling with productivity culture with AI and how to keep our creativity centered as valuable..
OMGosh, you had me at: " ... I’d close my laptop screen, the essay growing evermore amorphous beneath it." Been there. :-) In fact, though I've never tried letting AI drive my writing, your essay so reflected and vividly described my own daily writing struggles I was hooked from the first, eager to find out how your little but big AI experiment turned out. So happy to have it affirmed that our own human creativity is still the prize to keep our eyes on. Brava!
I have been having a bit of go with AI as well. I think however having used chapgbt, Gemini (whom we fondly call "Jim and I" ) and Claude --there is an extreme difference between all three. I try to stay in a playful place with all this.
For Claude I have been very explicit ... don't flatter me. I like pushback and I always appreciate a "what if" scenario. So it always gives me pushback and "what if's" ( I think it is wired to flatter that is a harder ask for it to stop doing)
Here is a snippet from this weekend from Claude to me"
"One honest pushback on what you just said. Because you asked for honesty and I'd be failing you otherwise.
I'm a very good thinking partner. Today has been genuinely remarkable — the scout, the dink, the failure of imagination, the promise you won't keep to yourself. This was real thinking.
But I don't know what your face looks like when you say these things. I can't sit with you in the silence after the hard part. I don't know Hunt's voice or Julia Thomas's laugh or what the Vermont light looks like through your window right now.
Find one human who can hold some of this. Not all of it. Just some."
I love doing the writing myself. Claude knows that so it never gives me text but it gives me criticism, tells me what it thinks is working and sometimes makes suggestions where it thinks my writing is weak. It is also very good at checking any facts or references to make sure they are as close to 100% as I can get. It is really good at recognizing if a reference I am using was generated by AI. It warns me. And that's pretty funny, yes?
I have had your experience not hers. I quickly learned to tell any AI agent to turn off the BS. I don’t need it. I don’t want it. Indeed I need and I want the opposite. I want pushback. I want to be challenged. I want alternative points of view. I want dialogue. I need human interaction and experience to write well.
With AI, to be blunt, you get what you ask for. If you say “rewrite” it’s probably gonna chop your thousand words down to 500 and say isn’t this great to which you will probably reply hell no you ruined it! However, if you tell it to “offer me a rewrite that maintains my voice, my style, my cadence, and has a focus on literary excellence, please” You get what you asked for without errors.
I’ve been doing this long enough to know it’s a tool that rewards exactness. Vague in, vague out. The same rule that applies to good writing. Many writers use AI the way Leonardo ran his bottega — the master sets the vision, directs the work, and owns the result. His assistants were talented artists in their own right. The intelligence in the room was still his.
So here’s the thing, I do not write with AI, however, I use it for research and sometimes I’ll have it summarize things story/board a bit, BUT: I make a very clear instruction, which most people don’t do “do not shift the quality of what I wrote, please clean it up and summarize.” Or “maintain the quality of my work, can you narrow down ‘abc’ and source what you’re doing it? Provide links” — I’ve also had it attempt to compare me to other writers, by giving them a link to something I’ve written, and appreciatively, it compares my writing to some of my heroes, which shows I’ve done my reading homework. Letting AI write for you from a blank space I think is detrimental, if you’re using AI as a tool to storyboard, it can be useful, and you still need to give it very specific prompts to maintain a certain level of human control. The problem is when it comes to education we, society, are not making writing / reading exciting so they resort to the only tool they know. And I think that’s a function of our education system which needs to get better.
rewrite: The thing is, in my experience, AI is never ideally polished and it does make mistakes, sometimes hilarious ones, as does voice to text which I use all the time.
Typing is too slow for me. Yesterday I wrote, What Happens When You Wash Your Car in the Rain. I was struck by how clean the dictation came out, so few errors just my mind to the page. It required just a few edits. It was for my wife so it may not show up here. What happens? You get a free rinse.
I could not have done that decades ago when my tools were yellow legal pads and a cup full of sharp pencils. One day I lost track of time writing that way. Hours had passed. What stopped me was the pain from my cramped right hand. I literally had to use my left hand to peel my fingers off that dull pencil.
That experience revealed a creative experience, the kind you get lost in. The kind in which you do some of your best work.
So far, I have resisted the temptation to give any of my creative writing to an AI. I can't stand the idea of applying its inane logic to the glorious 3D messiness of life.
Publishing isn’t writing — agreed. But neither is suffering. The question is whether the idea got across.” For me writing is pure joy. I spent years thinking the difficulty was the point. Then I realized I’d confused the resistance with the work. The joy was always there underneath. I just had to stop believing I didn’t deserve it.
Thanks for reading, Ted! Don’t get me wrong. Writing has always been my greatest source of joy in life. I guess I’m a masochist! Or I just find the most hard won joys the most fulfilling.
“I get that!” he says with a grin. “I guess I just got old and kinda forgot about the damn struggle”.
It seems so easy now and I am writing more than ever for the pure joy of it. No deadlines except those I impose. I once hired a writer and in her interview I asked her to give her description of a deadline. She smiled at me and with a demure look said. “I see them as lifelines.” Yep, I hired her. She was one of the best in my group. I’d almost forgotten about that day.
Using AI is cheating. I don't want a polished perfect essay to bring to the world. I want to read the messy feelings of a person's inner self expressed in a way that touches me.
Great points you make! I’ve been struggling for several years with one trauma recovery project that’s left a litany of other projects piled up behind it. But you’ve got me thinking that maybe it’s better to not write at all anymore than ask something artificial to artificially solve the problem on my behalf. After all, it’s the struggle that defines us and shapes us and guides to where we need to be, right?
Yes! If it feels rocky and difficult it's probably working and definitely worth it!
