Messiah or Villain

The reaction of writers to AI is interesting. One crowd treats it like a messiah. Another treats it like a villain.

For me it boils down to that, for effective writing, the fundamentals still matter. Probably more than ever. Good ideas are still rare. Taste still matters. Judgment still matters. 

A machine can produce a thousand sentences before breakfast ... but most of them still need someone who knows the difference between finished and merely generated. Because AI doesn't magically make a mediocre writer brilliant. It just lets a good writer spend less time pushing the wheelbarrow and more time deciding where the bricks belong.

Most technologies are far less dramatic than the people arguing about them. In my experience, technologies tend to be multipliers: They make good habits more productive and bad habits more obvious. So, when I think about AI, I keep coming back to the same conclusion I reached with other transformative technologies: 

Learn to think. Learn to write. Then learn the tools.

Not because the algorithm demands it. Because your time is worth more than pretending the clock stopped in 2018.

Overthinking

 

Along with checking for proper spelling, my editing process includes double-checking words to make sure they mean what I think they mean.

Recent examples: 

Panacea. I used it to mean "cure-all." I was right, but I felt compelled to double-check.

Same thing with proscribe. It looked wrong. Did I mean to use the word prescribe? 

And the same overthinking had me arguing with myself about infer. Was I confusing it with imply?

 

NOTE:

Proscribe means to forbid or outlaw while prescribe means to recommend.

The writer implies (hints), and the listener or reader infers (draws a conclusion).

 

Upscale Oops!

The upscale restaurant had an upscale bathroom.

An interior decorator made it feel comfortable and welcoming. More like a living room than a bathroom.

But as the restaurant soon learned the designer lamp and lampshade that were perfect for the design aesthetic were a failure for installation in a bathroom.

Oops!

"Please do not throw trash in the lampshade." Just a few words on a Post-It note tell a full story.

Polished vs. Interesting

 

We've confused being polished with being interesting. And I blame that on ChatGPT, Claude, and the rest of the AI gang.

Not because AI is bad at writing. It's often annoyingly competent. It can organize ideas, tidy up sentences and produce something perfectly acceptable in seconds. That's exactly the problem. "Perfectly acceptable" is becoming the new default.

The result? We're wallpapering the internet with competence.

But as a writer, my goal is not just competence. It’s about developing memorable ideas … and they rarely arrive dressed sensibly. They stumble in sideways. They start as a throwaway comment, a ridiculous comparison, or a question that makes everyone in the room pause for a second longer than feels comfortable. Creativity has always had the manners of a scruffy dog. It wanders off the path, rolls in something questionable, then somehow comes back carrying exactly what you needed.

Algorithms don't really do that. They smooth the edges. They average things out. They're brilliant at predicting the next word. Less brilliant at inventing the sentence that shouldn't work but somehow does.

That's why I'm becoming suspicious of anything that feels too neat. The perfect LinkedIn post. The flawless marketing framework. The universal formula for creativity. They all remind me of hotel artwork. Technically fine, but nobody has ever gone back to look at it.

Maybe the competitive advantage isn't working harder to sound professional. Maybe it's refusing to sand off the rough edges that make your thinking recognizably yours. Different has always looked a little weird at first. That's usually how you know it's worth paying attention to.

Don’t confuse being competent with being compelling. They're not the same thing. One gets approval. The other gets remembered.