Hi Reader,
Looking for a strong reaction? Start talking about AI's role in the creative process. Prepare the pitchforks.
I write my own books. I choose humans to design my covers and real people to voice my audiobooks.
At a time when it's popular to shout down AI, my stance seems safe. Even admirable.
Sorry. I'm not trying to score points. I just like working with real people.
I believe there is art in imperfection.
A little over a year ago, I wrote an article for Writer’s Digest about artificial intelligence.
At the time, I'd finished my second book and was whacking my forehead against the wall trying to dislodge Noble Reckoning from its stuck place in my brain.
Not an unusual problem for me.
Writing has always been a bit of a grind for me. The literary vehicle carrying me toward “The End” is a wobbling jalopy—taking frustrating detours, hitting trees, occasionally burying its wheels in muddy fields.
In my article, I wrote about wondering if AI could be a useful tool.
Could it write?
Should it write?
No. Of course it shouldn’t write.
That’s my job. I’m the writer.
But what if it could? What if I could use it as a tool to get my ideas out quickly?
So, a year ago, I allowed AI to take the writing wheel. Just a brief test drive.
Before I continue, I need to be very clear: Noble Reckoning is a human creation. Mine. It's not artificial.
Intelligent? I'll let others decide.
I gave AI some samples of my writing, explained my characters and told it what needed to happen.
Then I watched.
No writer’s block. No trepidation. In the time it might take me to wrestle a paragraph into submission, pages appeared.
The writing was pretty bad, but that didn't bother me much. First drafts are allowed to be bad.
But there was another problem.
A big one.
That night, lying in bed, I wasn't thinking about my story.
That's unusual. My books follow me around. Problems from the writing room show up while I'm driving, walking the dog or staring at the ceiling at three in the morning.
But that night?
Nothing.
I had almost no connection to what was on the page.
This was still my story. Still my ideas.
The problem?
I was using a joystick to control my story.
For me, the battle takes place at sentence level. That afternoon there had been no battle.
Sentence level is where ideas emerge and creativity sparks. Sometimes the struggle forces me to understand a character differently. That changes the scene.
The scene changes the story.
My plot needs to go off-road. It requires wrong turns. I need to get stuck—then take time to figure out where I'm trying to go.
In the end, I concluded that AI wasn't the fix for my writing struggle.
I've thought about that article quite a bit over the past year because—plot twist—I use AI more today than I did then.
A lot more.
Research. Business. Marketing. Data. Learning. Sometimes I just argue with it because no one else in my family appears to enjoy arguing as much as I do.
While some people are shouting down the technology and others are predicting it will solve nearly everything, I'm not particularly interested in either camp.
My guess is we'll spend years figuring out where AI belongs in our lives.
My thoughts about it are uncomfortably nuanced. But that's okay. I'm content living in the gray.
So here's my current—and likely evolving—take:
I'm grateful for AI's ability to make me more efficient—to remove some of my busywork.
But outsourcing my thinking and creativity?
That's probably not a great strategy.
I'll continue to be curious about it. I'm not a Luddite.
I've learned that, for me, creative discovery happens in the strange and specific way my mind works through problems—especially when I'm stuck.
So I will continue to be a slow storyteller. My value as a writer isn't producing more words per hour.
Noble Reckoning came out last week.
I wish I could tell you that after three novels I've developed a cleaner, more efficient creative process.
I haven't.
The book fought me the entire way. Eventually, it became the book I hoped it could be.
The mess is my process.
My books will always arrive with tree branches in the bumper and mud on the tires.
Apparently, that's how my stories find their way home.
Happy Friday!
Andy
