The truth is that you can’t write a good book using AI right now without learning how to write. I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to, but you certainly can’t right now.
However, you probably can learn to write by using an AI to help you with a book.
If you leap right into writing a book — without any previous writing experience — by using an AI to assist you, you’re going to learn differently. But you will still have to think about what you want to say, how to say it, what order to say it in, and whether or not it’s working.
Basically, the underlying skills it takes to write well are going to be the same, regardless of what tools you use to do it. No matter what, you still have to learn how to take ideas in your mind and translate them into words on a page that will mean something to someone else.
So many of the objections I see to writers using AI really just come down to defenses of college hazing: “I went through it, so they should have to go through it also!”
But if we’ve found an easier way for people to learn, then that’s a good thing.
And yes, disclaimer, I have heard all the arguments about how AI programs came from unethically sourced databases. That’s not what we’re talking about here. That’s a different conversation for elsewhere.
I’m talking about how AI programs can open up writing to more people.
Writers all know the pain of staring at a blank page, desperately trying to pull words out of your head and just basically not knowing how you’re going to manage to this time, even if you’ve done it over and over before.
AI programs can make that easier.
Easier is good.
I really just need to write a thread on this where I go through the process of writing a story with the help of AI…
I’ve only done that once so far, and I think I ended up keeping, like, five words the AI generated, which weren’t even contiguous. It was still helpful.
Maybe next month, I’ll post the aforementioned story, and then I can use it as an example, breaking down how the AI helped me with it. But I’ve already posted my new story for this month, and as my own publisher/editor these days, I don’t want to undercut my publishing schedule.
Basically though, there’s a lot of fearmongering about AI writing, and yes, there are ways to misuse it. A lot of those ways are things people could do without AI too, just not as fast.
But AI also has good uses when it comes to writing, and those are worth exploring.
I feel like I’m saying such elementary, obvious things here… but also? I’m not seeing other writers saying this stuff publicly, and you shouldn’t have to get a secret invitation to a private group to get to hear:
It’s okay to use tools that help you.