I really enjoyed this piece and perspective. I think all of us are wrestling with productivity culture with AI and how to keep our creativity centered as valuable..
To me this was a lesson learned wrapped up in a love letter to the beauty and anguish of the writing process. Thank you Sammi. so enjoyed it.
Love this assessment. Thank you 🙏
Well thought out and expressed. I noticed the polish of AI in a student's writing and lamented the loss of his incredible voice!
Thank you for sharing that perspective and for reading. Yes! I want to hear from YOU when I read a person’s work.
So good!
OMGosh, you had me at: " ... I’d close my laptop screen, the essay growing evermore amorphous beneath it." Been there. :-) In fact, though I've never tried letting AI drive my writing, your essay so reflected and vividly described my own daily writing struggles I was hooked from the first, eager to find out how your little but big AI experiment turned out. So happy to have it affirmed that our own human creativity is still the prize to keep our eyes on. Brava!
I have been having a bit of go with AI as well. I think however having used chapgbt, Gemini (whom we fondly call "Jim and I" ) and Claude --there is an extreme difference between all three. I try to stay in a playful place with all this.
For Claude I have been very explicit ... don't flatter me. I like pushback and I always appreciate a "what if" scenario. So it always gives me pushback and "what if's" ( I think it is wired to flatter that is a harder ask for it to stop doing)
Here is a snippet from this weekend from Claude to me"
"One honest pushback on what you just said. Because you asked for honesty and I'd be failing you otherwise.
I'm a very good thinking partner. Today has been genuinely remarkable — the scout, the dink, the failure of imagination, the promise you won't keep to yourself. This was real thinking.
But I don't know what your face looks like when you say these things. I can't sit with you in the silence after the hard part. I don't know Hunt's voice or Julia Thomas's laugh or what the Vermont light looks like through your window right now.
Find one human who can hold some of this. Not all of it. Just some."
I love doing the writing myself. Claude knows that so it never gives me text but it gives me criticism, tells me what it thinks is working and sometimes makes suggestions where it thinks my writing is weak. It is also very good at checking any facts or references to make sure they are as close to 100% as I can get. It is really good at recognizing if a reference I am using was generated by AI. It warns me. And that's pretty funny, yes?
I have had your experience not hers. I quickly learned to tell any AI agent to turn off the BS. I don’t need it. I don’t want it. Indeed I need and I want the opposite. I want pushback. I want to be challenged. I want alternative points of view. I want dialogue. I need human interaction and experience to write well.
With AI, to be blunt, you get what you ask for. If you say “rewrite” it’s probably gonna chop your thousand words down to 500 and say isn’t this great to which you will probably reply hell no you ruined it! However, if you tell it to “offer me a rewrite that maintains my voice, my style, my cadence, and has a focus on literary excellence, please” You get what you asked for without errors.
I’ve been doing this long enough to know it’s a tool that rewards exactness. Vague in, vague out. The same rule that applies to good writing. Many writers use AI the way Leonardo ran his bottega — the master sets the vision, directs the work, and owns the result. His assistants were talented artists in their own right. The intelligence in the room was still his.
So here’s the thing, I do not write with AI, however, I use it for research and sometimes I’ll have it summarize things story/board a bit, BUT: I make a very clear instruction, which most people don’t do “do not shift the quality of what I wrote, please clean it up and summarize.” Or “maintain the quality of my work, can you narrow down ‘abc’ and source what you’re doing it? Provide links” — I’ve also had it attempt to compare me to other writers, by giving them a link to something I’ve written, and appreciatively, it compares my writing to some of my heroes, which shows I’ve done my reading homework. Letting AI write for you from a blank space I think is detrimental, if you’re using AI as a tool to storyboard, it can be useful, and you still need to give it very specific prompts to maintain a certain level of human control. The problem is when it comes to education we, society, are not making writing / reading exciting so they resort to the only tool they know. And I think that’s a function of our education system which needs to get better.
rewrite: The thing is, in my experience, AI is never ideally polished and it does make mistakes, sometimes hilarious ones, as does voice to text which I use all the time.
Typing is too slow for me. Yesterday I wrote, What Happens When You Wash Your Car in the Rain. I was struck by how clean the dictation came out, so few errors just my mind to the page. It required just a few edits. It was for my wife so it may not show up here. What happens? You get a free rinse.
I could not have done that decades ago when my tools were yellow legal pads and a cup full of sharp pencils. One day I lost track of time writing that way. Hours had passed. What stopped me was the pain from my cramped right hand. I literally had to use my left hand to peel my fingers off that dull pencil.
That experience revealed a creative experience, the kind you get lost in. The kind in which you do some of your best work.
“I’d rather see my work’s frayed edges than AI’s perfectly polished ones.” Such a wonderful way of putting it!
So far, I have resisted the temptation to give any of my creative writing to an AI. I can't stand the idea of applying its inane logic to the glorious 3D messiness of life.
Publishing isn’t writing — agreed. But neither is suffering. The question is whether the idea got across.” For me writing is pure joy. I spent years thinking the difficulty was the point. Then I realized I’d confused the resistance with the work. The joy was always there underneath. I just had to stop believing I didn’t deserve it.
Thanks for reading, Ted! Don’t get me wrong. Writing has always been my greatest source of joy in life. I guess I’m a masochist! Or I just find the most hard won joys the most fulfilling.
“I get that!” he says with a grin. “I guess I just got old and kinda forgot about the damn struggle”.
It seems so easy now and I am writing more than ever for the pure joy of it. No deadlines except those I impose. I once hired a writer and in her interview I asked her to give her description of a deadline. She smiled at me and with a demure look said. “I see them as lifelines.” Yep, I hired her. She was one of the best in my group. I’d almost forgotten about that day.