I can’t believe I live in a world where this needs to actually be said, but here it is:
I do not use AI in any part of my writing or process. Ever. All of my stories are thought up in my own head. I then chart them out with pen and paper and sticky notes to create my story outline. And then I write them, using a combination of an old-school paper notebook and my laptop, depending on where I happen to be when I’m writing. (And, yes, I always outline before writing—I’m definitely a “plotter”, though my finished stories always end up different than what I had originally planned. I often think of new tangents or fun twists while I’m writing!)
I also do not knowingly use AI-generated art in any of my social media or blog posts, and all of my covers and character art are done by actual human artists that I pay for their extraordinary talents. Yes, it would be much cheaper to just feed a bunch of prompts into a machine and have it spit something out for me… but it would also be hugely unethical and a betrayal of my colleagues in other Arts fields.
AI: Don’t imagine. Don’t dream. Don’t create. Don’t think.
If you are an aspiring writer, please think twice about using any AI in your writing. If you are a teacher, please consider what children are learning when they are taught to use these systems that only exist at all (as publicly admitted by their creators) because of the blatant theft of copyrighted material created by artists, authors and musicians in fields that are now being decimated because of these systems.
When we tell children that they need to used these things because they’re the Cool New Thing that Everyone Must Learn or Be Left Behind, we’re really telling them this: Don’t imagine. Don’t dream. Don’t create. Don’t think. Just let the machine do it for you because it’s easier. It will do it faster than you can. It will do it better than you can right now, so why bother trying to get better at it yourself?
Writing is a process. And learning any skill takes effort.
Here’s the thing: Learning how to write well is a process. And, as with any skill, that process is necessary to becoming good at it. Making mistakes, feeling stuck, learning to work through that feeling—all of it is part of what becoming a writer entails. Learning how to brainstorm ideas and work with those ideas to form them into a coherent story is also part of that process, and it’s an important one. Is it easy? Not usually. But that’s part of it, too.
Ideas, as the saying goes, are a dime a dozen. Once you start writing, you are never going to run out of ideas because the more you write, the more ideas you’re going to get. The hallmark of a “real writer” is having the tenacity to take those ideas and work with them—i.e. to actually write.
No one is born a writer, or an artist, or a musician. Interest in these fields combined with practice turns the merely curious into the experts. Outsourcing all of the necessary work that allows you to truly understand and excel in your field means you will never—can never—become any of these things.
Finally, hot tip: Definitely keep a notebook or a file folder on your computer where you can jot down ideas when they come to you. You’ll want to be able to revisit them later and you’re likely to forget them if you don’t write them down somewhere!
