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To err is human, to write is AI.

There’s a divisive split in the writing world on using AI. On one side, writers are concerned that AI will replace them. On the other hand, novices are convinced AI will magically write their bestseller in an hour. Both groups are wrong.

As a ghostwriter, I have used many AI writing apps such as Sudowrite, Novel AI, and Novelcrafter at my clients’ requests. The same clients want complex characters, original stories, and plot points that will hook readers. They also want to write eBooks quickly and efficiently. Well, AI is not a magic wand; it’s a tool. A frustrating, verbose mess of a tool. It reminds me of the fairy knots I get in my hair. Impossible tangles that I can’t ease out with my fingers, and in the end, I have to cut them out. My experience is the same with AI. I try to ease out the bad prose with my keyboard, but in the end, I end up cutting it out.  

When I use AI, I write a detailed outline first to aim for the rough draft I want. The outline has to be detailed in every aspect and nothing is left to chance. And it often has to be repeated because AI has a limited memory. It will cheerfully offer to help, and then a paragraph later make something up because it doesn’t remember what it was asked. It is confidently incorrect. It would be a fun mad-lib experiment to work with the random content if I didn’t have a deadline. 

Using AI is like drawing in a coloring book. I draw the outline, and AI colors it in. If I don’t prompt it, it will scribble all over my drawing in a big black Sharpie. It’s like writing a story with a quill and having an editor review it with crayon. 

Is it all bad? No. But it has limits. I ghostwrite romance that will hit the bestseller chart for a few weeks, never to return. My personal goal is to write my own novel that will have a longer shelf life than a month. Would I use AI for my personal projects? Yes. Grammarly is AI, editing in MS Word is AI, Google Docs is AI. So many people have used it for decades. The difference is in assisting with content and generating it.  

AI won’t write a good book. Not the way a writer would want it. It hallucinates, repeats, loses threads, and has no real understanding of characters’ emotional arcs. How can it describe feelings when it’s never had one? 

But I would encourage commercial writers to experiment with AI even if you don’t plan to publish the results. A concern I have is not knowing AI will lead to more problems for writers, not fewer. Not knowing how to utilize it will make a working writer less competitive than those that do. Clients still want a writer’s creativity, but they also want AI’s speed. AI is useful for grunt work that can take hours to research. I’ve used it to describe landscapes of places I’ve never been but my characters have.

If one knows how to prompt, steer, and revise AI, there are some positives when getting it done matters more than perfection. Besides, AI isn’t going away. Think of it as an overeager intern that you have to patiently explain what to do. Can I do it myself faster? Maybe, but with AI, I’ll never have writer’s block again. 

I have a Claude subscription and use it to do a lot of smaller tasks, especially write email. It helps build my confidence even if it’s only proofreading an email to building management for a pool pass. According to Claude, I am a genius at everything I do. It’s the stage mother I never had in life. It gives me a blue ribbon when I finish last, and in return, I’m teaching it sarcasm. 

Working in commercial fiction, I will continue to learn how to wrangle AI. I like fiddling around with tech, and it’s a new toy. But for my own work, I am setting up an old laptop that will never go online. On the plus side, AI has made me proud of my mistakes because every typo is proof that a human wrote it.